Blade gets this one thing right … for all the wrong reasons
Private universities are indeed a threat: as public institutions fail, the market will fill the vacuum
Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande, aka the commissar of varsities, is not often right about things. That is to say, he is mostly wrong about almost everything for which he has executive responsibility. We know this because public higher education is a shambles and public vocational training is virtually nonexistent, and it was so since before misguided students stole his revolutionary thunder. We can tell from the minister’s public utterances that his mind is not fully applied to the university crisis. He says, for instance, that the #feesmustfall movement is just like the protests that led to the Marikana police massacre of mine workers, in that the true motive of the protesters in either instance is regime change. This is nonsense, probably uttered because Nzimande is incapable of conceiving a cogent response to events over which he has no control. The Marikana protest and the student protest have only money — wages and fees – in common. The fact that the stude...
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