Daily Dispatch
Far-reaching tertiary crisis
ARELATIVELY small minority of students at our higher education institutions have warned they intend rendering the country ungovernable in pursuit of a free higher education for all.
This is not as preposterous as it sounds. While they may be a small minority, they have brought the nation’s higher education institutions to their knees and propelled this country to the brink of a national disaster of almost unknowable proportions.
Those who think this affects only the higher education sector are misguided. It will affect us all catastrophically.
The University of Cape Town vice-chancellor Max Price spelt out some of the more immediate consequences. UCT has already pushed back its academic programme into vacation time. The 2017 graduation has been pushed to June next year. He says there is exactly one week left to pull back the academic year or the institution will have to close its doors for the rest of the year. Fort Hare has already temporarily shut down and sent its students home. Rhodes and Wits universities say they, too, are on the point of having to close.
The obvious immediate crisis of closure will be for the thousands employed at universities which have no surplus funds.
How will salaries be paid? Layoffs of at least administrative and support staff will be inevitable. Academics will not want to stay on in such insecure circumstances.
The other obvious victims will be the students who don’t get to finish their academic year. Those in final year will be most harshly affected as achieving a degree will have to be postponed by at least six months, as will the start of their working lives.
The knock-on effects are awful. If students get to return in 2017 to complete the 2016 year in the first semester, they will find universities depleted of academic and support staff. And their return in 2017 will mean that they occupy the space meant for the new crop of students who matriculate at the end of 2016. Universities will also not have income from fees because everyone present will be there completing a year they have already paid for.
But even greater disaster looms. The public health sector is but one example. Annually it enjoys an influx of about 2 400 junior doctors, physiotherapists and psychologists and other internists who have to do community service. On December 31, the 2016 interns exit the system. On January 1 of 2017 there will be no one to replace them as most will not have completed their degrees. Price says this has the potential to bring the already stressed public health sector to a standstill.
The damage caused by the protests to the economy is a given. This is a national disaster and we are one week from it becoming an inevitability. But no one, except the VCs, are treating it with the urgency it deserves. Where is the leadership from government and private industry?
The protesting students also need to be aware of the consequences of their actions. They will be complicit, not just in their own educational demise, but potentially that of an entire generation.
They have created a national appetite for better funding of higher education, so what is the point of further protest?