Hon Deputy Speaker, in July of every year, young South African matriculants start to prepare their applications to attend university. It is an absolutely vital first step in realising their hope for a future as independent young adults.
Parental pride, of course, is accompanied by anxiety about whether they can afford a university-level education, especially one that is worthwhile.
The statistics for 2009 indicate that 164 528 students entered university for the first time. We estimate that some 65% of those entering class for the first time are drawn directly from matric. Three times as many students apply for admission as those who enter for the first time. Admission requirements are modified in many cases by giving preferential access to students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Many students do not attend the university of their choice. We do not know, on a national level, how many students get to attend their first, second or third choice of university. Anecdotally, the estimate is a one-in-twenty chance for the average student with average academic performance to enter the university of their first choice.
Attending a university, especially for those who are located far away from home, can be a frightening prospect. If you are the first person from your family to attend university, which is the case for many if not most poor students, the unfamiliarity of that experience on a wide variety of fronts can be terrifying. What then are the barriers to entering a South African university?
To start with, university officials would, of course, say that the greatest barrier is academic. Reviewing the figures since 1994, we reached a high point of a 73% matric pass rate in 2003, followed by a prolonged downswing to reach 61% in 2009. Of those who passed, 20% of students had university exemption. Of those who wrote the first key subject of mathematics needed for any science or economics degree, 18% passed with 50% or more and 29% passed with 40% or more.
If one takes 50% to be a real pass in mathematics, then 82% of our students who wrote mathematics actually failed and 18% passed. This is a decline in performance of catastrophic proportions.
The second barrier to entry is cultural. If you are academically capable and your first language is English, the world is your oyster in South Africa. There is far less of a choice, but you still have a choice between some credible institutions of higher learning if your first language is Afrikaans. You do not have many good choices to make if your first language is isiZulu or isiXhosa.
Language and the cultural apparatus that comes with it are vital resources on which to build academic success. They give emotional security to those entering universities for the first time. Families who have sent their children to university for generations do not know how lucky they are.
The third barrier to entry is class. All universities charge fees as the government subsidy is not enough to cover the costs of a quality education. The facility that enables poor students to afford university education is the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, NSFAS. Aid is provided to 17% of students.
In 2008 a mere 19% of NSFAS-supported students graduated, whereas a phenomenal 48% dropped out of the system. Poor students, who are mostly black, are therefore granted access, but they fail or drop out and then sink back into poverty.
There are other barriers that matter, such as geography, gender and disability. While universities should do what they can to ameliorate barriers to entry, the most fundamental one is really out of their hands, which is the quality of our matric results and the expansion of the college system. At present there are about 125 000 full-time equivalent students studying at the further education and training, FET, colleges. This number is subject to confirmation. The enrolment should grow to over a million by 2018. The pass rate for FET colleges is estimated to be a dismal 30%.
At university it takes, on average, five years to complete a three-year degree. The dropout rate is alarming. There are too many underprepared students in the system. It distracts universities and diverts resources from their core functions. In summary, we need to solve some major problems and unless we do, our human resources development strategy will implode.
The question is: What has the Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande, done to solve the problems? Not much, it seems. He has held many summits and made lots of speeches. The only hard decision he has taken is to place some sector education and training authorities, Setas, under administration. He has also announced what is called the new Seta landscape; an act undertaken with the courage of a mouse in the face of the fury of an elephant.
The creation of a new Ministry, his brainchild, will cost the taxpayer R150 million. He has lost a director-general, Prof Mary Metcalfe - because, I believe, he wanted to fly half of the SACP to Cuba - and his media spokesperson because he is a public relations nightmare. He was recently spotted at the Vineyard Hotel and, if he was staying there, it seems as if the embarrassment of staying at the uberbourgeois hotel, the Mount Nelson, is not enough to deter him.
The question is: What has to be done? Many more opportunities for the main Nguni first-language speakers should be created using a multicultural approach to development at universities at a regional level. Universities should be financed to replace the three-year-long degree with a four-year- long one.
In consultation with the provinces, dysfunctional FET college councils and principals should be performance-managed out of the system and a quality rebuilding process should begin.
The National Skills Fund should be used as a financial vehicle for the FET curriculum expansion involving the private sector and, when it comes to schools, the provincial education superintendent-generals should assert their duties and obligations to govern and administer, keep the teachers' unions at bay and be held to account for mismanagement. Government must abandon the national democratic revolution as the guiding principle in appointments.
In conclusion, last week, the Eastern Cape provincial government rehired Mr Mannya as superintendent-general of education. He was rehired even though he left the same post in 2001 after being threatened with criminal charges by the MEC for education, who claimed he had failed to perform his duties.
Last year he was suspended and dismissed as head of the KwaZulu-Natal department of agriculture after a disciplinary hearing found him guilty on 16 charges of misconduct. So here he is to rescue a department that received a disclaimer from the Auditor-General - no accountability! Government recycles crooks to look after our children's education. Thank you. [Applause.]