The voluntary turnover rate of academics ranges between 41 and 63% and at least 6 000 new academics are required to replace retiring academics within the next five years.

On a dusty street of a village in the North West Province a group of 12-year-olds are cheering each other on as they play kgati, an indigenous game using a skipping rope. As the game intensifies one of them hears her grandmother shouting from the kitchen, requesting her to go to their ward counsellor’s house and ask if social grants will be paid the following day.

Meet Faith Sibiya and Carl Thomson. They are two typical varsity students. Faith is an eccentric foot-dragger and always finds an excuse to do that really important assignment… tomorrow. Carl, on the other hand, is an inattentive fusspot. In less than six months’ time, both of them have to set foot in the world of work.

Staff and students at the North-West University's (NWU’s) Engineering Faculty are in the process of giving the traditional way of manufacturing products a huge blow. They are now using their wide variety of world class three-dimensional printers.

Normal heart rates range from 60 to 100 beats per minute. Anything above that means blood is racing at an alarming speed through your veins. One person whose blood is pumping with passion in the fight against a deadly health condition, hypertension, is Prof Alta Schutte.

Edward Netherlands is an inspiring researcher who is continuously challenging the boundaries of existing scientific knowledge. His most recent accolade vests him as one of the country’s most productive and innovative young male researchers.

Prof Ravinder Rena’s expertise in education and undergraduate research is taking him places – to Dublin in Ireland to be exact.

Over the years the North West University (NWU) has shown that it is not only dedicated to achieving academic excellence, but also to helping and developing the community and the environment.

It would be a pity if we do not reap the fruit of the indigenous knowledge cultivated in our communities.

“My teacher loves me.” “My social worker is like my mother, she cares.” “My neighbour cares for me; he doesn’t want me to go hungry.”