Student Funding (in) equity in South African higher education – fuelling or failing futures?

• In Event: The Economics of Higher Education

Proposal

Abstract

The question of what would constitute a just and equitable student funding model remains a major research and policy concern for higher education in Africa and beyond. Out of decades of austerity, financialization, and related neoliberal conceptions of education and society, and the normalising of debt as a primary means of funding students in higher education , inequity has been reproduced and the very soul of public higher education is at stake. We argue that the project of reimagining a new African university would be incomplete without a new, just and inclusive model of fundings students. In this chapter, with South Africa as our focal point, we explore the intersection of student funding policy and inequity by critically reviewing and analysing the evolution of post-apartheid South Africa's student financial aid models in order to illuminate the gaps, sore points, uncertainties and deficiencies that have triggered sector-wide unrest and instability in the recent past. We conceptualise the increased reliance on student tuition fee to compensate for austerity cuts and other dimensions of marketisation of HE as cause for concern and a foundation of inequity in higher education. We advance that , to the extent that cost-sharing models remain a barrier to equitable HE participation, they are failing instead of fuelling just futures in education. We urge African HE leaders and policymakers to come to terms with, review and avoid the pitfall of the era of HE marketisation. We also suggest that it is time to reimagine ‘free’ HE to mean more than a system that is ‘free of charge’ at the point of access. HE needs to be freed from rigid market logics. Finally, we put forward social solidarity, transitional and reparative justice as core tenets that should guide South Africa and Africa’s pursuit for a just, equitable and sustainable student funding model.

Author

• Mukovhe Masutha, University of Johannesburg