PROFILE STADIO HIGHER EDUCATION
STADIO’ s CEO shares enthusiasm for higher education
DR STAN DU PLESSIS
In 2025, STADIO Higher Education announced the appointment of Dr Stan du Plessis as its Principal and Chief Executive Officer. After nearly three decades in academia, Du Plessis stepped into the role on 1 August, bringing deep expertise and renewed energy to STADIO’ s mission of providing quality education at scale.
Dr Stan du Plessis’ s academic credentials are awe-inspiring. He had previously served as Chief Operating Officer and Professor of Economics at Stellenbosch University, was a former president of the Economic Society of South Africa, and a member of the elite“ Harvard group” of economists who served as advisors to the South African government in the early 2000s. But it’ s his recent appointment as STADIO Principal and CEO that has him most fired up right now.
The vision: quality at scale
For Dr du Plessis, his current role offers an exciting challenge that has eluded higher education for centuries: scale.“ The biggest unfilled need in the South African higher education system is the ability to deliver quality at scale to a much larger section of our population,” he says.“ This is what STADIO has chosen as its agenda, and it’ s what I have long believed is the most important challenge in our sector.”
Enthusiastic about transitioning from the public sector into private higher education, Dr du Plessis believes that private institutions have a critical role to play in addressing the challenges facing South Africa’ s tertiary education landscape.“ The more I meet the brilliant people we have, and see the enthusiasm and the dynamism of our people, the more enthusiastic I am about our agenda – so it’ s been a very happy experience so far, and I hope it’ ll stay on that trajectory,” he says.
Traditional universities worldwide tend to remain relatively small, he explains, with even iconic names like Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge enrolling no more than 25 000 students.“ If we simply follow the traditional model, we won’ t succeed in our objective. We have to do things differently.”
Rethinking the academic model
That“ different” approach is already underway at STADIO. Du Plessis describes the institution’ s“ new academic model”
106 SA PROFILE www. saprofilemagazine. co. za