TERTIARY BUDGET
Higher education crisis set to deepen as funding fails to match minister’s vision
Ambitions to expand technical institutions and introduce community colleges despite R40bn annual shortfall, writes Belinda Bozzoli
The underfunding of higher education has become so hackneyed a subject — like the failures in housing, nursing, teaching, power provision and many others — that we are now inured to its insistent presence. But we should not become hardened to this serious problem, for it speaks to the future — the coming generations of professionals who will be running our society. We should have learnt by now, from bitter experience during apartheid, that damage inflicted upon the education system in one generation can be felt for decades to come. It weakens society in the long term in ways that cannot be remedied quickly. This is what is happening to our higher education as we embark upon an era of ever-declining funding, continual protest, unmanageable fee increases and inept, short-term government responses.At the end of last year, an alarming report from the Department of Higher Education and Training brought this home in startling detail. The bottom line of the report is as follows: the depart...
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