Speech by Belinda Bozzoli MP, Shadow Minister of Higher Education and Training, during the budget vote debate on Higher Education and Training, Parliament, May 13 2015
Multi-billion Rand Higher Education Development Initiative needed in SA
Madam Speaker,
Over the past year Higher Education has been in the news. With Rhodes falling, Hitler rearing his ugly head and the DA winning the Fort Hare SRC elections, our Universities are churning out headlines.
But there are some far deeper questions we need to examine. What kind of Higher Education our students are getting in the lecture room? What kind of training they are getting in the technical field. These questions are hardly ever explored. We prefer the easy indulgence in spectacle to the hard issues of actual educational practice.
Much of what goes on in the day to day grind of teaching and learning is profoundly affected by the size and distribution of the government budget.
And what could be more important to the future of our country than the proper, enlightened and up-to-date education of our youth.
The budget going directly to Universities in the country – ie to 25 major teaching institutions, which between them will teach over 1.1 million students – is R23 billion.
We know this is insufficient. Every benchmark we use to compare it internationally confirms this.
On average other African countries give Universities 20% of what Basic Education gets. This would translate here to about R40 billion in direct subsidies to universities alone.
And using OECD country proportions, we should be spending about R50 billion in direct subsidies to Universities, or 25% of the amount spent on Basic Education. Our Higher Education sector is neglected in the extreme.
There are three main effects of this institutionalised lack of enlightened leadership.
One: the system can’t truly modernise.
With a few exceptions, our Universities and Colleges are far behind the times. They are stuck in past models of higher education. Many of them have dated, insular courses which do not address 21st Century matters, global challenges, the most advanced thinking, or the most sophisticated contemporary skills.
Our university research lags dramatically and is funded at levels which are laughable by international standards.
Two: the system can’t pursue excellence.
Those teaching in our Universities and Colleges are ground down. Their salaries are abysmal. They are demotivated by the treadmill created by the ever growing size of classes and ever weakening quality of our matriculants.
The ANC-led government has had no hesitation in increasing students numbers without any thought for increasing funding to pay for more lecturers.
Why not?
If a school expands, the government allocates more teachers. But if a University doubles in size it just has to build bigger lecture halls, and the teaching load of each and every academic doubles instead. This would never be tolerated in any unionised sector of the economy.
So our permanent university staff-to-student ratio has grown in the last 20 years from 1 to 38 in 1994, to 1 to 55 in 2014. In the UK, where there are a lot of complaints about large class sizes these days, it is 1 to 17. We are really a joke, internationally speaking.
In real terms, the university subsidy per student head has gone down in the past 21 years from R20 000 to R16 000. Our universities are slowly being squeezed to death.
Three: the system can’t afford new blood.
The system is so underfunded it can’t afford to bring on board a new cohort of top quality lecturers, trainers and professors.
I repeat: the system can’t afford to do it. Why?
First: Academic salaries are too low. What self-respecting young professional with ten years of post-school training, would stay in a lecturing job, where they may earn less than a rock drill operator? Yes, less than a rock drill operator.
The answer is: none.
Second: the costs of proper international PhD training are high. No university can afford to fund its students to undertake full time PhD study. And government won’t fund them. But this is what is needed. Becoming an academic should take ten to twelve years of full time education after school, much like becoming a medical specialist does. This hardly ever happens here.
No wonder there is an outcry from students and academic staff on this matter.
In this the government plays a mean game.
Our Minister of Higher Education and Training has a shocking record of attacking the very universities he is there to champion. He frequently publicly bullies and humiliates even our most eminent Vice-Chancellors and our most distinguished academics.
But it is the older generation of academics is valiantly keeping the system going under the present appalling financial conditions. When they retire there will be nobody to take their places.
In the last 21 years the ANC government has done absolutely nothing to fund the production of a new generation of academics.
Even in Botswana, promising students have long been sent, their fees and living expenses fully paid for, to obtain PhD training in the US and UK. On their return they have been guaranteed a post. New positions were created for this purpose, funded by the state. As a result, Botswana now has a competent and experienced academic cohort.
Kenya, Mozambique and others have had similar schemes. Rwanda has a huge scheme to fund the international training of their brightest and best, along the lines taken by China when it first reopened its universities after the Cultural Revolution. Billions have been put by these countries into fast tracking the next generation into University teaching.
Here the government is squarely to blame for the failure of this country to produce a new generation of academics.
This budget, for the first time, after 21 years of ANC rule, contains within it funding for a watered down, modest scheme which the Minister will tell you is our equivalent.
Madam speaker, I say to the Minister, “your scheme, which was not even your own idea but was devised instead in desperation by the Universities themselves. It is done on a shoestring. It is too little and far, far too late.”
No new funding appears to be voted for it. I suspect it will simply be done by rearranging existing university budgets. This is the case with all the innovations Minister Nzimande trumpets to the press from time to time. Shame on the Minister and to the Treasury, for their disingenuousness on this matter.
What I envisage for this country is a massive multibillion rand Higher Education Development Initiative, like that put forward by China in the 1980s, by Russia in 2010, and by India with the development of their renowned Institutes of Technology.
Such a scheme should significantly and permanently raise university subsidies and salaries. It should put hundreds of promising young graduates into the best international universities to get PhDs in the core subjects, with guaranteed state funded positions on their return.
If we do this, within ten years we will have a new generation of outstanding scholars in our universities, we will attract back into universities some of the older professionals who have left them because of poor pay and demoralising working conditions, and our higher education sector will be able to modernise and pursue excellence.
Madam speaker, I say to the Minister: Transform this budget so that Universities receive the required funding to enable them to serve the future generations of our country.
We do not support this budget. It is grossly insufficient for the purpose.
In fact it is an insult to the young people of this country.
I thank you.
Issued by the DA, May 13 2015
