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Prof Shireen Motala is the South African Research Chair in Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg.
Since the advent of democracy in 1994, the South African government has relentlessly pursued equity in education, despite increasingly limited public finances. While discrimination in social spending has reduced, with race no longer a criterion, inequalities remain because of the high costs of achieving fiscal parity in education.
In higher education, slowly growing fiscal inputs are not translating into greater efficiency and quality outcomes. As such, questions persist about whether the current approach to equity is adequate, and whether differential redistribution that favours the underprivileged has taken place.
Institutional viability threatened by student debt crisis
The institutional viability of South African universities is under threat from a mounting student debt crisis, leading to calls from top officials and university leaders for fundamental reform of the way in which the public higher education sector is funded.
“If we increase student funding at the expense of the system, we are then shooting ourselves in the foot,” South Africa’s Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology, Blade Nzimande, told parliament on 4 May.
“As we increase student funding, we should also be pushing for an increase [in funding to higher education institutions], otherwise we are funding students to go into a system that will increasingly be unable to address their needs,” he said.
Students protest for increased government funding for tertiary education at Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT) on 8 April 2021 in Durban, South Africa. According to media reports, the students are demanding the scrapping historical debt and financial exclusion, as well as access to free registration, computers and data. (Photo by Gallo Images/Darren Stewart)
With mounting financial pressure, it is clear that the current model of student funding in South Africa is not financially and fiscally sustainable, write
Philippe Burger and Francis Petersen.
With a Covid-hit, shrinking economy and a mounting public debt burden, the Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni, announced a tight Budget in February 2021. This Budget also constrained its allocation to the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET).
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