Students protest for free education in Cape Town. (Photo by Shaun Swingler/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
There are about 503 higher education institutions in South Africa. Of these, 26 are universities. Since 1994, the university has experienced an increase in enrollment. Many factors, such as social pressure, the dawn of democracy and access to institutions previously reserved for whites, led to this increase.
Deliberate government policies make higher education accessible and available, in line with the Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 2019, about 1.2 million students registered for private and public higher education in SA. Of these, 90% end up in higher education institutions or public universities. With that said, 65% of these students register through contact mode, resulting in a lack of space and capacity.
The Education White Paper painted higher education as a broker of “life chances” and a channel for “equity in the distribution of opportunities and achievements among South Africans”. Parents and students see a university degree as a vehicle to escape structural inequality and poverty and climb the ladder to corporate and public sector strata.
With limited resources to address capacity challenges in our universities, we ask one question: “Is higher education a right or a privilege?”
Not everyone deserves/needs a university qualification
Basic education and adult basic education rights contained in the Constitution state that the state must provide education to all children and adults living in South Africa. This right is based on section 9(3) of the Constitution which provides for the right to equality and prohibits unfair prejudice. However, unlike basic education, higher education is a privilege and the state must strive to make it available and accessible to citizens.
The availability of higher education depends on the availability of resources, such as infrastructure and funding. As a result, we argue that education, especially higher education, should differentiate. Higher education institutions must have fair and functional discrimination in order to function effectively and efficiently.
Fair discrimination
There are 503 higher education institutions in the country showing the wide range of options that post-matric students have. However, the majority of students choose to enroll in a university and ignore other available higher education institutions, which can provide a suitable education.
Higher education offers different types of education. For example, universities based on theory, create and introduce frameworks to solve social or business problems. Technical colleges and TVET (technical and vocational education and training) exist to provide practical experience to students. Then there is the Department of Education and Training Sector (Seta) and the like, which are other means of post-school education.
Depending on the student’s matric marks and abilities, he/she should go to university or TVET.
Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights qualifies that technical and professional education should be available and accessible to all, but this should be based on merit. Merit is a fair discriminatory qualification based on unlisted grounds. It is a spectrometric tool that acts to identify the objective qualities that are socially constructed to and from higher education institutions.
It is a tool used to allocate scarce educational resources and determine access to maximize the return on investment of the higher education system. Merit gives states the flexibility to allocate resources in line with their politically constructed development aspirations.
Section 37 (1) of the Higher Education Act provides the basis for fair discrimination in higher education through policies recognized by the board of public higher education institutions.
However, the basic education system can be a solution to overcapacity in higher education.
Students who pass 30% to 40% are qualified to enter university. This is where we argue that education should be discriminatory. Only students who pass with an overall score of 80% to 100% must enter the university. Others must be registered for TVET and other higher education institutions, depending on the criteria set.
Fair discrimination gives countries the flexibility to allocate resources and students to institutions that will unleash their potential and maximize return on investment while allowing students to acquire the skills they need to participate actively in the economy.
The Department of Higher Education and Training recognizes four channels for post-secondary education: university, vocational education, community education and Setas. These channels should actively allocate students through the merit system. For example, students with 30% to 40% and less should be automatically transferred to community and vocational colleges. These institutions have the necessary skills, capacities and programs to unlock the potential in these students.
It is very important to point out that these students can still enroll in private universities in South Africa at their own expense. When it is argued that these students have a right to a public university education, that right is not denied or delayed. Students can still earn degrees and certificates equivalent to degrees from many of these pathways.
The lack of fair discrimination in higher education can be the main avenue of protest in universities demanding free education, etc.
The massification of higher education leads to greater access to educational opportunities, and not necessarily more because of structural problems in our education system as a whole. Primary and secondary education and other pathways to higher education have inconsistent policies and programs that create entry barriers for students in schools in rural and poor areas of South Africa.
While governments are trying to reduce financial barriers to access, most students in rural and poor communities may not be able to access these opportunities.
The progressive nature of the right to higher education does not free the government and allows it to cut the constitutional obligation to send access to higher education but instead recognizes the economic and time constraints that arbitrate the determination of the right and the need for flexibility in the pursuit of this right.
Progressive rights require governments to set clear goals and timeframes to achieve universal access. Access to higher education does not only mean mass admission but also talks with more students from different socio-economic backgrounds according to section 9 (3) of the Constitution. This means that rural students with disabilities should have equal and barrier-free access to higher education like other students.
Functional discrimination
The increasing incidence in the public domain of individuals using false qualifications to access higher education and job opportunities reflects not only the perceived value of degree certificates, but also the desperation to obtain the keys to unlock opportunities as envisioned in the Education White Paper. These people recognize that educational qualifications create elite citizens with a world of opportunities and that education itself is a cold-blooded discriminator that filters title candidates from the unemployed masses.
Recommendation
The right to higher education is a secondary right that can be realized when there is equitable access to quality primary and secondary education. This means not a right, but a privilege. As a result, governments should prioritize implementing policies to address the current massification of access. There should be a clear understanding that higher education should be fairly and functionally discriminatory.
Not every student needs to obtain a university qualification. Fair discrimination requires that all South Africans, regardless of background, have an equal opportunity to meet the minimum standards for accessing higher education institutions.
However, this access, which is seen as a tool to realize equality in society, is a tool that propagates inequality between graduates and non-graduates of higher education – working towards unsettling discrimination.
Dr Motshedisi Mathibe is a senior lecturer at the Gordon Institute of Business Sciences. Hamandawana Zhou is a management consultant at Skill Share Africa Institute.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official policy or position Mail & Guardians.