Higher education demands will be met
THE GOVERNMENT believes the billions of rand it has pumped into higher education would be able to meet the growing demand of students.
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan yesterday said that in addition to the R32 billion allocated last year, the government had injected R5bn into higher education as a result of the increase of the threshold of students who qualify for the National Students Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) from R122 000 to R600 000.
Gordhan also called for all qualifying students to register with the institutions of higher learning.
In a media briefing before his Budget speech, Gordhan said they would continue funding higher education because of the need and demand.
“We are committed to developing a roadmap to get beyond this point that we get more resources,” he said.
Director-General in the Treasury Lungisa Fuzile warned that the funding of students must match the results.
It would not be wise to spend money when people were not getting out of the system quickly.
Students have to finish their degrees on time, and be able to come out of the system.
He said the government had spent a lot of money in education.
“On higher education, government has pumped enormous amounts of resources within a constrained fiscal environment,” he said.
Gordhan said the R32bn allocated for education was a huge amount of money.
He warned that the focus must not only be on higher education but also on early childhood development and basic education.
These were critical phases in producing quality students who will contribute to the economy.
“As we deal with that situation we have to ensure we don’t focus on one part of the education system,” he said. “Early childhood development and basic education have to be fixed to ensure the benefits accrue to higher education.”
Education is now the government’s largest expenditure item on the budget.
More than R320bn has been allocated into education for the 2017/18 financial year with R216.7bn going into basic education.
Universities have been given R31.6bn, the Skills Development levy was R21.1bn and education administration allocated R15.8bn.
NSFAS has received R15.3bn from Treasury and Technical and Vocational Education and Training colleges have been allocated a total of R7.4bn.
Gordhan said they would continue to talk to various stakeholders in the education sector to address problems.