Universities South Africa says it's deeply disturbed by the continuing damage to the academic programmes and the infrastructure of many universities.Universities South Africa CEO, Professor Ahmed Bawa, said there's growing anxiety that the academic project of 2016 is in serious jeopardy.
He says universities are committed to the idea that students have every right to engage in protests and activism in their quest for fee-free higher education.However, Bawa says universities are increasingly despairing of the nature of these protests.Universities South Africa says damage sustained by the university sector in the last year due to student protests is estimated to have now exceeded the R600 million mark.
"We feel that it is time for everybody-students, parents and other interested parties- to come together to work out to just how to move ahead with the rest of this academic year, and with the start of the next academic year. So it is really a plea to people to understand that we are sitting on a knife edge now. We are sitting at the point where it is very likely we wont be able to retrieve our academic year at several universities"
Professor Bawa says the proposal tabled last week by Higher Education Minister, Blade Nzimande, provides a basis for the fees must fall process to move forward.Nzimande said government would cover the shortfall of existing poor students while also addressing the needs of the students who find themselves in the so-called "missing middle" category.Professor Bawa says that given the interim nature of the Minister’s intervention, the current shutdown at some institutions is extremely difficult to understand.
He says there are some key elements to Nzimande's statement that allowed Universities South Africa to align with it."It is the first indication that the State recognises the 'missing middle' as a category of students that need to be specially catered for. And secondly from the Universities' point of view it's this recognition that the higher education price index is about 1.7% higher than the CPI and that is extremely important from a sustainability point of view" A number of Universities around the country remain closed, including Wits, UCT, University of Pretoria, Rhodes and NMMU.
