R33 billion to fund free higher education

THE GOVERNMENT will spend a whopping R67 billion on post-school education with at least R33bn being allocated towards the newly-introduced free higher education.

Higher Education Minister Naledi Pandor was briefing the media yesterday before tabling her department’s R89.9bn budget in the National Assembly.

She said R20.5bn was allocated to NSFAS, R10.7bn for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges, R38.6bn for universities, R16.9bn for skills development and R2.3bn for community and training education colleges.

Pandor said her department expected 84 000 firsttime university students to be fully funded this year.

A further 190 000 in all other years of study would be funded at the “average full cost of study”.

“This massive injection of student funding support under the new bursary scheme is also combined with a government commitment to increase the core funding for universities and TVET colleges to 1% of GDP over a five-year period‚” Pandor said.

She, however, said the free education, meant for students from households with an annual income of less than R350 000, did not provide for postgraduate students.

“There has to be attention to the improvement of funding postgraduate students . . . I think we need to ensure we do provide adequate resources‚” Pandor said.

“My sense is that it is one of the domains in which there is significant possibility for partnership with the private sector. Other countries have done this well. I think it is an area we could explore‚” Pandor added.

NSFAS CEO Steven Zwane said they received up to 420 000 applications‚ which was more than 110 000 received by the end of November last year.

“We do know who qualifies and meets the funding criteria of NSFAS. What we are now doing is to make sure that the data that we have matches the data of registration at institutions.”