R2bn development fund for disadvantaged universities
Prega Govender last week reported in the Sunday Times that a government plan to allocate R2-billion to eight historically disadvantaged universities over the next five years has been met with mixed reactions. The Department of Higher Education has budgeted R410.7- million for the new financial year and R433.5-million for the following year to help eight universities, among other things, to get into a "financially sound position".
The benefitting institutions include the universities of Fort Hare, Limpopo, Venda, Walter Sisulu, Western Cape and Zululand, and Mangosuthu University of Technology. Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (formerly Medunsa) has also been identified as a beneficiary because it will be separated from the University of Limpopo this year.
The grants exclude the normal block and ring-fenced allocations to each university and their use for recurrent expenditure such as salaries of staff should be avoided. The use of the grant to supplement other state earmarked funds, infrastructure for teaching and research is prohibited.
Loane Sharp, an economist at the Free Market Foundation, an advocacy group for business and consumer rights, was critical of the new initiative, saying that the government was throwing good money after bad. "It's going to go to the highly dysfunctional institutions where lecturer quality and exams standards are very poor." Sharp said some of these institutions were still directing students into fields of study that had no relevance in the workplace. He added that there were thousands of unemployed graduates in the country but 829 000 vacancies in the private sector, including half that affected the professions such as law, accounting, engineering and finance.
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