Honours (4th year) and MA students registered in the Unit tended to have a number of characteristics not common to candidates to other departments. These were:

1. Their maturity. On average, the majority of the class was over 28 years of age, and often older, with a few young students coming directly through from 3rd year.

2. Very few students, if any, would have applied for other Honours courses.

3. Nearly all our students were quite clear as to their future vocations and had made a deliberate decision to return to university to meet the demands of those vocations. These fell into three main categories :

a) popular organizational anti-apartheid and development work;

b) experienced teachers who then returned to their previous posts; while

c) some Honours graduates moved onto disciplinary-based MA studies either at UN or elsewhere (in, for example, Education, African Studies, Gender Studies etc).

A pattern began to emerge in the early 1990s where previous CCMS Honours or Masters graduates now returned for a year or two to register for a further degree (MA or Ph.D) prior to again returning to their respective professions. This indicates that the notion of lifelong learning means just that: it is our graduates who will help CCMS to shape life-long learning programmes as they enter and exit CCMS in the light of their professional career needs.