The College Sector: Another floundering Zuma unfunded mandate
14 September 2016
Yet another educational crisis is emerging under the failing government of President Jacob Zuma, this time in the College sector. The College sector has been targeted in the Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande’s “national delivery agreement” for expansion in the coming years, yet there are no signs that the meagre R6.29 billion state funding for this sector will increase in 2017.
The Department of Higher Education and Training cannot fund the Technical, Vocational and Training Colleges, or its new “Community Colleges”, adequately. This was revealed today by the Department in a presentation to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Training.
At present the vitally important TVET College sector is smaller than the 1m-strong University sector, while Vocational and Technical training is far larger than the University sector in most middle income countries.
The Department said that government subsidies cover only 53% of costs, leaving the 50 TVETs, which train some 700,000 students, struggling under severe financial and social pressures, student unrest, damage to property and loss of tuition time. NSFAS funds are stretched and travel and accommodation allowances inadequate or absent altogether.
The Department conceded that the Colleges have insufficient learning and teaching material, inadequate equipment and outdated curricula. Very few of them have maintenance budgets. National examinations cannot be mounted in the Community Colleges and neither the TVETs nor the Community Colleges are able to expand the numbers of students they register on current budgets.
The DA calls upon Treasury to take seriously this statement, against a background of simultaneous University underfunding, student riots, the Fee Free movement, shrinking national budgets.
There appears to be a general lack of appreciation within Government of the central role of Higher and Further education in the development of our economy and society.
The DA welcomes the fact that the National Skills Fund is assisting the College sector financially, but believes that the contributions of the Fund, and some of the SETAs, will not make a serious dent in the basic funding shortfall in the College sector. These contributions are project-based, making little difference to the shortages in basic costs.
The President needs to be told that this sector is failing and must concede that the College sector cannot expand, leaving hundreds of thousands of aspirant students with nowhere to go for Vocational and Technical training.
His “delivery agreement” for Colleges cannot be met, and unless things change dramatically, the much vaunted White Paper on Higher Education and Training is unlikely ever to be implemented in the College sector.
Issued by Belinda Bozzoli, DA Shadow Minister of Higher Education and Training, 14 September 2016
