Student surplus burdens system
THE institutions of higher education in the country were carrying a heavy burden of an extra 400 000 students on their backs, Statistician-General Pali Lehohla said yesterday.
He said these students were treadmilling at the same point and not coming out at the other end.
Lehohla said the students inflated the number of those enrolled in the 26 institutions of higher learning to about a million instead of the approximate figure of 600 000 who should be there.
“The system is inefficient,” he said.
“Bearing in mind that students died and others failed, there was an expectation that the numbers which went into first year were more or less what came out at the end. We have 170 000 first-year students in our universities,” he said.
The expectations were that 521 000 undergraduates and 100 000 postgraduate students existed, which made up 600 000. “But we have a million students in universities,” he said.
These students were among the numbers demanding free education, Lehohla said.
“The system is more expensive because of the surplus being churned around inside.”
Lehohla spoke at the release of a report on the financial statistics of higher-education institutions and reasserted that free education was not possible.
Growth
He said universities across the country had seen a 32.8% growth in student enrolments between 2006 and 2015. The University of Pretoria (Tuks) and Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) experienced 21.4% and 11.3% respectively.
Tuition fees received by all universities last year were R21.5 billion, with Tuks having just more than R2 billion and TUT R1 billion. There was an overall R26.8 billion in grants, of which Unisa had R2.2 billion, Tuks R2.1 billion and TUT R1.4 billion.
Money from donations made up 23% of income and tuition 34%, but education could not be free, he said.
“Education has to be paid for by taxes, and with a 92% employment rate for graduates, it can be achieved,” he said. “The collection method has got to be strengthened, but the rate at which they pay has to take into account the situation of the country.”
Graduates would pay for both the private benefit, which allowed them to have jobs, and the public good, which was the benefit to society, and everyone else could chip in perpetually, he said.
He said priorities were also skewed. Politicians had counted electricity and water as issues of importance. “Not once did they mention education.” Education fell 18th out of 20 areas of priorities when community members were interviewed.
Lehohla highlighted the need to interrogate reasons for having 400 000 students clogging the system. He said the fee system was not structured properly.
The disruptions at institutions of higher learning would further mess up the system, disrupt the labour market and throw high-school education into disarray.
DIALOGUE is vital to break down the structural and systematic racial walls that continue to blight South Africa’s ideal of a Rainbow Nation.
This is among the issues that the three-day anti-racism conference will tackle.
The conference, which is being held at Constitution Hill in Braamfontein, is hosted by the Anti- Racism Network of South Africa.
It has brought together representatives from civil society, academics and NGOs and ordinary South Africans.
The chief executive of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Sello Hatang, who was among the guest speakers, called for efforts to empower the youth, particularly the “black child”.
He said the violent protests that had engulfed many universities were a manifestation of the slow pace of transformation.
“How do we make sure that black children are not bank ATM cards that are not recognised?
“The recent burnings and acts of violence by young people are a direct indication that our transformation efforts have failed,” he said.
Hatang criticised the “incident-based outrage” about racism and made an appeal to people to tackle the issue instead of shying away from confronting it.
“We need to educate ourselves, and stop pretending like we know. Our leaders need to lend a sympathetic ear to the youth.”
The delegates were then split into groups to discuss topics of racism.
Among the sessions was the Human Rights Clubs, which dealt with combating of racism and inequality among primary school and secondary school pupils.
Facilitated by Foundation for Human Rights member Sarah Motha, the clubs are part of the initiatives guided by section nine of the constitution.
“Our education system lacks grooming and educating young children to stand up for themselves in events where they are discriminated against,” she said.
According to Motha, nearly 80% of children admitted to Grade 1 fail to successfully reach matric on time.
“At their youthful and vulnerable stage is where we need to empower them,” she said.
The adaptation of the Human Rights Clubs at schools would mean that during their spare time, pupils could gather to “unpack the constitution” and form support structures for those discriminated against for their sexual orientation, among other things.