Representatives from several higher education bodies met for a full two days to discuss funding challenges in July 2014
Funding, therefore, is one of the key themes that Universities South Africa will be pursuing on its agenda of engaging with government. The organisation’s chairperson Professor Adam Habib says that the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities, chaired by Cyril Ramaphosa, found that government had provided R22-billion — but the required funding was closer to R38-billion.
Universities South Africa’s 2015-2019 strategic framework says that while the increase in funding is welcomed, higher education expenditure has been declining alarmingly in student per capita terms.
“It is also declining as a percentage of the government’s budget and of gross domestic product, to the extent that South Africa’s proportion of higher education spending of GDP is now more or less equal to that of sub-Saharan countries as a whole,” the document authors write.
To counter this trend and to help its member institutions meet government’s goals for enrolments and other outputs such as research, Universities South Africa will be campaigning actively for an adequately funded university system.
This problem is framed not only in increased student numbers, but also the expectation from government for universities to grow their enrolment numbers.
The White Paper on Higher Education and Training has set a target for a university participation rate of 25% by 2030, which equates to an enrolment of around 1.6 million students. This document also reaffirms the principle of cost recovery from loans as the basis for a sustainable national student financial aid model, despite historical loan recovery rates being alarmingly low.
Adding to this challenge is government’s intention to move progressively towards free education for the poor in South Africa as resources become available.
The targeted number of enrolments set out in this document tally with the National Development Plan’s (NDP’s) proposal to increase gross enrolments from 950 000 in 2010 to 1 620 000 in 2030. The NDP states that a “greater understanding within government is required to acknowledge the importance of science and technology and higher education in leading and shaping the future of modern nations’’.
Universities South Africa’s strategy document says that given this acknowledgement, “It is becoming self-evident that without such a guaranteed increase in state revenue, attempts at expansion cannot succeed without seriously jeopardising the quality of teaching and learning and research in particular”.
It has therefore developed a three-pronged strategy that includes advocating for a recapitalised National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), actively participating in the development of a revised funding policy framework and engaging with other government departments to set aside financial resources to promote research excellence.
The organisation says that the challenges facing NSFAS in the short to medium term will undoubtedly have adverse effects on universities in the foreseeable future. It hopes to forestall disaster through engaging the Ministry of Higher Education and Training, National Treasury and the NSFAS Board on ways to overcome these challenges in a sustainable fashion.
Universities South Africa will be lobbying to address the new funding policy expected to be implemented from April 1 2019. This policy was outlined last year in the Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities, with the Department of Higher Education and Training expected to release the draft policy this year for comment.
Universities South Africa will be focusing its efforts to ensure that adequate public funding for universities is maintained and expanded, and that the current and future challenges of student funding are considered in the finalisation of this policy.
It will also be engaging other government departments that have a vested interest in academia’s outcomes. These include the Department of Science and Technology, which has an interest in promoting research excellence. The emphasis in these engagements will be to advocate for the postgraduate funding quantum to be increased in line with the full cost of study at this level.
Other targets for lobbying and advocacy include the Departments of Trade and Industry, Health, Energy, Water Affairs, Environmental Affairs, and Communications to unlock more resources for the university sector aimed at research, and scholarships and bursaries for postgraduate students.