An obvious solution for education

AS A TAX-PAYING South African, I’m concerned about this problem with the bunch of students who have disrupted the academic year, prejudicing thousands of fellow students who want to study, in the name of some misbegotten notion that college education must be free.

Everyone knows that anything free is taken for granted and is abused. Take for example the air we breath and the climates we for now enjoy.

A good tertiary education is a privilege in every country, not a right.

But there lies the conundrum: there is a glaringly obvious solution which has not come to the inert minds of the government or the student rioters.

As a taxpayer, I’d love to offer a free university education to any student who achieves an average of 80 percent for whatever courses he or she takes. This is a winwin situation.

I’m tempted here to say graduates in such fields as science and technology, engineering and medicine should be required to achieve a 75 percent average and that the students in the humanities be required to achieve an 85 percent average to encourage more students to study in areas of learning sorely lacking in our country.

Students who work hard and achieve results get free education. Anyone who ever received a bursary knows it was predicated on a certain level of performance.

A state bursary would require a commitment to get excellent grades and benefit the country by producing high-quality graduates. Dr Peter C Baker