It should come as no surprise that the Heher Commission has finally concluded that free higher education for all South Africans is "unaffordable". Two years ago, President Jacob Zuma established the commission to answer the question: is free higher education feasible? Actually, it was the wrong question, because the answer was always going to be "no". It doesn’t take more than a cursory glance at SA’s public finances to see that. Anyway, with only 5% of poor children qualifying for university, compared with 40%-50% from the affluent middle-classes, free education would always be a regressive policy, giving a free ride to those who could actually afford to pay something towards education. Rather, what Heher’s commission should have been asked to establish was whether tertiary education could be made more accessible through innovative financing mechanisms, because then the answer would have been a resounding "yes".
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