HIGHER Education in South Africa came under the spotlight yesterday at the third CPUT and Cape Times public lecture, where UFS outgoing vice-chancellor Jonathan Jansen warned against another zero-percent fee increase at universities.
Jansen was the keynote speaker on the topic, "South Africa, Higher Education in crises: Possible Solutions" at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology’s Bellville campus yesterday.
He launched a scathing attack on the current Fees Commission and Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande’s expected announcement on fee increases in 2017.
Jansen said it was “a sore point” that politicians and not university councils would be making announcements on fee increases. He also lamented the fact that the Fees Commission was being managed by a panel of judges, not academics.
Jansen told the audience that Africa was littered with broken universities which held great promise a few decades ago, but were now essentially defunct as a result of state interference.
“Today the same things that took down those universities are the same things that will cripple ours. State interference is politicians deciding what fee increases should be.
"The only thing that does is chase away the top academics and the fee-paying students because they have options."
Also at the event, Cape Times deputy editor Aziz Hartley thanked CPUT vice-chancellor Prins Nevhutalu and the university's team for having invited Jansen.
“Prof hails from the Mother City, from the Retreat area, so there is not much we can tell him about Cape Town. We, of course, are grateful for the contribution he makes to our country,” he said.
Hartley has been promoted to Sunday Argus editor after spending 37 years working at the Cape Times. “It has been a pleasure for me as deputy editor to have represented Cape Times," he said. "I’d like to introduce Carlo Petersen, who has been appointed senior editor at Cape Times.”
Petersen, in turn, said he was proud to be part of the lecture series as CPUT was his alma mater, and he looked forward to the lecture series growing in partnership with Cape Times.