Funding JZ’s lemon

The lemon that former president Jacob Zuma handed SA in December in the form of fee-free higher education for poor and working-class students could become the gift that keeps on giving.

That’s if the increase in funding drives the number of undergraduate university students supported by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nasfas) up from 230 469 in 2017-18 to an estimated 1.2 million over the medium term. The number of poor students supported at TVET colleges should increase from 230 068 to 1.1 million.

The department of higher education and training received extra funds of R57 billion in the medium term. With provisional allocations announced in the 2017 budget, the total additions amount to R67 billion. The increase in spending will mostly be on additional allocations to Nasfas. Bursary expenditure will rise from R15.4 billion in 2017-18 to R38 billion in 2020-21. On a year-by-year basis, allocations for fee-free higher education and training amount to R12.4 billion in 2018-19, R20.3 billion in 2019-20 and R24.3 billion in 2020-21.

All new first-year students with a family income below R350 000 per annum at universities and TVET colleges in the 2018 academic year will be fully funded for all years of study. Returning Nasfas students’ loans for 2018 onwards will be converted to a bursary.

To fund the fee-free policy and revenue shortfalls, a committee identified budget cuts of about R85 billion over the medium term.

Of this, R53 billion was shaved off national government expenditure and R28 billion off grants to provinces and local government.

Large provincial grants like school infrastructure backlog grant, education infrastructure grant, human settlements development grant and provincial roads maintenance grant were reduced. Local government grants, the public transport network grant and the urban settlements development grant were also cut.