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13 May 2005

An efficient, adequate, well-resourced and responsive system of higher education is an attribute for any society.

1. The Department remains fully committed to promoting equity of access and transformation in South African higher education.

2. Practical action in response to promoting equity includes the following interventions:

* Provision of funds of up to R267 million over a three-year period to develop academic support programmes.
* Increased support through the national student financial aid scheme.
* Incentives to institutions through the new funding formula to support institutions that improve their success rates.

3. The enrolment planning for public higher education proposal is a response to a number of troubling features in higher education:

* Increased access has not been accompanied by related strategies that ensure quality improvement in the institutions or in the sector.
* Growth in higher education has been driven by institutional interests and not by sectoral or national deliberations and plans.
* Enrolment growth has been unplanned, unrelated to available funding resources and detached from the available institutional physical and personnel resources.
* The absence of planning has exacerbated the quality problems, including high drop-out rates.

In response to these national challenges the Minister developed a proposed approach and presented the draft proposal to the sector to seek the response of vice chancellors by 30 April 2005. The response is still awaited.

Essentially, the proposal seeks to develop approaches that do not cause the opening of the doors of learning to become traps in an ever-revolving door of failure and despair.

The proposal sets out the following as core priorities:

* That institutions should in the coming period focus on improving graduation and success rates through better management of new intakes and readmission of returning students
* That the higher education system should be planned to ensure that it responds and contributes to national human resource development and research priorities, in particular, in scarce skills fields such as teacher education and science, engineering and technology.
* That enrolments should be matched to available resources to enable the higher education system to deliver on its teaching and research mandate.

The media reports on exclusion of students who fail first year are grossly misleading and false. I have stated that the Ministry cannot condone the continued enrolment of students who demonstrate no progress whatsoever in their studies. This is not in the interests of the students, nor of the system.

The primary concern of the Minister is:

* That performance of higher education institutions should improve.
* That growth in student enrolments should be reflected in growth in institutional output in a sustainable and equitable manner.
* That institutional plans should integrate South Africa’s human resource development objectives and goals.

This proposal does not depart in any way from my commitment to examine and most probably improve the overall level of funding to the system.

Our success will be assured through planned enrolment, planned growth and improved sectoral co-operation.

Enquiries:
Tommy Makhode
Ministerial spokesperson
Cell: 082 566 0446
Tel: (012) 328 7529
E-mail: makhode.t@doe.gov.za

Issued by: Department of Education
13 May 2005