Subsidy cuts to tertiary education institutions are far more serious than they at first appear, argues ‘Brenda Gourley, vice-chancellor of the University of Natal (Durban)
There has been a great deal of news coverage about the subsidy and financial-aid cuts to universities. Organisations all over the world suffer reverses of fortune and trim their sails accordingly. What is different about universities?
Let me first explain the cuts in financial aid to students. For several years the tertiary sector has been expecting the establishment of a National Student Financial Aid Scheme. Such a scheme would be endowed sufficiently to address the problems of indigent students. Funders who have been giving ad hoc amounts to individual institutions have stopped doing so in the expectation that they will be asked to contribute to this fund.
Students (and the institutions) are now stranded in a limbo where the national fund is not established and the funders are not giving. The situation is so bad that an institution such as my own is unable to assist even those returning students who have been successful in their examinations, much less new entrants. This is an untenable situation in a country where there is a desperate shortage of trained personnel and an enormous investment has already been made in these young people. They too, and their families, have made sacrifices to come this far and unlike the ‘customers’ of other organisations, they are not going to stoically accept the situation. They have a political voice and they will make it heard.
What about the institutions themselves? Less than three weeks before the beginning of their financial year they are informed that they will have to make such substantial cuts in their operating expenses that it is clear drastic measures need to be taken if they are to balance their budgets.
The word ‘drastic’ is used advisedly. At least 70% of expenditure in a university is attributable to staffing costs. Retrenching staff costs money and unlike the rest of the ‘public service’, no financial assistance is offered by the government to assist with this cost. In any single year (and it is 1997 we are worried about) it would actually increase the monies spent by retrenchment packages being added to the bill.
Retrenching staff in a system which, according to the National Commission on Higher Education, is expected to double its student intake in the near future, is not an exercise to be undertaken lightly. It needs to be undertaken in the context of some planning parameters ‘ which in other systems that have had to restructure, are provided by the Ministry of Education. If it is not done in such a context then a whole range of decisions could be taken where similar or identical disciplines are eradicated in every university, resulting in nobody being able to study in that discipline anywhere in the country.
This is not in the national interest and would, in my view, intellectually impoverish the country very seriously. The fact is that a systemic view needs to be taken and indeed that is why the National Commission on Higher Education was undertaken, and its recommendations (after due process) need to be implemented in an orderly fashion.
Many university staff are highly specialised in a discipline and have chosen a life of scholarship. If they are made redundant, they will not be absorbed into the country’s workforce, but will move to universities elsewhere in the world. And when the higher-education sector doubles in size and if and when we need them back, they are unlikely to return. It takes a long time to grow an academic and we neglected this process like so many others in the pursuit of an ideology which has now been crushed.
Like the many other things we neglected, this too is not curable overnight. It is my view that the biggest long-term crisis facing the higher-education sector is where to find the next generation of academics. With salaries as bad as they are, the best of our young graduates are not pursuing academic careers. Among other things, the loans they have to repay make it almost impossible to do so. The lure of public and private-sector salaries is irresistible. And now they are also exposed to uncertainty.
I do not wish to argue that there are no operating improvements capable of being made in higher education. That would be ridiculous. But there are substantial parts of its expenditure that are highly sensitive to exchange-rates fluctuations which are beyond our control. The library, for example, which is so much at the heart of a university, procures most of its books and journals from abroad and the dramatic decrease in the value of the rand has had an equally dramatic effect on library purchases. Laboratory equipment is equally affected.
What about that other large item in the revenue of the university ‘ student fees? There is a view in some business circles that fees should dramatically increase. The United States is pointed to as an example of where fees can range from anything up to the equivalent of R100 000 a year.
The fact is that the US has a healthy, functioning student financial-aid scheme where students can borrow what they need and the loans are underwritten by the state. We haven’t got that and it is a tragedy that the majority of our people are finally able to come to university at the very time when we cannot afford what students elsewhere in the world have come to take for granted ‘ often free university education and at least adequate state-assisted loans.
Minister of Education Sibusiso Bengu is quoted (Natal Mercury, December 13) as saying that the universities are ‘panicking unnecessarily’. It is his ministry which informed us of the subsidy cuts and we are only acting responsibly as we ponder how on earth we are going to find the means to get through 1997 without inviting bankruptcy.
Maybe bankruptcy is something we should face with more equanimity. Would the ministry bail us out? Even the dreaded Margaret Thatcher bailed out a university in Wales that went bankrupt. I, for one, do not see that as an option and I am sure the minister would agree. So my colleagues in universities and technikons remain worried. The higher-education sector is easy to destroy. It takes generations to build again. Let us look after what we have and not wait until it is too late.
Professor Brenda Gourley is also chairman of the Committee of University Principals