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In my humble opinion, i think that we must be honest with ourselves in admitting that we are in a crisis. It's time we face up, chin up and be brave with ourselves in admitting our failures and those of government.
When the president announced the 0% fee increment in, students rejoiced and it was seen as a victory for the students. However, we have seen that this did not only not help, but it continued to put students in debt and continued to become a barrier between students and success.
Now, while the university fees remained unincreased, the world did not stop. The rand deprecated further, inflation continued and resources became expensive. What we did not pay attention to, was that everything went up.
You see, in this day and age, universities get their funding from 3 main sources, namely, student fees, government subsidies and through donations or grants from 3rd parties.
These three sources work to create the economic foundations of any university system and what happens in one area will affect what happens in the others.
We therefore needed to look at it in that way, which we did not. We failed to understand that the issue of student fees cannot be examined alone and needs to be seen in the context of the other income streams.
Because university costs tend to be more or less fixed and inflexible the balance between these three sources of income needs to be maintained while university income steadily expands to cope with growth.
So at least 60% of fixed costs are for wages and salaries (far more in the poorer universities), while other major fixed-cost items include electricity, municipal rates, costs of running residences, cleaning and internationally priced book, laboratory, it and digital subscription costs. Every single one of these costs has shot up at rates exceeding inflation over the past ten years, but the fees remained, so the balance was breached.
So let's try and bring this into university level and look at the provision of basic student support services. Institutions like Nelson Mandela University who do not have enough on-campus residences to even reach the government threshold are not able build more residences because there is no money. The very same students who cannot afford the fees, are subjected to private property owners with their exorbitant rental fees.
To add more misery to these students, thus means by virtue of them living off campus, they do not have university subsidized cafeterias and so they buy the food from retailers who increased their prices and remember, these are poor students who can not afford fees. What are they going to eat?
From now, it must quite be clear that in order for the students to maintain a basic life, they must incur debt. Not even that, but their struggling parents must borrow monies so that their children must at least go to bed having eaten morvite and tinned fish.
So how must there be academic participation from students? How can a student who sleeps with water actively participate in class and pass? This is even more for the academic staff who are now leaving South Africa because they are overworked and underpaid? Now tell me who is going to teach this hungry indebted poor student? You are now left with an uninformed student, which is contrary to what a student should be.
Clearly, this 0% increment has hindered the improvement of student support services which form a core of the development of a. Scholars in institutions if higher learning and our government has proved time and time again that this is beyond their capacity and are unable to comprehend and find viable solutions to this conundrum.
So what must be done?
Firstly, there must be protection against rampant fee increases while improving the quality of education by restoring state subsidies to universities to an appropriate level. Secondly, Dr Blade Nzimande must fund NSFAS at a higher level, using more nuanced criteria, to provide adequate support for the poor and “missing middle”. After that, they must continue to collect fees from all who can afford them.
Government needs to expand the NSFAS criteria to include students from the “missing middle” immediately so that all applicants from households with an annual income of up to R500 000 have a fair chance to apply for student financial aid. Introduce a tiered system of loans/grants so that those in the “missing middle” who can afford to pay a portion of their expenses receive proportional assistance, be proactive about this.
If we are serious we need to ensure that no university student who successfully obtains an award under NSFAS receives less than his or her full cost of study, residence costs, and adequate food and book stipend (subject to the tiered system). In a nutshell, simplify and streamline the NSFAS process to minimize administrative costs and prevent surpluses. Significant efforts should be made to increase third steam income as a source of finance but it cannot realistically be considered the route to meeting current shortfalls.
Our government needs to come on board and play its part, for once they must assist the youth. They must start by reducing the number of prestige items in the national budget and redirecting the funds towards university education. apart from that, efforts of setting up partnerships with the private sector, and the banking sector in particular, must be sought for, to increase access to loans, improve the efficiency of collections and widen the pool of funds available.
To conclude, the fees crisis in universities today is the result of the financial neglect of the system, particularly in the 15 years of high growth since 2000. Much of this is to do with government’s “massification” approach, which has led universities to take in more students than they can handle or afford.
Although NSFAS has received funding increases, especially recently, it is still insufficiently funded. Worse still, the system is inefficient. Even in the face of scarcity, South Africa has options to better spend its resources and better govern its institutions.
Lastly, finding ways of ensuring that we have properly funded university education for the poor is where our energies should be placed.
