The conclusion is straightforward: students could not afford the tuition hikes and the burden of debt became a reality, not only for those who graduated, but also for those who dropped out with debt and without a degree. It was a cruel calculus for the materially poor and academically disadvantaged.
Now to be clear, it is not that funded students paid the fee increases themselves, although there is little recognition of this simple fact in the protest movement. Moreover, government has substantially increased NSFAS funding in the past and present, and has promised to do so into the future. In 1991 the NSFAS funded 7 240 students to the tune of R21,4 million; by 2014 the scheme funded 409 475 students at a cost of R9 billion. Those on state funding – whether from the NSFAS, a more general fund, or the Funza Lushaka Bursary – were fully covered for most of their costs. If anything, the minister of higher education would complain from time to time that the tuition fee increases by the universities were pushing the NSFAS envelope, but the reality is that students were amply funded.
The students for whom the tuition fee increases were becoming a problem were poor students who did not qualify for NSFAS or Funza Lushaka funding, and students from middle-class families (the ‘missing middle’) who could not afford the escalating costs of studying at university. These are the groups among whom the pressure was building, as it was among those students for whom NSFAS had simply run out of funds. But the university protests were often led by middle-class and fully funded students presuming to lead on behalf of their poorer classmates. The vice-chancellor of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) makes a clear distinction between the truly poor and the better-off students:
Prins Nevhutalu: You hear all the time the discourse that informs the discussion around fee increases focused on UCT and Wits. It’s all about a ‘missing middle’, but parading it in the name of the poor students. So my argument to Max [Price] and Adam [Habib] is, you absolutely have no need for posturing. We carry the burden of the largest numbers of poor students. You cannot argue on behalf of poor students. Argue about your own institution and say you need more money from the state, but don’t hide behind the poverty of black people. The protests about fees originated on campuses that for me were not facing the harsh reality of poverty.
There is no question that the problem of inadequate NSFAS funding hits the poor the hardest, even as the burden has spread to middle-class students as well. And with every year that tuition fees increased beyond the rise in earnings of families in a stagnant economy, the predictable perfect storm came closer. In response to these pressures, frustration would push students into desperate acts. Put simply, fee increases on campuses compounded struggles with poverty in communities.
Lourens van Staden: And the way we allocate NSFAS, you give students money for certain things like tuition and often maybe for textbooks, as an example. But students also need to eat. If you are poor, where will you eat? At TUT we have a strong academic development support unit where our psychologist conducted some studies. There’s a lot of prostitution, a lot of our boys are stealing in town. You find them when you drive out in the evening. Why are they doing that? Some of them are really just acting criminally because they do it to have beautiful things and so on. We did the research. But others simply do not have a meal. So for me, those who are enrolled are having a tough time experiencing equality in terms of a full stomach, or the necessary resources like textbooks or to get access to electronic resource centres, or to have a proper laptop or whatever. I mean the tools, that’s imperative. And now you don’t eat. It’s a vicious cycle. It’s not conducive for [poor students]. And then in our case, the ones that we send home by the thousands, what happens to them? And you know, often TUT is not the preferred institution among prospective students because of all the disruptions. So we might be the last resort. Still the financial issues matter to poor students here. I am not saying we should have fee-free education, because that would have disastrous implications. Just look at what happened elsewhere in Africa.
So what did universities do?
If the narrative of student protestors is to be believed, universities and their leaders are singularly unresponsive to these four intersecting crises (subsidies down, fees up; enrolments up, throughput rates down). ‘Tell me,’ I asked one of the student leaders in a moment of exasperation during the #FeesMustFall protests, ‘what is it that you asked that we did not do?’ The question was rhetorical, because at UFS we went out of our way to address every material and intellectual need of our students. My directive to my senior team was simple: do not fight with students or workers on things we can agree on. And so when the invasion of the rugby field happened (problem one) and the assault that followed (problem 2), the principal of a Cape Town university called me and said: ‘Of all the universities, and all you’ve done, this should not have happened to UFS.’ We all thought so, and we were devastated by a faction within the SRC leadership who claimed that, after decades, ‘nothing had changed at UFS’. Fortunately, virtually everyone connected to the university knew better.
UFS was fortunate to have a council that took pride in its commitment to have one of the lowest fee structures in the country. This meant that even though UFS did more than most institutions in terms of academic innovation – such as the compulsory 101 core curriculum and the funded study-abroad programme for undergraduates – the institution ran a tight ship, keeping its fees low and its staff remuneration at 53 per cent of expenditure regardless of the fluctuating levels of the annual subsidy. If any university had a pro-poor fee structure, it was UFS. But you would not know that from the fierce protests of 2015–2016.
Like many other universities, Stellenbosch University (SU) used its own internal funds to add substantially to the government’s loan and bursary allocations in order to meet the expanding needs of a growing student population. According to its leader, SU managed a total of R658,7 million in student bursaries, of which R155 million came from within its own funds, thereby covering 24 per cent of its total student body. With an on-average poorer student body, UFS covered 47 per cent of its student body, with R48,4 million coming out of institutional funds from a total of R427 million available for financial assistance. More than anything else, these institution-held funds directed to student funding signalled commitment to poor students, for such money could easily have been deployed in running the general operations of the university.
In addition, as indicated earlier, universities often stretch the ‘payment due’ dates to enable students and their families to raise the funds needed for studies. Most parents eventually find some funding to cover historical debt from previous years and current obligations in the present year of study. Invariably, this has an impact on the cash-flow status of a university and could lead to serious crises with regards to payroll. But universities go to the line to enable families to come up with funding, which serves both the student, enabling him or her to study, and the institution, enabling it to operate.
Many universities have a variety of textbook ‘buy-back’ schemes to help students purchase books cheaply. (This sometimes becomes a racket, with all kinds of instant entrepreneurs willing to scam desperate students.) Students share books. Publishers increasingly offer online and cheaper mass-purchase options. Students themselves organise book-return sales. Lecturers rely on book notes placed on Blackboard or other technology platforms. These schemes, with or without university facilitation, enable students to access expensive books without which they would find it hard to prepare for assignments, tests, and examinations.
Since the 1990s there is hardly a university without a centre for teaching and learning, or some centralised facility that provides additional tutorial classes; coaching in academic writing skills, study skills, and note-taking skills; sessions on reading and preparing for assignments; and countless other interventions that help bridge students from schoolwork to university studies. Academic support programmes of varying ideologies and approaches sprang up everywhere decades ago, and some universities have set up whole campuses to enable students with weak school results to do a bridging year before applying for degree studies.
Free