‘Affordable’ free tertiary education plan to be phased in
● Free tertiary education will be phased in to “ensure sustainability of government finances”, ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa said in his January 8 statement yesterday.
An “affordable and sustainable” funding model would have to be developed to make sure the party’s policy on free education was implemented, he said.
“This historic decision [free higher education], which vindicates many decades of struggle for free education for the poor, will be implemented in a phased approach to ensure sustainability of government finances and radically expanded access to education.
“It will be implemented by providing full bursaries for tuition and study materials to qualifying South African students at public TVET [technical and vocational education and training] colleges and universities, and subsidised accommodation or transport capped at specific levels for those who qualify, starting with first-time-entry students in 2018.”
Ramaphosa said students who were returning to university and were funded by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme this year would have their loans converted into full bursaries.
“This is a critical contribution to ensuring that students from poor backgrounds are able to access the kind of skills required for meaningful participation in the economy. This is giving effect to our objective of a skills revolution, which requires that we sustain our significant investment in basic education.”
He said free higher education would help modernise South Africa’s economy but admitted that the dismal state of the economy often resulted in skilled graduates being left unemployed.
“Despite the progress we have made in expanding access to education, millions of young people do not have the skills that the economy needs. Even those with skills lack the work experience and readiness that most employers look for,” he said.
As a result, the party had decided to prioritise effective public employment programmes, internships, job placement, youth entrepreneurship and set-aside programmes.
On the eve of the party’s elective conference last month, President Jacob Zuma announced he had decided to implement free tertiary education for students from households with an annual income of less than R350 000. The surprise announcement was criticised for its lack of detail and confusion over its implementation. The National Treasury cautioned Zuma at the time about the unaffordability of the programme.
The announcement came after Zuma appointed the Heher commission in 2016, headed by retired Judge Jonathan Heher, to investigate the feasibility of providing feefree higher education following the nationwide #FeesMustFall protests.
Until last year, only students whose combined annual family income was R122 000 or less were eligible for funding by NSFAS. This excluded tens of thousands of young adults whose parents were nurses, teachers or government workers.