Pretoria - Higher education role players and parliamentarians met in Pretoria on Wednesday to discuss plans to save the 2016 academic year.
They were on a desperate mission to rescue the situation at universities, which have been plagued by weeks of violent protests instigated by students demanding free education.
Connie September, chairwoman of the portfolio committee on higher education and training, used the occasion to call on political parties to assist in finding solutions to the higher education crisis.
September was leading the parliamentary joint-committee on a week-long oversight visit in Gauteng to find ways to complete the academic year.
The committee members met managers of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), who briefed them about their plans to deal with the ongoing impasse.
University council chairpersons were initially scheduled to attend, but were not present as they had “other engagements”.
September said education was a societal issue which needed inputs from different voices across the political spectrum. “The recurring message to the committee from different stakeholders is that politics is the underlying issue; the differences need to be put aside and we must look at the bigger picture, which is to save the academic year,” she said.
The involvement of everyone was crucial in finding a solution that would get the future of protesting students back on track, she added.
Head of NSFAS, Sizwe Nxasana, talked about the ministerial task team report which addressed the funding of tertiary education.
He said the essence of the report was that it was possible to offer free education to students coming from poor family backgrounds.
The report recommended that students from working class backgrounds received financial assistance, which would be reduced as their family incomes increased.
MPs were told that free education should be offered in line with the constitutional obligation contained in the Bill of Rights.
According to Nxasana, the amount of money which would be required to fund education of at least 90% of the university students was at least R68 billion annually.
Msulwa Daca, NSFAS chief executive officer, said there was no qualifying student who was turned away by a university because he or she didn’t have the financial means to pay fees in the current financial year.
He said that the Department of Higher Education wrote to the universities early this year, asking them not to deny students admission because they didn’t have funds.
Daca said universities complied and reported that 56 000 students had been enrolled without finances. Those students required an amount of R2.2bn to cover their fees.
The financial aid scheme had to scramble to secure R1.6bn from within its system for students who registered without money. Daca said the process to get funds for the rest of the students was on.
“It means that in 2016 there is no student who was turned away at the university for not being able to pay, and that was happening for the first time in the country,” Daca said.
He told the committee about an amount of R4.6bn announced by President Jacob Zuma early this year to address the problem of historic debts incurred by at least 71 000 students.
Daca said NSFAS disbursed more bursaries than study loans.
For this financial year at least 178 961 financially needy students at universities were funded to the tune of R7.2bn.
Students paid for by the NSFAS this year won’t experience fee rises next year. The so-called missing middle - students above the NSFAS threshold but for whom university education was unaffordable - would also not receive a fee increase.
MPs commended NSFAS for having pulled out all the stops to make sure that education for the poor became a reality.
NSFAS managers said they had secured eight new funders to contribute towards higher education, but more efforts were being made to find more funds. They reported that they were still grappling with getting previously funded students to repay their loans.
rapula.moatshe@inl.co.za
Pretoria News