Ministerial Committees will not deliver Free Education
Many government departments who refuse to implement what is needed are very fond of commissioning studies, whose recommendations always sit and gather dust in their offices only to wait for another study on the same matter. The budget vote speech of the Minister of Higher Education and Training, Dr Bonginkosi Nzimande, delivered on the 24th of April in Parliament is a clear indication of this trend.
As a way of demonstrating that they are working, government departments are always launching new policies, committees and institutes and the recent speech proves the Minister's excelling commitment in this field. On Tuesday last week South Africans learnt of the Working Group that is to determine the actual cost of introducing free university education for the poor. Below we will show how irrelevant this committee is for the actual free education objective. Before this let us look at the Committee Creation Logic (CCL) by the government.
This week we also learnt of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities, the Ministerial Task Team on the recognition of prior learning, a task team to study the SETAs, the advisory panel on African languages, Ministerial Oversight Committee on Transformation, National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences and many other committees and institutes.
The creation of a public image of a ministry working, rather than doing the work, is the main purpose of these committees. This is the fundamental problem with politicians; for them it is not about working to address the plight of the people but it is about making poor people believe that they are working and thus hoping that one lonely day the fruits of the work will be delivered to them.
A movement cannot sustain occupying a moral high group on the basis of intangible qualities such as belief and hope. These same qualities are the ones that engender bitterness when they evaporate.
The mass actions earlier this year of students at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, University of Zululand, Mangosuthu University of Technology, Walter Sisulu University, and many others on historically black campuses, all bear testimony to the discontent and bitterness of students with the current system of education.
The many reformist policy frameworks of the people's democratic government starting from the 1997 White Paper on Higher Education, 2001 National Plan on Higher Education and the chaotic institutional mergers have dismally failed to bring any significant changes to the system. With all these reforms in place, the crisis of access and success of the working class offspring in higher education is stubbornly persisting.
As we stand today, according to Ian Scott of the Centre for Higher Education Development, less than 12 percent of the African and Coloured 20 to 24 age groups are able to access higher education. Of those who access the system, about 50 percent of them leave higher education without obtaining any qualification.[1]
The issue of funding for poor black and Coloured students has long been identified as a problem, hence the relative consensus on the need to introduce Free Education for the poor until undergraduate. The Ministerial Review Report on the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) had in 2010 established the cost of funding free education to be R9.2 Billion. Instead of simply introducing free education for all based on that recommendation, the good minister chooses rather to establish a Working Group that will ‘establish the costs' of introducing free education.
The exaggerated focus on FET Colleges (at least in speeches and press statements) by the ministry is only a way of escaping the real challenges in institutions of higher learning. Our government is failing to admit that the post-1994 regime has dismally failed to produce knowledge thinkers that are reflective of a democratic South Africa in both content and demographic representation.
The fact that there has been no University built post-apartheid but our government took 15 years just thinking about it proves that there is no commitment in increasing the gross participation rate in the higher education arena, particularly of the African majority. The 2001 National Plan on Higher Education estimated the gross participation rate to be 15 % and targeted a participation of 20% by 2016.
Because of little or no efforts to improve access by our democratic government, the estimation now is that the participation rate is at 16%, meaning that from 2001 to today the improvement has only been a mere 1%.
When we consider problems such as these and propose pragmatic solutions and injection of money from government, a Ministerial Committee is always set up to study what is well known by all. It will be long before we stop begging for free education and start to engage in serious action in demand of it.
Footnote:
[1] Ian Scott( 2012): Centre for Higher Education Development
Luzuko Buku is the Deputy Secretary-General of the South African Students Congress (SASCO) and a Masters Student at the University of Fort Hare
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