CAPE TOWN, October 26 (ANA) – The South African government will be allocating an additional R17.6 billion to fund higher education over the next three years to 2019, National Treasury said on Wednesday.
This comes after R5.6 billion was added to university subsidies to fund the zero percent fee increase for the 2016 academic year.
In its 2016 medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS), Treasury said that university students’ #FeesMustFall campaign had placed the issue of education funding at the centre of the policy debate and had generated welcome suggestions on how to fund tertiary education.
Treasury said expenditure on post-school education and training had grown much faster than other budgets over the past five years, thus placing government in a precarious position.
Though post-school education and training expenditure on government priorities was still ranked number four (after basic education, health, and defence, public order and safety), spending on it was rapidly growing.
By 2019, Treasury forecast that spending on post-school education and training would have increased by 9.2 percent, placing it second only after costs of servicing government debt.
According to Treasury, allocations for higher education had increased from one percent of GDP in 2008 to 1.5 percent today.
But most of this increase benefited vocational colleges, sector education and training authorities and the National Skills Fund, rather than universities.
Violent protests have erupted in many public tertiary education institutions since the Minister of Higher Education, Blade Nzimande, announced a revised funding structure for 2017.
Nzimande said government would fund the increase in fees at higher learning institutions for the 2017 academic year, up to a maximum of eight percent, for students from households earning up to R600,000 per year over the medium-term expenditure framework.
Treasury said subsidies to universities grew at 10.9 percent each year and transfers to National Students Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) grew at 18.5 percent despite fiscal constraints.
NSFAS received additional funding of R10.6 billion over the 2016 medium-term expenditure framework period.
Of this amount, R2.5 billion was allocated in the current year for short-term debt relief for 71,753 unfunded or inadequately funded students who were at universities in the 2013, 2014 and 2015 academic years.
The remaining R8 billion was for unfunded new and continuing students for the 2016 academic year and beyond.
Despite this, the MTBPS showed that there would be no money allocated to write off the NSFAS historical debt during the next three years.
Priorities for government in the years ahead included broadening access to effective vocational and technical skills, and improving the impact of resources devoted to vocational training.
Treasury said a roadmap was needed to fully finance the costs of study for students from poor and working-class families, saying the plan needed to consider the impact of different education interventions to maximise social and economic transformation.
“In higher education, as in all areas of public policy, decisions and trade-offs are required to ensure balanced, sustainable development that meets the vast needs of the population using available resources,” Treasury said.
– African News Agency (ANA)
