Free yet? Progress, setbacks, tensions and the potential futures of South Africa’s free higher education policy: A 6 year "WPR" critical review
Abstract
Prior to 2017, maladministration, unfunded and underfunded students, misalignment with student needs, high non-completion rates and a violent student debt crisis characterised South Africa’s student financial aid scheme, and triggered annual unrest across the higher education (HE) sector. Following a wave of protests by the #FeesMustFall movement and widespread calls for a free decolonised HE, in 2017, the South African government replaced its 26 year old income-contingent student loan scheme with a grant-based free HE education policy for poor and working-class students. While the policy intervention restored relative stability across the sector, several fault lines in the student funding policy remain. In this article, drawing on a combination of qualitative policy document analysis and descriptive statistics, we employ Carol Bacchi “what’s the problem represented to be?” (WPR) approach to analyse recent student funding policy developments in South African HE. We employ the WPR approach to (a) direct attention to the significance of reflecting on how the HE student funding problem has been constituted and framed in policy proposals, and (b) challenge the dominant “problem solving” paradigm (inherent in mainstream policy propositions) by drawing attention to benefits of an alternative “problem-questioning” approach to the country’s pursuit for a just and equitable student funding model. We then make some recommendations on how South African HE policymakers can avoid the pitfalls of well-meaning HE funding policies turning into instruments for creating and reproducing the very disparities they are meant to ameliorate.
Downloads
References
Adams, R. 2017. “Poorest students will finish university with £57,000 debt, says IFS.” The Guardian 4 July. http://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/jul/05/poorest-students-will-finish-university-with-57000-debt-says-ifs.
Amupanda, J. S. 2018. “Who is in the ‘we’? Interrogating the African union’s agenda 2063 and youth political participation.” International Journal of African Renaissance Studies ‒ Multi-, Inter- and Transdisciplinarity 13(1): 56–76.
Arbouin, A. 2018. “Black British Graduates: Untold Stories.” In Trentham Books. Trentham Books. UCL IOE Press, UCL Institute of Education, London, UK. e-mail: ioe.ioepress@ucl.ac.uk. https://www.ucl-ioe-press.com/.
Bacchi, C. 2012. “Introducing the ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ approach.” In Engaging with Carol Bacchi: Strategic Interventions and Exchanges, 21–24.
Bacchi, C. L. 2009. Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to Be? Pearson.
Badat, S. 2011. “Free Higher Education in South Africa Why Not?” International Higher Education. https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/ihe/article/download/8535/7669.
Bangeni, B. and R. Kapp. (Ed.). 2017. Negotiating Learning and Identity in Higher Education: Access, Persistence and Retention. London: Bloomsbury
Batsani-Ncube, I. 2021. “‘Governing from the opposition?’: Tracing the impact of EFF’s ‘niche populist politics’ on ANC policy shifts.” African Review 13(2): 199–216.
Battiste, M. 2019. Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit. UBC Press.
Bawa, A. C. and A. Pouris. 2023. “An assessment of the economic impact of South Africa’s public universities.” South African Journal of Science 119(9‒10): 1–7.
Berman, E. P. 2022. Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy. Princeton University Press.
Bhorat, H., M. Kimani, and N. Pillay. 2018. “The evolution of National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).” LMIP POLICY BRIEF 22.
Boliver, V. 2016. “Critically evaluating the effectively maintained inequality hypothesis.” British Journal of Education Society & Behavioural Science 15(2): 1–9.
Bowen, G. 2009. “Document Analysis as a Qualitative Research Method.” Qualitative Research Journal 9(2): 27–40.
Brown, R. 2010. Higher Education and the Market. Routledge.
Brown, R. and H. Carasso. 2013. Everything for Sale? The Marketisation of UK Higher Education. 1st Edition. Routledge.
Carnevale, A. P., P. Schmidt, and J. Strohl. 2020. The Merit Myth: How Our Colleges Favor the Rich and Divide America. The New Press.
Cassidy, C. 2023. “University of Melbourne vice-chancellor calls for free university education.” The Guardian 21 June. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/21/university-of-melbourne-vice-chancellor-calls-for-free-university-education.
Castro Baker, A., S. Martin-West, S. Samra, and M. Cusack. 2020. “Mitigating loss of health insurance and means tested benefits in an unconditional cash transfer experiment: Implementation lessons from Stockton’s guaranteed income pilot.” SSM ‒ Population Health 11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2020.100578.
Chatterjee, A., L. Czajka, and A. Gethin. 2020. Estimating the Distribution of Household Wealth in South Africa (hal-02876974). HAL. https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-02876974.html.
Chikoko, V. and P. Mthembu. 2021. “The impact of poverty on basic education in South Africa: A systematic review of literature.” Systematic Reviews of Research in Basic Education in South Africa, 69.
Chinyoka, A. and E. Mutambara. 2020. “The challenges of revenue generation in state universities: The case of Zimbabwe.” Cogent Social Sciences 6(1): 1748477.
Cloete, N. and F. van SchalkwykF. 2021. “Free higher education: Crises that could have been foreseen.” University World News March 2021. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210324220438212
Council on Higher Education. 2018. Vital Stats, Public Higher Education. Pretoria
Council on Higher Education. 2023. Vital Stats, Public Higher Education. Pretoria
Dalglish, S. L., H. Khalid, and S. A. McMahon. 2021. “Document analysis in health policy research: The READ approach.” Health Policy and Planning 35(10): 1424–1431.
De Villiers, P. 2023. “Progress in Student funding in SA Higher Education.” In Reflections from the Field, ed. L. Waller and S. Waller. Volume 2. DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.109664.
Department of Education. 1997. White Paper on Higher Education in April 1997 titled ‘A Programme for Higher Education Transformation’. Pretoria
Department of Higher Education and Training. 2022. Annual Report 2021/22. Pretoria
Eaton, C. 2022. Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education. University of Chicago Press.
Fuller, A., S. Heath, and B. Johnston. 2011. Rethinking Widening Participation in Higher Education: The Role of Social Networks. Taylor & Francis.
Govender, P. 2023. “NSFAS board confirms leave of absence for CEO Andile Nongogo.” TimesLIVE 16 August. https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2023-08-16-nsfas-board-confirms-suspension-of-ceo-andile-nongogo/.
Habib, A. 2019. Rebels and Rage: Reflecting on #FeesMustFall. Jonathan Ball Publishers.
Haines, A. 2018. “Wasteful expenditures lead to tax hikes in South Africa’s 2018 budget.” International Tax Review. https://search.proquest.com/openview/e0785f94e4904f79be1f723edf387d5c/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=30282.
Harris, D., K. Vigurs, and S. Jones. 2021. “Student loans as symbolic violence.” Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 43(2): 132–146.
Hlati, O. 2021. “National Students Financial Aid Scheme audit the ‘worst ever’.” IOL | News That Connects South Africans 11 February. https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/news/national-students-financial-aid-scheme-audit-the-worst-ever-eeabb55c-3c76-489d-8036-43487e8cc536.
Hlati, O. 2023. “NSFAS wrongly defunded thousands of students.” IOL | News That Connects South Africans 7 September. https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/news/nsfas-wrongly-defunded-thousands-of-students-c590df41-0e23-4251-b1c9-3e701be34d7b.
Ilie, S. and P. Rose. 2016. “Is equal access to higher education in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa achievable by 2030?” Higher Education 72(4): 435–455.
Langa, M. 2017. “Researching the #FeesMustFall movement.” In Hashtag: An Analysis of The #FeesMustFall Movement at South African Universities, 6–12.
Love, D. 2022. “America’s student loan crisis stems from a war on education as a public good.” The Washington Post 29 December. https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/12/29/history-student-loan-debt/.
Mamdani, M. 2007. Scholars in the Marketplace. The Dilemmas of Neo-Liberal Reform at Makerere University, 1989‒2005: The Dilemmas of Neo-Liberal Reform at Makerere University, 1989‒2005. African Books Collective.
Marcus, B. H., W. Rakowski, and J. S. Rossi. 1992. “Assessing motivational readiness and decision making for exercise.” Health Psychology: Official Journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association 11(4): 257–261.
Marginson, S. 2012. “Including the other: Regulation of the human rights of mobile students in a nation-bound world.” Higher Education 63: 497‒512.
Marginson, S. 2016. “High participation systems of higher education.” The Journal of Higher Education 87(2): 243–271.
Masutha, M. 2023. “Against the pedagogy of debt in South African higher education.” African Journal of Teacher Education 12(2 Special): 48–68.
Masutha, M. and R. Naidoo. 2021. “STORIES FROM THE MARGINS.” Knowledge Beyond Colour Lines: Towards Repurposing Knowledge Generation in South African Higher Education, 59.
Masutha, M. and S. Motala. 2023. “Student Funding (In)equity in South African Higher Education: Fuelling or Failing Futures?” In Creating the New African University, 248–273. Brill.
Masutha, M., R. Naidoo, and J. Enders. 2023. “Challenging university complicity and majoritarian narratives: Counter-storytelling from black working-class students.” Critical Studies in Education, 1–19.
McLean, S., J. Stewart, and A. O. Batty. 2020. “Predicting L2 Reading Proficiency with Modalities of Vocabulary Knowledge: A Bootstrapping Approach.” Language Testing 37(3): 389–411.
Mitchell, J. 2021. The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe. Simon and Schuster.
Mohamedbhai, G. 2008. The Role of Higher Education for Human and Social Development in Sub-Saharan Africa. 10.1007/978-1-349-58169-6_10.
Mortimer, C. 2017. “Tuition fees system is so “politically diseased” it should be scrapped, says politican who helped design them.” The Independent 7 July. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/tuition-fees-scrapped-lord-adonis-politician-behind-university-bill-a7830156.html.
Motala, S., and D. Carel, D. 2019. “Educational Funding and Equity in South African Schools”. In South African Schooling: The Enigma of Inequality: A Study of the Present Situation and Future Possibilities, ed. N. Spaull and J. D. Jansen (ed.), 67–85. Springer International Publishing.
Mustaffa, J. B. and C. Dawson. 2021. “Racial Capitalism and the Black Student Loan Debt Crisis.” Teachers College Record 123(6): 1–28.
Naidoo, R. 1998. “Levelling or Playing the Field? The politics of access to university education in post‐apartheid South Africa.” Cambridge Journal of Education 28(3): 369–383.
Naidoo, R. and G. Whitty. 2014. “Students as consumers: Commodifying or democratising learning?” International Journal of Chinese Education 2(2): 212–240.
National Students Financial Aid Scheme. 2019 Annual Report. Cape Town.
Neil,G. and Wildschut, A. 2021. “How Large Is the Missing Middle and What Would It Cost to Fund?” Development Southern Africa 38 (3): 484–91.
Payne, J., institute (GB)., P. S., & Callender, C. (1997). Student Loans: who borrows and why? Policy Studies Institute.
Phakathi, B. 2021. “Higher education minister disputes auditor-general’s damning NSFAS findings.” Business Day 10 February. https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2021-02-10-higher-education-minister-disputes-auditor-generals-damning-nsfas-findings/.
Phillips, N. and R. Hewings. 2021. Why VAT really does hit the poorest hardest. New Statesman 8 June. https://www.newstatesman.com/business/economics/2011/10/why-vat-really-does-hit-poorest-hardest.
Piketty, T. 2000. “Chapter 8: Theories of persistent inequality and intergenerational mobility.” In Handbook of Income Distribution, Vol. 1, 429–476. Elsevier.
Presidency of the Republic of South Africa (2017, December). Presidency response on Heher Commission of Inquiry into Higher Education and Training. https://www.gov.za/speeches/presidency-response-heher-commission-inquiry-higher-education-and-training-16-dec-2017-0000
Rexwhite, E. T. and O. G. Onyenania. 2007. “Factors Affecting the Development of Information Infrastructure in Africa.” Library Hi Tech News 24(2): 15–20.
Riemann, M. 2023. “Studying Problematizations: The Value of Carol Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ (WPR) Methodology for IR.” Alternatives to Laboratory Animals: ATLA 48(2): 151–169.
Sachs, M., R. Amra, T. Madonko, and O. Willcox. 2023. “Austerity without consolidation: Fiscal policy and spending choices in Budget 2023.” SCIS WORKING PAPER SERIES: SCIS Working Paper | Number 60.
Salako, P. 2022. “‘We are stuck’: Months of university strikes leave young Nigerians’ lives on hold.” The Guardian 8 June. https://amp.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jun/08/months-of-university-strikes-leave-young-nigerian-lives-on-hold.
Seamster, L. and R. Charron-Chénier. 2017. “Predatory Inclusion and Education Debt: Rethinking the Racial Wealth Gap.” Social Currents 4(3): 199–207.
Shermer, E. T. 2021a. Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in College Debt. Harvard University Press.
Shermer, E. T. 2021b. “Why Massive Forgiveness Won’t Solve the Student-Debt Crisis.” New Labor Forum 30(3): 88–98.
Snowdon, C. 2013. “Aggressively regressive: The ‘sin taxes’ that make the poor poorer.” SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3915589.
Spicker, P. 2017. “The takeup of benefits: Lessons from the UK.” https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/247235/the-takeup-of-benefits-lessons-from-the-uk.
Unterhalter, E., J. Parkes, and C. Howell. 2019. “Achieving gender equality in and through education.”
Vanek, M. 2021. “South Africa Students Plan to Shut Universities Over Funding.” Bloomberg News 15 March. https://www.bloomberg.com.
von Fintel, D. and A. Orthofer. 2020. “Wealth inequality and financial inclusion: Evidence from South African tax and survey records.” Economic Modelling 91: 568–578.
Webb, C. 2021. “Liberating the family: Debt, education and racial capitalism in South Africa.” Environment and Planning. D, Society & Space 39(1): 85–102.
Williams, J. 2006. “The Pedagogy of Debt.” College Literature 33(4): 155–169.
Wiseman, A. W. and P. M. Davidson. 2021. “Institutionalized inequities and the cloak of equality in the South African educational context.” Policy Futures in Education 19(8): 1478210321999197.
Copyright (c) 2023 Shireen Motala, Mukovhe Masutha
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
This journal is an open access journal, and the authors and journal should be properly acknowledged, when works are cited.
Authors, copyright holders, may use the publishers version for teaching purposes, in books, theses, dissertations, conferences and conference papers.
A copy of the authors' publishers version may also be hosted on the following websites:
- Non-commercial personal homepage or blog.
- Institutional webpage.
- Authors Institutional Repository.
The following notice should accompany such a posting on the website: This is an electronic version of an article published in SAJHE, Volume XXX, number XXX, pages XXX “XXX", DOI. Authors should also supply a hyperlink to the original paper or indicate where the original paper (http://www.journals.ac.za/index.php/SAJHE) may be found.
Authors publishers version, affiliated with the Stellenbosch University will be automatically deposited in the University Institutional Repository SUNScholar.
Articles as a whole, may not be re-published with another journal.
The following license applies:
Attribution CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
