Chairperson, hon Minister Blade Nzimande, hon members of the NCOP, ladies and gentlemen, it is an honour for me to be participating in the debate, representing Gauteng. We all know that South Africa's university sector is the strongest and most diverse in Africa.
In the new landscape there is nearly double the number of students of all races. Three quarters of a million in all are enrolled in the fewer but larger public universities, and nearly one in five young South Africans enter higher education. More than half of all students are women, and some 8% are international students. Most of them are from other African countries; but thousands are also from Europe, Asia and America.
South Africa's apartheid legacy was a higher education sector that was racially divided, of uneven quality and beset by duplications and inefficiencies. Higher education in a democratic South Africa faced huge challenges, primarily the need to achieve greater equality, efficiency and effectiveness within institutions and across the system. Since 1994, the new government drove a radical restructuring of higher education aimed at making it stronger and more focused and efficient, within a framework of policies and regulations. Universities had to open their doors to students of all races; transform curricula to become more locally relevant but also geared to a knowledge-driven world; train growing numbers of different types of graduates essential to economic growth and development, and produce scholars that are able to tackle South Africa's problems through research that is responsive to all of society's needs.
Public funding of higher education has increased in recent years. Universities have received a major funding boost from government to refurbish buildings, construct new facilities and upgrade equipment and libraries in order to improve outputs and produce more science, engineering and technology graduates.
The expansion and transformation of the South African student population has been nothing less than astounding. According to provisional Department of Higher Education and Training figures, student numbers have nearly doubled in the past 16 years, from 473 000 in 1993, to 799 658 in 2008.
In as far as South Africa's student participation rate is concerned, the proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds in higher education is fast approaching 20%. While access to higher education has significantly improved, there are still racial divides between the participation rates of young people.
Because disadvantages start before young people are born and continue right through to the workplace, it became clear that we should not think of higher education in isolation but rather as one link in an educational chain that begins much earlier.
Most research finds that social mobility, or the chance of a young person climbing the social ladder, was higher for those born in better-off families. The researchers found that a major reason for this was that the expansion of higher education opportunities had disproportionately benefited the better-off and that the inequality gap in terms of university participation had actually widened.
Over the past two years, the South African government has been asking higher education to play a fundamentally greater role in the development of the country. Through a range of initiatives that are intended to accelerate economic growth, reduce poverty and supply scarce skills, the government is calling on higher education to assist in this drive towards citizen empowerment. While still respecting the autonomy of our institutions, government has become highly sensitised to the role that the universities play in society.
The linkage between education and development is direct and simple: Higher education enhances human capital, which in turn makes higher growth possible; and universal education universalises the benefits of development.
It has never been more important to ensure that we make full use of the talents of all young people and provide pathways into higher education for all of those who can benefit. It is not only a matter of social justice, but of economic necessity.
We have always believed that it is unfair that some young people stand a significantly lower chance of going to universities because of their backgrounds, regardless of their talents and abilities.
The importance of education and higher education transcends the material benefits it brings to individuals and society. All too often, we tend to focus mostly on the economic benefits of education. Of course, that is an important dimension, which must receive our paramount attention. However, we must not lose sight of the nonmaterial benefit of learning to the learner himself, and to society as a whole.
I would like to share my views on a few main challenges. I will start with access to higher education. There has been a phenomenal expansion of college and university education in our country. I remember how difficult it was in my student days to gain access to a college education; and how rarer still was the entry into universities. We have come a long way since 1994 in democratising college and university education, which has moved closer to the poor and rural populations and other marginalised sections of our society. Nevertheless, it should be our endeavour to further expand access to higher education, especially to professional education, and to levels that are comparable to those in developed countries.
The New Growth Path has placed a strong emphasis on this as an essential requirement for raising our annual gross domestic product, GDP, growth rate to 8%. Enriching the knowledge base and enlarging the skill sets of a far larger percentage of our working population is critical for achieving our objective of higher growth through higher productivity.
Access to quality education cannot be measured merely in numerical terms. It is important to access quality education. I share the concern of many educational and developmental experts that the quality of college and university education has not kept pace with its quantitative growth. This is all too evident at the beginning of each academic year, when students and their parents have an agonising time trying to gain admission to good institutions, the number of which is too small for cater to the growing demand.
A point I wish to drive home is the urgent imperative of post-school educational opportunities for matriculants who have completed the national senior certificate without admission to a Bachelor's degree. There are a limited number of programmes for the majority of youth who cannot find employment or training opportunities and cannot get into university programmes. Some of these learners from poor communities enrol in FET colleges to complete a second matric and are still not employable. In real terms, this also cheats them of three years of future economic activity.
I am glad to know that the Ministry of Higher Education and Training has drawn up plans to address this issue. I have heard many people telling me that our college and university education has not shown sufficient flexibility and adaptability to respond to the needs and opportunities in the external environment.
Take, for example, the fact that the share of services in South Africa's GDP is consistently growing and today accounts for about 50%. In the coming two decades, almost 60% to 70% of the jobs would be in the services sector. I do not think that our system of higher education is adequately geared to meet this need. Similarly, it should also gear itself to seize the rapidly expanding opportunities in the global employment market. Experts have pointed out that in 20 years from now, when many of the advanced nations would have a fairly large percentage of senior citizens in their populations, nearly 45% of South Africans would be in their mid- to late 20s. This demographic change can be turned to our advantage if we improve and reorient higher education in our country to harness the opportunities provided by the globalisation of the employment market.
Whatever the funding mix for higher education is, there must always be a link between what an institution charges and its performance in widening access and supporting those without the ability to pay. While South Africans must face up to the challenge of paying for excellence, universities that charge higher fees must support poor students.
The principle is very clear that where the funding system permits expansion, the excellence of that expansion and widening participation must be equally important.
We want to recognise the progress being made in turning around the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, NSFAS. We believe that there are still some challenges of access by the poor to the loan facility that must be addressed. This includes improving the way the NSFAS communicates its message to learners so that they are aware of the financial assistance that is available long before they leave school; the explicit targeting of learners in no-fee schools; streamlining the application process to universities and the loan facility; and the removal of registration fees for the poor.
We welcome the commitment to ensure that the NSFAS becomes a model public entity that delivers on its mandate to provide financial assistance to poor students so that the pool of educated and trained young South Africans can be increased. These young people are our future.
Chairperson, allow me to conclude by informing you that in Gauteng we have adopted a set of interventions to enable young people to make the transition from school to further education and/or work that provides further training opportunities. As we are improving pass rates at the Grade 12 level, we are even more committed to increasing the survival and flow of learners to higher education and gainful employment.
In conclusion, it is time that some non-negotiables that our President laid down for the schooling sector need to be applied to colleges and universities and I quote:
Lecturers should be at university, in class, on time, teaching, with no neglect of responsibility. The students should be in class, on time, learning, be respectful of their lecturers and each other, and do their assignments and projects on time and to the best of their ability.
I thank you. [Applause.]