Wage hike calls add to Rhodes’ woes
Rhodes University‚ one of SA’s top tertiary institutions, is facing financial distress and wants to cap salary increases at 5% in order to remain viable. But support service workers want an increase that is in line with inflation and wage negotiations have deadlocked.
Rhodes University‚ one of SA’s top tertiary institutions, is facing financial distress and wants to cap salary increases at 5% in order to remain viable.
But support service workers want an increase that is in line with inflation and wage negotiations have deadlocked.
Like several other institutions around SA, Rhodes’ financial crisis appears to have been triggered by the zero-percent student fee increase for the 2016 academic year. The government placed an 8% cap on fee increases for 2017.
Vice-chancellor Sizwe Mabizela said in a circular last week that a single percentage increase in the remuneration bill is equivalent to R4m.
“The current offer thus translates into an additional R20m in salaries. We cannot increase this budget further without placing the future of this university and the academic project in serious jeopardy,” said Mabizela.
The institution’s situation was compounded by a high ratio of staff costs, heavy reliance on student fees and maintenance backlogs which can no longer be deferred, he said.
A partial moratorium had been placed on the filling of support staff vacancies and nonessential consultancy contracts.
“Over the past two years, the higher education sector, generally, has been grappling with a serious impact of declining state subsidies and a combination of other financial pressures.”
According to the budget review tabled in February, spending on higher education and training, which includes universities and TVET colleges, is expected to reach R89.8bn by 2019-20, growing at an average annual rate of 9.2%, making it the fastest-growing expenditure item after debt servicing.
Spending is estimated to amount to R77.5bn in 2017-18, rising to R80.8bn in 2018-19.
Universities have said that government funding remains inadequate. SA’s higher education costs have risen at twice the national inflation rate over the past 20 years. At the same time, state funding for higher education declined in real terms, forcing universities to impose fee increases higher than inflation.
There is concern that students could again embark on protests in 2017 to demand free higher education.
In a written reply to a parliamentary question last week, Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande said that according to the agreement not to increase fees, government contributed around 83% and universities between 0% and 17% on average of the R2.3bn needed to fill the gap. At Rhodes, the state contributed almost the entire amount, about R43m.