The SACP welcomes the remarks made by the Director-General of Education, Mr Thami
Mseleku in his briefing to the Portfolio Committee on Education in parliament yesterday.
The SACP fully welcomes and appreciates government’s
commitment to regulate the provision of private higher education in our country. We
believe that this is long overdue as this is a
matter that has a direct bearing on our capacity to realise our goal of
expanding access to higher education.
The SACP is firmly of the view that the strengthening of public higher education is the
only means through which students from
working class and poor backgrounds can be able to access higher education and skills. An
expanding, quality public higher education system is also the only means through which we
can meet one of the key RDP objectives, that of human resources development.
However one of the biggest threats to the creation of a sustainable and quality public
higher education system in South Africa is
the unregulated proliferation of private higher education institutions. These institutions
include foreign state universities who have identified the developing world as a private
market to accumulate surpluses in order to strengthen the capacity of floundering public
higher education in developed countries. The biggest danger in an unregulated growth of
private institutions for our
country is that it draws those students who can afford to pay away from the public
institutions, at a time when our public institutions are increasingly becoming dependent
on student fees for their viability. This proliferation of private institutions also poses
a big threat to quality higher education and human resource development as some of them
provide very
poor quality higher education.
We are however not unaware of the fact that the growth of private higher education
institutions is not unrelated to the inability of many of our higher education
institutions to transform themselves and their curricula to meet the needs of our country
and student career aspirations. Therefore the question of regulation of private higher
education institutions is not a matter for government alone, but should also be assisted
by the introduction of new and appropriate programmes at our institutions in
order to attract funding and students. It is an indictment that in many of our
institutions of higher education some lecturers are still using notes written decades ago
and still relying on rote-learning and regurgitation. Swift curriculum changes are
therefore an important ingredient in strengthening a public higher education system.
The SACP emphatically rejects recent statements made by some of the spokespersons of private higher education institutions, that it is the private sector that is better able to respond to our education and human resources needs. Proliferation of profit-seeking private higher educationinstitutions can never be able to overcome the apartheid legacy of higher education, nor address the developmental needs of a country like ours which is still characterised by massive socio-economic inequalities.
The SACP therefore calls for urgent measures to be undertaken by government to regulate
private higher education institutions in our country. As part of this regulation it is
important also that these institutions must meet stringent criteria to contribute towards
the development of our human resources in line with our RDP objectives. Otherwise the
provision of higher
education in our country will be reduced into a haven for profit-making, instead of being
driven by broader developmental objectives.
Issued by :
SACP Dept. of Information & Publicity
E-Mail:sacp1@wn.apc.org
South African Communist Party
Head Office
COSATU House
No. 1 Leyds Street - 7th Floor
Braamfontein 2001
Republic of South Africa
Tel: 27 11 339-3621/2
Fax: 27 11 339-4244
For further information and enquiries please contact:
Mr Mazibuko Jara 083 651 0271