Johannesburg - With two weeks left until the application deadline for universities, hundreds of thousands of prospective first-years must contend with the fact that they need to come up with a plan B because of limited space.
A survey by The Star last week revealed that universities had received applications that exceeded the available space.
The University of Johannesburg has received 114 000 first-year applications for next year, yet can only accommodate 10 500.
Wits University expects the number of first-year applications to reach 50 000 by the end of this month and can only accept 5 500.
When speaking at the Progressive Professionals Forum’s first anniversary celebrations in Midrand earlier this month, Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande, said his department was working towards opening community colleges from next year to diversify the higher education sector and to also allow even people without formal schooling to enrol and learn practical skills.
Nzimande said technical and vocational training had to be as viable and appealing to students as going through a traditional university and getting a degree.
“The problem at the moment is that we’re a one-route nation - everyone goes through matric and goes to university. If you haven’t gone through that route you are a nobody. That is a problem, that is incorrect. No country does that,” he said.
To beef up the further education and training (FET) colleges, the department gazetted a draft policy document for public comment on the norms and standards for funding of FET colleges.
The draft policy, which spells out the structure and output of the colleges, concedes that the sector is catering to a fraction of the population that should be benefiting from it.
“By international standards, the size of the FET college sector is too small for the size and level of development of our economy. The 15 to 19 age cohort, which should comprise an important target for this sector, has a mere 2 percent enrolment rate in technical and vocational further education and training. Industrialised countries have over 6 percent of the youth cohort in vocational education and so it can be argued that the college sector should increase fivefold,” the policy document states.
Similarly in the FET colleges - like at universities - tuition and accommodation fees have been identified as an impediment for students.
“Indications are that college fees could be seven times as high as fees in ordinary schools. Unlike schools, colleges have no system of fee exemptions for poorer students. This partly explains why colleges are particularly inaccessible for poorer households,” the policy states.
Despite the department increasing National Financial Student Aid Scheme funding, too many students are still unable to further their studies because they cannot afford it.
The two new universities in the Northern Cape and in Mpumalanga that opened their doors to students at the beginning of the year are still in their infancy and won’t be able to enrol more than 500 first-year students combined.
The Star