Replace student fees and
‘The students are coming!”
WhatsApp pictures had alerted staff of students marching towards the Wits Business School during my visit last week as a visiting professor, and I made a hasty exit to avoid being locked in.
The student radicalism almost made me nostalgic for my own militant protester days against the Springboks 45 years ago.
It also reminded me of Britain’s system of student fees and university finance, which is unfair, discriminatory and dysfunctional. (Wales and Scotland have different policies but much the same applies there too.)
My answer is to replace it with a graduate tax — a small addition to income tax paid by all graduates during their working lives.
The no-fees demand from some protesting students ignores the reality that South Africa, more than Britain, has other much greater and pressing priorities for public spending, not least because a university degree is a privilege and normally leads to higher earnings.
It also ignores the reality that there are so many more students than in the past — more than 400 000 since apartheid ended. The dispute is nothing to do with “decolonisation” as I heard some angry students claim. It is about tough choices: for government, for universities and for students themselves.
Quite apart from being unfair and discriminatory to all but students with the richest parents who pay off the fees anyway, the current system of tuition fees in Britain is unsustainable. Students are emerging from universities with mountainous debts, preventing them from getting loans for cars or houses and universities are increasingly short of funds. It seems to me the same is true of South Africa.
Fees in Britain are more than R160 000 annually and are a serious disincentive for some to go into higher education, especially those who are poor or mature.
Nearly half of British students default on repaying their fees, increasing government borrowing