There are budget-neutral options

The ANC government has done to university education almost exactly what it did to Eskom, writes DA shadow minister of higher education & training Belinda Bozzoli.

It has severely underfunded it for 20 years; it has doubled the numbers of those accessing it, with 100% of the newcomers from poor backgrounds; it has failed to consistently invest in infrastructure, including research equipment, residences, laboratories, classrooms and maintenance; and, worst of all, it has entirely ignored numerous warnings that a crisis was looming.

Now the crisis is laid bare, as it was when power cuts began with Eskom. No fewer than eight universities are, according to the higher education & training minister himself, on the verge of bankruptcy. Prof Adam Habib, vice-chancellor of Wits, has mentioned that his university would not be exempt from this should it continue to be unable to raise fees. There will be much more unless something is done urgently.

Just as was the case with Eskom, enormous figures are now being bandied about as to how much it would cost to rectify the situation.

At a bare minimum, to bring the level of basic university funding back to 1996 levels of 0,82% of GDP (which were already too low) would take an enlargement of the annual budget from the current R24bn (direct to universities themselves) to R34bn. For the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) to cover the costs of funding all students whose parents earn below the (very low) threshold of R120 000 would cost an additional R7bn on top of the R7bn already given to university students.

So the most modest calculations would entail an absolute annual increase of R17bn immediately.

Furthermore, students in the “missing middle” (too “rich” for the NSFAS, too poor for bank loans — a very volatile constituency indeed) would require urgent attention, through imaginative additional schemes.

Urgent catch-up infrastructure investments for a wide range of things would be necessary too.

A sensible, growth-orientated government should be aiming to invest the same proportions in higher education as Russia (1,8% of GDP), India (1,3%) and other middleincome countries we emulate in other ways. Even the average for the middle-income countries in Africa hovers around 1%.

To start meeting these levels, we would need to ratchet up university expenditure from the proposed R34bn over a period of years, aiming steadily at a GDP percentage target we should set ourselves: 1% would be a good one to start with. We should also start looking at higher education as an investment which yields a return, as the Australians do, rather than as an expense or a luxury. (They estimate its return on investment to government, individuals and society as around 11%.)

Such figures and ambitions are frightening while our national budget is itself so frozen. Can we find solutions that are immediately doable and do not cost the country more? Well, yes and no:

There are clearly items within the current budget which can be moved to higher education immediately. The Democratic Alliance has put forward concrete proposals for funding to be reprioritised and it has suggested redirecting R2bn from the sale of government’s Vodacom stake; and cutting specific items of expenditure in the department of international relations, VIP protection services and the planning for the proposed nuclear build. Government says it can find R3bn immediately for 2016 to relieve the pressure put on universities by the president’s announcement that no fee increases will be implemented.

We should not fall into the trap that the ANC has fallen into already — simply to propose raiding the National Skills Fund. This is because university education is not the only form of higher education we need. Excellent skills education is a sine qua non of our growing economy. Taking money from there would be robbing apprentice Peter to pay professional Paul. But the NSFAS does give R2bn to students in technical vocational education & training (TVET) colleges — the primary vehicle for skills education — and only R799m of this is funded from skills money. Putting another R1,2bn from skills levy money into the NSFAS for the TVET students who are actually getting a skills education would mean an additional R1,2bn would be available for university students.

There are other possibilities — universities of technology may be able to make a claim on skills levy funding for students in highly desirable areas of skills need, thus releasing further funds for university students. More could be done.

Another solution would be to dramatically and urgently increase the rate of repayment of NSFAS loans, which has run at an average of 10% over the past 15 years. A campaign could be run right now, for example, for graduates to repay their loans as a gesture of sympathy with the protesting students. The new chairman of the NSFAS board, Sizwe Nxasana, has said he will professionalise loan recoveries — but when? What can he deliver for next year, or 2017?

Universities could urgently adopt a sliding fees scale approach, as in Italy, where students’ family income levels dictate the fees charged. Wealthier students could make up the deficit caused by far lower fees, or in some cases no fees, for poor students. This