Key features of the National Plan for Higher Education include:
l reducing the number of institutions;
l eliminating duplication of programmes offered by institutions in the same region;
l establishing a single distance education provider by merging Unisa, Technikon South Africa and Vista University’s distance education centre;
l merging Vista’s contact tuition campuses with other institutions;
l setting up a national working group that, by the end of the year, will have to recommend how other mergers around the country should take place;
l reducing the number of students in the humanities, and increasing enrolments in business, commerce and science;
l requiring institutions to increase student and staff numbers of blacks and women;
l maintaining traditional distinctions between technikons (to provide career-oriented programmes at diploma level) and universities (offering a mix of professional and career-oriented programmes and research degrees);
l requiring institutions to submit by the end of July five-year plans detailing their academic programmes government approval of these plans will determine what funding institutions receive;
l strengthening regulations on private education providers, including capping student enrolments; and
l lifting last year’s moratorium on new distance education programmes offered by contact institutions but government approval will be needed even for programmes for which state subsidies are not required.