“In light of the very limited opportunities for employment in Grahamstown, it is totally understandable that most of them have little choice but to seek employment elsewhere.”
“In light of the very limited opportunities for employment in Grahamstown, it is totally understandable that most of them have little choice but to seek employment elsewhere.”
Rhodes University Dean of Students Dr Vivian De Klerk had this to say in response to a call from the newly-installed university Chancellor, Justice Lex Mpati, for graduates to stay and work in Grahamstown.
In an interview with Grocott’s Mail recently Mpati said that when achievers leave Grahamstown, it impoverishes the community as there are fewer role models for those left behind.
Speaking to some born-and-bred Grahamstown graduates, they shared mixed feelings about choosing to seek jobs and opportunities further afield.
Former Victoria Girls’ High School pupil Tracy Probert agrees with De Klerk that there are far more job opportunities for people with specialised degrees in bigger cities. The BA linguistics graduate plans to leave Grahamstown to find work.
“I also feel that I need to get out of the small-town living that I’ve become accustomed to,” she said.
Probert explained that many young adults want to get away from home to study elsewhere, and likewise Grahamstown-born Rhodes students want to go somewhere else when they finish studying.
Daniel Baines, who attended Kingswood College and recently completed his LLB at Rhodes, has moved to Port Elizabeth to pursue his law career.
“I had lived [in Grahamstown]long enough. I always knew that I was going to leave after I finished studying,” he said.
Leaving is made a lot easier by the limited work prospects here, he said.
Former Mary Waters and St Andrew’s College pupil Maleke Lesoro is still furthering his post-graduate studies in biochemistry at Rhodes, but doesn’t see himself sticking around when the time comes to find a job.
“I’m not leaving yet, I am currently doing my Masters,” he said. “But I would like to live in Pretoria.
“There is no other reason I would leave Grahamstown. It is just not the place to find work in biotechnology.”
Probert does, however, have some advice for local students who are desperate to leave.
“What locals don’t realise is how different going to Rhodes is from being in school here,” she said.
“Locals who go to Rhodes should spend at least a year in res so that they can get away from home and be an independent person.”
