SA’s universities are a national treasure. But they can only meet national needs for skills and social mobility if there is a fundamental change in the current funding system, which is increasingly based on student debt. The question is not whether it should change, but how.Apartheid left SA with an unusually small number of tertiary graduates compared with most of its peers among upper-middle-income countries. That means employers have to pay more for scarce high-level skills, contributing to both slower growth and deeper inequality.In the 2010s, 33 upper-middle-income countries reported on the share of tertiary graduates in their workforce. SA came in 23rd: just 17% of South African workers had a degree, compared with almost 25% in most Latin American economies and about 20% for other countries in the data set.The skills shortage raises pay for professionals and managers. On average, in upper-middle-income economies, the richest 10% of income earners make about 10 times as much as...
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