Tertiary education sector concerns can’t be dismissed
FOLLOWING the revelation by the National Treasury that there would be a 10% budget cut, leaving 87 712 students being unfunded in the 2024 academic year, concern about the state of the higher education sector continues to grow with each new setback.
Acting CEO of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), Masile Ramorwesi, during a briefing to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Higher Education, detailed their plans for the current academic year, highlighting how they were aware that there were risks to cutting the student funding, such as student protests.
He said insufficient bridging finance options could have a “severe impact” on the sector as NSFAS may not be able to pay allowances on time and when most needed by students at the beginning of the financial year.
Thankfully as the academic year began, the minister and the scheme’s acting chairperson, Professor Lourens van Staden, came through with a temporary solution of allowing the institutions to disperse the allowances, by ensuring the release of funds earlier.
Universities were roped in to operate as a channel to pay student allowances for February and March.
Many have criticised the announcement, citing concerns about the challenges of corruption, and a shortage of allowances at institutions. The biggest setback, however, has been for those students who have had to seek alternative institutions to study further, and for the sector, the deregistration of a number of private institutions.
Scores of students face being left stranded after the recent decision by the Department of Higher Education and Training to deregister a number of colleges belonging to the Educor group. The group’s institutions include Damelin, CityVarsity, Icesa City Campus and Lyceum College. In a statement posted in the
Government Gazette on March 19, the department’s director-general cancelled the registrations because the institutions had failed to submit audited financial statements since 2020.
Concerns that South Africa’s higher education sector is heading off the rails cannot be dismissed any longer.