INSUFFICIENT FUNDS
CLAIRE BISSEKER: No-fee campuses death knell for fiscus
If Zuma announces free higher education in the current environment, he will commit the country to fiscal suicide
President Jacob Zuma has presided over the destruction of jobs and growth and reduced business and investor confidence to shreds, but he has not indulged in outright populist expenditure — until now. Zuma is reportedly about to jettison the Heher Commission’s findings that free higher education is unaffordable and run with a plan devised by a family friend, Morris Masutha (28), who has a masters degree in small enterprise development. If Zuma announces free higher education from 2018, without the means to finance it, it will be the most alarming development in the economy since he sacked Pravin Gordhan. It would confirm, once again, that he is prepared to take SA right over the fiscal cliff to shore up his popularity ahead of the ANC’s December elective conference. Masutha’s plan reportedly puts the annual cost of providing full cover to poor and lower "missing middle" tertiary students (those from households earning under R350,000 a year) at R50bn. The task team set up by the gover...
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