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CHAPTER 8 - Analysis must rise: A political economy of falling fees
- from PART 3 - SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF INEQUALITY
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- By Stephanie Allais, the director of the Centre for Researching Education and Labour, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
- Edited by Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Sarah Mosoetsa, Devan Pillay, Roger Southall
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- Book:
- New South African Review 6
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 23 March 2018
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2018, pp 152-166
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Summary
This chapter explores some of the complexity of the debates around the funding of higher education in South Africa, and how it intersects with inequality – both counteracting and complicit in increasing inequalities in society. The specific context is student protests, under the banner of #FeesMustFall, which rocked universities in South Africa in 2015 and 2016, and seem likely to continue in 2017. The chapter argues that while there are convincing principled arguments for fee-free higher education as a mechanism to create equality in the student body, as well as to decommodify higher education, doing away with a component of fee payments for university education in contemporary South Africa could leave most if not all stakeholders in South African universities today with worse outcomes, and may aggravate inequality. This is based on two analyses that have been inadequately dealt with in the current debates. The first is that while elite higher education systems are politically untenable in democratic societies, mass higher education systems play into labour market inequalities in complex ways, and massification has negative as well as positive effects on society. The second is that the unintended consequence of doing away with fees is likely to be a substantial weakening of our top institutions, with – if the arguments for the public good role of higher education hold – negative consequences for society overall.
OVERVIEW OF THE PROTESTS AND RESPONSES TO THEM
South Africa's university system is located in a context of extreme and widespread poverty; extreme inequality; a racialised labour market with a historic and current built-in dependence on cheap labour; extremely high unemployment; high levels of insecure work; and widespread dissatisfaction with the government. Admission to university education has expanded dramatically over the past twenty years. Funding from the fiscus has risen in real terms, but higher education inflation has risen faster than inflation in general, in part due to a weak exchange rate, and expansion has seen large numbers of poor and poorly prepared students enter the system (DHET 2016). In short, a crisis has long been brewing in the university system.
Despite some aspects peculiar to South Africa, many of the trends in South African higher education are typical of an international picture. Participation in higher education has dramatically expanded around the world in the last two decades (Schofer and Meyer 2005).
Chapter 6 - SKILLS? WHAT SKILLS? JOBS? WHAT JOBS? An Overview of Research into Education/Labour Market Relationships
- Edited by Enver Motala, University of South Africa
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- Book:
- Education, Economy & Society
- Published by:
- University of South Africa
- Published online:
- 16 February 2020
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2014, pp 103-124
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Introduction
The relationship between education and the economy is of ongoing concern around the world. Attaining ever-higher levels of education is widely believed to be essential for economic growth, and the idea of a ‘knowledge economy’ is frequently invoked, sometimes as an ideal to which people should aspire, and sometimes as an imminent reality. Livingstone and Guile (2012: iii) note that today the existence of a ‘knowledgebased economy’ is ‘widely taken for granted by governments, mass media, public opinion, and most scholars today. The idea of the ‘knowledge economy’ is a major contributor to contemporary questioning of the role of secondary education and the curriculum. This questioning has also, in part, been caused by the relatively recent and rapid expansion of secondary education internationally.
In South Africa, both the education system and the economy have particular problems, largely originating in the apartheid system. On the one hand, there are exceptionally high levels of unemployment (Marais 2011; Mohamed 2010). On the other hand, millions of young people leave the schooling system with inadequate education, and there is very little provision of education and training outside of the school and university systems (DHET 2012). A skills shortage is widely regarded as a major contributor to South Africa's high unemployment levels. In some quarters an allegedly inflexible labour market is also blamed, and it is sometimes seen as a paradox that South Africa can have both a skills shortage and high levels of unemployment. Young people frequently leave their education institution with no possibility of attaining a well-paying job, or, in many cases, any employment at all, in the context of pervasive structural unemployment in South Africa. More broadly, the South African economy has experienced what has commonly been referred to as ‘jobless growth’ with capital rather than labour intensive forms of economic growth being the order of the day (Mohamed 2010). This is coupled with a prevalent argument from employers that they cannot find people with the ‘right skills’. Policy makers and researchers question the suitability of school subjects and ‘traditional’ disciplinary bases for curricula in schools, and even more so in colleges, where new courses and programmes often are developed in the absence of a traditional disciplinary base, see Wedekind's chapter (Chapter 4) in this book for an elaboration.
Chapter 10 - Understanding the persistence of low levels of skills in South Africa
- from PART THREE - Public Policy and Social Practice
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- By Stephanie Allais, Senior Researcher at the Wits Education Policy Unit, researching education and the labour market.
- Edited by John Daniel, Prishani Naidoo, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Devan Pillay, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Roger Southall, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
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- Book:
- New South African Review 3
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 31 May 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 March 2013, pp 201-220
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Summary
A shortage of skills is widely believed to be a major factor inhibiting economic growth in South Africa. Extremely high levels of unemployment are frequently attributed to our poor education system (Bloch 2009) and to the weaknesses of our ‘skills development’ system (National Planning Commission 2011). Standards of training for artisans and other mid-level skills are low (Mukora 2009), as are the numbers enrolled in vocational and occupational education programmes. The quality of provision is erratic, and throughput rates of the colleges are at a low level (Taylor 2011). The institutions set up through the levy-grant system, the sectoral education and training authorities (Setas) and the National Skills Fund (NSF), have been much criticised. Many employers simply treat the skills levy as an additional tax: although 65 per cent of employers who should pay the levy are doing so, by 2004 only 10 per cent of levy-paying employers were participating effectively in the system (Kraak 2004a). Some blame overly bureaucratic and incompetent Setas, and others argue that employers do not want to train their staff. Setas are also criticised for their ineffectiveness in mediating between training and economic and social requirements, with one weakness seen as the fact that their labour market analysis is based on reports from workplaces and not on research (Erasmus 2009). Public perception, as reported in the media, suggests concern with the large amounts of money in the system, particularly where this has remained unspent, as in the NSF. Corruption and poor governance in the Setas have received copious media coverage.
Has anything been achieved through the skills levy? André Kraak (2011: 98-99) provides one of the few pieces of research arguing that there have been positive achievements:
The Learnerships system has survived its bad publicity rather well over the past ten years as some of the HSRC 2008 survey results show. Completion rates were 65 per cent, and 57 per cent of completed learners found employment (HSRC 2008a). In a difficult youth labour market, these are extraordinarily good outcomes and they should be embraced and built upon.