Students are let down by the failure of oversight

12 July 2019

For someone seeking an education after they have finished school, the Department of Higher Ed and Training sounds like a place filled with promise. From here students can expect to find a place suitable for their type of Matric and their particular interests; to enter Universities, Colleges or training premises that are well managed, well equipped and pleasant; to experience a high quality, reliable, well managed course or programme; to be able to listen to and learn from the best possible people, who are highly qualified in their area, who are helpful and knowledgeable; and to exit proudly with a qualification that every employer will be impressed by, that is fully up to date with the latest information, insight and skills, that has widespread recognition and that is fully quality assured in every way.

But instead we have a Dept which has been overtaken by the tsunami of demand for student funding and has had little time, or even inclination, to worry about actual teaching and learning. Thus the DHET has become swamped by, and synonymous with, NSFAS. This doesn’t mean student funding isn’t important. Of course it is. But it has now become so all-consuming a concern that the Department:

- spends a vast amount of its time worrying about food allowances, travel vouchers, book money and accommodation instead of learning, teaching and research

- has no clear plan for growing skills relevant for the future

- predicts that student numbers in both Universities and TVETs will barely increase at all over the next 3 years

- knows perfectly well that there is still insufficient funding for students who cannot afford fees or living expenses – there is still a massive missing middle, and the levels of student funding at present are unsustainable in the long term - but is unable to do anything about it

- Has hobbled its oversight of University teaching, and operates on an outdated, disconnected syllabus in TVETs, as my colleague will point out later

- Fails entirely to manage an R18bn budget - that of SETAs and the NSF – to ensure that the necessary skills are taught well and properly certificated

- oversees a R2.5bn budget for a division – Community Education and Training – which spends 90% of its time and money helping high school pupils rewrite their matrics, which is not really the function of a Higher Education Department

In spite of these problems we, as the portfolio committee, have very little idea of what is really going on in DHET. This is a Department, before we even look at its merger with Science and Technology, which manages a budget of R108bn and which has no fewer than 110 entities reporting to it, 26 of them – the Universities - only indirectly, 84 DIRECTLY. Yes, 84 entities directly reporting to the Minister.

This includes: 50 TVET Colleges 21 SETAs 8 CET Colleges and 5 other entities, including NSFAS an entity which on its own receives and disburses no less than R30billion per annum and is under administration.

And yet not a single one of these entities has presented its budget and APP to our Committee. Nor have we seen the Auditor General’s report on the Department, a report which usually signals where the problems are in use of the massive budgets under consideration. So we have not seen the budgets of:

- NSFAS – a R30bn organization which serves hundreds of thousands of students, is under administration and which has been the site of constant, relentless criticism for the past 20 years.

- Any of the 21 SETAs, which together receive R15bn per annum, a good many of which have had to be put under administration over the years, which are institutions which are widely regarded as unsuccessful and which often have very critical AG reports.

- Any of the 50 TVET Colleges – many of which we know are failing, and which have struggled to conform to the PFMA

And it is widely known that several Universities which are autonomous but in which the Minister is entitled to intervene in when clear problems emerge, are in trouble. One, Fort Hare, is under administration. Others, such as Walter Sisulu or Zululand, are filled with intractable problems.

So we have a major problem of oversight here. How can we support this massive budget if we have little or no idea of what the situation is in many of its many sub-budgets. How can we blandly and unthinkingly approve of a level of expenditure which is unprecedented in this troubled portfolio, with no clue of where the problems lie and how they are or are not being addressed.

So we as a portfolio committee cannot in all conscience say to students that we are sure that what they are being offered is of adequate quality, is well managed and is not riddled with inefficiency and corruption.

From the student point of view there is another problem of oversight in this Department – a very serious problem. And that is the the weakness of the Department’s own oversight over what is taught and what the qualifications are like coming out of Universities, Colleges and SETAs.

Built into this department is an elaborate and important quality control system. The quality of our education and skills training is meant to be protected by two main bodies – the CHE – which deals with Universities, and QCTO which deals with skills in both Colleges and SETAs.

But so overwhelmed is the dept with the complexities and failures of student funding and the vast costs contained in that that these two bodies have been virtually decimated by underfunding and have become Cinderella organisations within a vast behemoth.

We can see the results of this in the levels of qualification coming out of our system. Most SETA qualifications are not properly certificated by the QCTO which is the quarter of the size it needs to be in order to work effectively. SETAs do their own certification, but we have little evidence that the billions spent on SETA courses are anything more than tokens, given to students to justify the massive expenditure on course providers who are often in a patronage relationship with SETA management. College qualifications are, as we shall see later, unable to hold their own in today’s job market. And Universities vary hugely in what they offer.

Those with their own rigorous quality control mechanisms (external examiners, certification by by Professional bodies and internationalization being the most important) do deliver quality programmes. But many have given up on rigorous external examining and do it themselves, have become parochial and inward looking and fail to offer the quality required in every possible way.

Students leave such universities as virtually unemployable many of them obtaining qualifications which are in any case not likely to lead to employment in the first place. None of this is picked up by the overburdened and underfunded CHE which just cannot do the job it is supposed to do as the system teeters.

The Dept now has been merged with Science and Technology – one of the most sophisticated and advanced Depts in government, geared entirely towards supporting, nurturing and developing the most advanced skills, but only less than one tenth of the size of Higher Education – 100bn versus 8bn.

Will the mediocrity and paralysis of Higher Education affect its smaller partner? Or will excellence be allowed to thrive, grow and in turn enrich the bigger one. Will postgraduates start to get levels of funding equivalent to that of undergraduates, or will they remain pitifully underfunded.

Issued by Belinda Bozzoli, Shadow Minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology, DA, 12 July