Stellenbosch: Universities need the right leadership
Demonstrations are emotionally draining, physically tiring and time consuming. Yet we must protest: the commodification of education in higher learning violates the founding principles and values of this country’s democracy as envisioned in the Freedom Charter and Bill of Rights.
Access to quality education is fundamental for a society of substantive equality. It ought to be afforded to those who need it the most: the poor.
The proposed 11.5% fee increase at Stellenbosch University will serve to maintain the status quo of excluding those who by accident of birth found themselves black and/or poor.
Consequently, the systematic superiority and oppression of gender and racial groups that tore this country apart will never be addressed.
We call on Stellenbosch University not only to suspend the fee increase, but to decrease the fees, given the university’s large financial reserves.
If the government is serious about ensuring development of our country, it must expand the budget it allocates to higher education. Otherwise, meaningful transformation will not happen because the previously disadvantaged and underprivileged who form the majority of the country will not have the opportunity to participate in the country’s development. Moreover, broadened access will go a long way toward ensuring that higher education is transformed.
But, to achieve this, the right leadership is needed. Stellenbosch University’s management comprises old white men who are still caught in the past. Moreover, most of the older generation in management are too detached from South Africa’s poor to understand the current situation. They are not willing to remedy this detachment by humbling themselves and listening to us.
As students we haven’t had a chance to heal from the pain of the past. That is why we want to reimagine universities as places of epistemic healing. We don’t trust the old system: it is inherently exclusionary. If I have a look at the role tertiary education has had in my life, I simply cannot discount its life-changing abilities.
After my father was afforded the opportunity to study, he could put my mother through university and in turn all of their children. Through one person being educated, four more people were saved from poverty and became contributors to the taxbase rather than burdens on it.
This could have been the case for more of my father’s siblings but opportunities were scarce under apartheid. The unfortunate outcome is some of their offspring have often turned to a life of crime because of poverty.
If we no longer want to live in one of the world’s most dangerous countries, with the dubious honour of being among its most unequal societies, we should all be serious about education — for all. We should either be joining the protesting students or applauding them from the sidelines. Unfortunately, however, fault lies more with government and less with university administrators.
There is a reason why universities are expensive and that is because they require highly qualified staff and need to be run much like municipalities that require constant upgrades of infrastructure and maintenance. This is not an inexpensive undertaking and is funded through government subsidies, fees from students and a “thirdstream income” usually in the form of fund-raising.
The real reason universities constantly have to increase fees is that the government subsidy is not adequate in South Africa. It currently sits at around 0.6% of gross domestic product and is much lower when compared with other emerging nations such as India (1.3%), Russia (1.8%) and Saudi Arabia (2.3%). Our spending on higher education sits at a mere 12% of education as a whole, whereas the continental average is 20% and the global average 19.8%. This is inconsistent with the fact that we are one of the highest spenders, in terms of GDP, on education as a whole. If students force their university leaders to lower fees, they will in turn put pressure on their biggest sponsors — the government — for more money. This pressure is necessary. As society at large, it is up to us to make sure we continue the protest at the ballot boxes to make sure that we elect a government that prioritises education and adequately invests in it.