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Scotch Tagwireyi
South African universities are experiencing a dramatic fall in enrolment, with the viability of some campuses threatened by a drop of almost 30% in student intake between 1998 and 1999.
Exceptions to this are the University of Pretoria and the University of Cape Town, both of which claim to have stable enrolment figures.
Vista University, which has several campuses throughout the country, says all have experienced a decline in student numbers. “The negative differences between 1998 and 1999 levels in particular are worrying, running as high as 27% at the Bloemfontein campus and 25% at the East Rand campus,” Vista University representative Lungi Wolf said this week.
Ahmed Essop, chief director of higher education in planning and management for the Department of Education, says the decline is more severe in the historically black institutions.
National enrolment figures for 1999 went down about 10% – which translates into 40 000 fewer students than in 1998.
“There is a smaller pool of matriculants with university exemption, so fewer students qualify to go to university. Also, there are foreign or private institutions offering higher education,” said Martha Molete, a representative of the University of the Witwatersrand.
The number of students who sat for matric exemption went down from 552 862 in 1998 to 511 474 in 1999, with only 63 725 earning matric exemption – 24 772 fewer than 1994’s 88 497.
This means that there is an even smaller pool of university candidates for the year 2000, with more than 20 South African universities and 20 foreign private institutions competing for these high school graduates.
The University of the Witwaters-rand only enrolled around 17 000 students last year, compared with 19 004 students in 1996. The University of the Western Cape’s enrolment fell from 13 150 in 1997 to 9 481 in 1999.
The University of Durban-Westville, the University of Zululand, the University of North West and the University of the North have also recorded a significant decline in enrolment figures.
Private institutions such as Boston City Campus and the Academy of Learning group of colleges have close to 170 000 students and staff throughout the country.
This week, the government blamed the decline on foreign and local private institutions, saying they present unfair competition to local universities.
“These institutions are virtually killing our education and there is a strong need to debate private education and [to establish] a regulatory framework for their registration,” Department of Education Director General Thami Mseleku told a parliamentary committee this week.
The decline is also said to be eating into the institutions’ finances as government subsidies, which are based on the number of students, decline. And this is forcing many institutions to find ways of keeping their enrolment figures stable and cutting costs.
“As we do not foresee an increase in matric exemption in the near future, we are focusing on Wits University’s standing to attract more postgraduate students. There is an increased interest in Africa and around the world to do postgraduate research at Wits,” says Molete.