Students trying to improve lot

The storming of the gates at Unisa, thankfully a nonviolent event, brings home dramatically the frustrations of young South Africans desperate to escape their backgrounds through the Holy Grail of a university degree. This desperation has been fed by a toxic cocktail of an economy battered by unemployment and a declining currency; a dysfunctional schooling system which pumps out matriculants with minimal passing grades; the pressing political imperative of free tertiary education; and the understanding that the ruling elite has accumulated riches beyond the dreams of Croesus without any realistic expertise or entitlement.

There is also the pressure exerted on individual would-be university students of being constantly bombarded by the mantra that education is the key. In itself, this is an untruth; hard work and application in any sphere of life is the far more effective solution.

It is also abundantly evident that if every mandated matriculant is to go from this country’s sausage machine schooling into the discipline of self-motivated study, the failure rate will multiply exponentially.

We endorse fully the determination of this country’s youth to better their lot. But we cannot condone the dilapidated educational vehicle left to them by more than two decades of apparent disinterest in how they attain their dreams.