The loans and student bursaries of successful third-year university students through the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) will not need to be repaid.But is this the right place to start the phasing in of free education? It has to be asked if sponsoring more students, with little chance of success, to enter a system in crisis is the best use of resources.
Directing more funding for student bursaries may be a short-term panacea for some but will not solve the problems in higher education.
Higher education & training minister Blade Nzimande packs a powerful punch in cabinet. Though the plans and allocations for the 2011/2012-2013/2014 budget were mostly complete by November, Nzimande succeeded in launching a late appeal to his fellow ministers, persuading them at the last minute to grant an extra R6bn for bursaries to poor students at universities and colleges. For most ministries, this meant taking cuts from their own programmes.
The policy intention that Nzimande was putting forward was not new — the ANC resolved at its last conference in 2007 that it should work towards ensuring education to undergraduate level would be free — but the practical steps have been agreed in a hurry.
According to the announcement, which was not kept for budget day on February 23, but announced in the ANC’s anniversary speech on January 8, all deserving students at further education & training (FET) colleges will qualify for free education. The loans of successful third-year university students through the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) will not need to be repaid.
NSFAS, a public entity that reports to both parliament and the department of higher education, provides bursaries to students whose family income is less than R120000/year. Student bursaries must be repaid once students begin to earn an income. The fund disburses about R3 bn/year, three-quarters of which comes from national treasury and the remainder from student repayments. Income from student repayments is about R500m/year.
What the new commitment to college students will cost, or what the impact will be on the fund’s sustainability from forgoing income from third-year repayments, is not clear. NSFAS CE Ashley Seymour says he hasn’t been involved in putting together any numbers and is in the process of meeting universities and colleges to quantify the figure. The allocation from national treasury — R6bn for the next three years — has been made on the basis of what is available rather than the expected cost, he says.
But a rough calculation doing the rounds in education circles puts the cost at double this. This means that either even more additional allocations will need to be made just to meet this commitment, or in the future the fund will be able to help fewer people.
But is this the right place to start the phasing in of free education? Or is it just a measure that will keep protesting students on campuses happy? Last year, a review of NSFAS commissioned by Nzimande and chaired by Marcus Balintulo pointed out two large problems with the scheme. The first was that most bursaries awarded by universities to poor students covered only half of what students required . The result is that an unknown number of students drop out as they are unable to come up with the rest of the money needed for accommodation, food, transport and books.The second problem was that there were a large number of families with incomes of more than R120000/year but which could not afford to send their children to university. As a result, many working-class and lower middle-class families remained excluded from higher education. This was called the “missing middle”.
Seymour says there are legitimate questions to be asked about the need for steps to help the “missing middle”. But, he says, since there is never likely to be enough funding to go around for everyone, the debate on who should be helped first is academic.
Bheki Mahlobo, deputy director- general in the department of higher education & training, says that scrapping repayments for third-years was a case of “needing to start somewhere” to implement ANC policy.
“Government has decided that final- year students will have their loans converted to bursaries. Going forward, free education will be made progressively more available in line with the [ANC] Polokwane resolution. At the same time the ministry is working on a paper on what to do about the missing middle,” he says.
The biggest uncertainties for NSFAS, however, lie in the commitments made regarding FET colleges where all deserving students — those who pass the means test and those who have passed their previous year of study — will have their fees waived. This section of the student population is expanding.
Several independent experts welcome the idea of free FET college education as a sound policy move. The Balintulo commission also made the same recommendation.
Jet Education Services executive manager Anthony Gewer says, “As long as it is a managed process and not just the opening of the flood gates [when it comes to funding FET education], then it’s good.”
He says there is spare capacity and space . “FET colleges are the best place to absorb those unable to find work. So fundamentally it’s a good thing.”
Mahlobo says the department is ready to handle greater numbers of students as “a great deal of infrastructure is lying underutilised”.
But what both outsiders and the department of higher education recognise is that the quality of teaching and learning at colleges is poor. Students, many of whom have dropped out of the failing school system, fare no better at college, where the curriculum is equally if not more challenging. The through put or graduation rate is abysmally low, says Mahlobo. Though improving, in 2009 (the most recent year for which graduation results are available) it was 4%.
It has to be asked if sponsoring more students, with little chance of success, to enter a system in crisis is the best use of resources.
Says Mahlobo : “The quality leaves much to be desired. But we have to fix this plane in flight, so issues of quality have got to be dealt with at the same time as we expand the system. There are just too many young people who need educational opportunities. If we wait, we will have a riot on our hands.”
Gewer says it’s a difficult trade-off. “Do you wait until you’ve fixed it or do you expand? All the analyses we’ve done show that the problems in the colleges are similar to those in the schools.”
The failure of the school system to provide the foundation for higher education remains a key problem. Mahlobo says a lecturer training programme to improve the knowledge and methods of lecturers is under way.
But more is needed.
One idea is to re-evaluate the level at which FET courses are benchmarked. At present, the National Certificate Vocational (NCV) offered at colleges is considered the equivalent of school grades 10-12.
Another idea is to give poor bursary students more academic and social support. Seymour says he believes this could go a long way towards improving the success rates of bursary students. Universities, too, are plagued by a low graduation rate: about one-third of students drop out of degree studies.
This isn’t something NSFAS is able to offer. But the organisation is working with private partners to try to bring this about.
In the light of the multitude of problems that continue to beset higher education, Nzimande has done well to secure further government funding for an area that falls into his portfolio. But concerns about whether the funding will bring results, while at the same time lead to improvements in a failing system, are valid.
This article leaves us asking if student bursaries is good money in a bad education system?
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1 comments so far
marginalized students who can't afford to pay up their tuition in college should be offered by opportunities by the government to contunue their studies.
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