Free tertiary education is available in Germany, Brazil and Argentina, and those in South Africa lobbying for it often point to these countries as examples to support their cause. But free education has consequences for the quality of education offered and can deepen inequality. The three countries in Europe and South America all have different concepts of free education and different ways of implementing it. For anyone comparing these countries to South Africa, the strengths and weaknesses of their systems, within the context of their respective economies, needs to be looked at carefully. Niall Ferguson, a history professor at Harvard University in the US, said the argument for free education in South Africa was "wildly unrealistic", given the country's economic position. The UK had a no-fee system until Tony Blair's Labour government reintroduced tuition charges for higher education in 1998. Blair acted after it became "clear that the UK universities were chronically underfunded c...
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