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Johannesburg — Students at the University of the Witwatersrand are divided on the way forward following Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande’s announcement of an 8 percent cap on fee increases, with some calling for an immediate shutdown of the institution.
Students gathered at the institution’s Senate House, which was renamed Solomon Mahlangu House during #FeesMustFall protests last year, are consulting on a way forward, with some suggesting a plan to empty out classes and shut down the campus.
Wits Deputy SRC president Motheo Brody told News24 that student leaders will do whatever the students request.
“We will take our lead from the students, but one thing is for sure, Nzimande’s suggestion is not acceptable.”
Other students refused to protest.
“Last year I put my body on the line protesting against fees. I will not do that for a 0 percent increase,” student activist Simamkele Dlakavu told News24.
Dlakavu attempted to address angry students shortly after Nzimande’s announcement.
Meanwhile, Nzimande says the government cannot subsidise students from wealthy families for free tertiary education.
“It is very unclear to government why families who can afford private schools should, under the current circumstances, be receiving further state subsidies for their children at universities,” Nzimande said in Pretoria.
“To subsidise these students would require taking funding from the poor to support cheaper higher education for the wealthy, which is not justifiable in a context of inequality in our country. We cannot subsidise the child of a cleaner or unemployed person in the same way we subsidise the child of an advocate, doctor or investment banker.”
Nzimande said they had looked at the challenges at hand from all sides and concluded that the best approach would be to allow individual universities to determine the level of the increases that their institutions would require.
“With the caution that this has to also take into account affordability of students, and therefore has to be transparent, reasonable and related to inflation-linked adjustments, our recommendation is that the fee adjustments should not go above 8 percent.”
Nzimande said he had consulted with various stakeholders regarding what would be best. He said to ensure that such inflation-linked fee adjustments of the 2015 fee baseline were affordable to financially needy students, government had committed to finding the resources to support them.
He said that the government would assist households with an income of up to R600 000 per annum with subsidy funding to cover the gap between the 2015 fee and adjusted 2017 fee at their institution.
“This will be done for fee increments up to 8 percent. This will, in effect, mean that all NSFAS qualifying students, as well as the so-called ‘missing middle’ —that is, students whose families earn above the NSFAS threshold, but who are unable to support their children to access higher education — will experience no fee increase in 2017. Government will pay for the fee adjustment,” he said.
Nzimande said while NSFAS would continue to provide loans and bursaries to poor students, the Department of Higher Education and Training and universities would continue to mobilise institutional and private sector financial support to enable affordable financial aid options for the “missing middle” students.
He said he had constituted the Ministerial Task Team on funding support for the poor and “missing middle” students, which is developing a model that would be tested in 2017 to provide affordable support to these students.
“We will continue to look for other ways of supporting financially needy students not covered by NSFAS, whilst a long-term solution is being developed to raise sufficient funding from the public sector, private sector and other sources to fund ‘missing middle’ students at universities and TVET colleges,” he said.-News24
derick.khumalo