UCT Graduate School of Business
The University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business is a business school in South Africa.
The GSB was founded in 1964 by a handful of individuals including the economist William Hutt (1963–1964). Hutt, who is famous for coining the phrase “consumer sovereignty”.
The first director of the GSB was Bob Boland (1964–1972) who introduced an extroverted and participative style of teaching, the likes of which the UCT campus had never seen before and which is still felt in the classrooms of the GSB today. In 1972 Meyer Feldberg, who went on to be Dean of Columbia Business School in New York, took over the directorship and ran the school throughout the 1970s.
Since then a number of directors have headed the School including John Simpson (1979–1986). Paul Sulcas (1987–1989), David Hall (1990–1992), Kate Jowell (1993–1997) and Nick Segal (1999–2003) and Frank Horwitz (2004–2009). The current director is Professor Walter Baets.
As the School continued to grow and prosper, it eventually outgrew its original campus in Rondebosch and in 1992 relocated to its present location at the V&A Waterfront.
The core GSB buildings were built in 1901 as the Industrial Breakwater Prison. The buildings were an addition to the original convict station that lay further down Portswood Road toward the Waterfront, established in 1860 to provide cheap labour for the construction of Cape Town’s first effective breakwater and harbour.
In 1926 the prison was closed down and turned into a hostel for migrant workers in Cape Town. But by the 1990s the buildings had been left empty and derelict when their potential to be turned into a leading academic facility was spotted. The buildings were extensively renovated and added to and the UCT GSB took up residence in 1991.
References
- Historical data supplied by Professor Vivan Bickford Smith, University of Cape Town.