Interest rate should hold steady this week, but it s not 100% guaranteed iol.co.za - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from iol.co.za Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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.
Some nationwide lockdown restrictions in South Africa could be back sooner than expected: analysts
Subscribe
South Africa’s rapid increase in coronavirus cases and the appearance of a second wave means that the country could see national lockdown restrictions be reintroduced sooner than expected, says Stellenbosch’s Bureau for Economic Research (BER).
In a research note on Monday (14 December), the BER said that, given the surge in cases and declaration of an official second wave of Covid-19 in the country, the likelihood of an earlier re-imposition of some nationwide lockdown measures has now increased.
“While we were worried about the possibility of a second wave leading to stricter restrictions sometime in autumn 2021, the likelihood of an earlier re-imposition of some nationwide lockdown measures has now increased,” it said.