Cape Town - A graduate and corporate tax should be considered to increase university and college funding, particularly to help poor students.
This was one of the key recommendations that emerged at the weekend’s Higher Education Transformation Summit in Durban.
In its report, the summit’s access and success commission agreed that universities could not rely solely on the government for funding poor students.
It called on the task team appointed by the president to address financial-aid issues to prioritise the funding of students through the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).
The report said new sources of funding for student aid needed to be investigated and repayment and collection rates improved.
It also wanted to look into fast-tracking the new student-centred model for NSFAS loans and bursaries.
Under the new model, introduced last year, those who might be eligible for funding would be contacted while still at school.
There would also be allowances for private accommodation, food, books and transport, paid directly to students.
Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande indicated where he believed additional funding should be coming from, daring students to “one day march to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange”.
Nzimande was concerned about the “muted voice of workers and academics” at the summit and said academics, in particular, bore the brunt of inadequate resources at universities.
He called for strengthened dispute resolution mechanisms at universities.
He would be looking at what was driving up costs at universities and the increase in spending on management versus academics, and said he feared that institutions were being corporatised.
But the minister insisted there were reasons to be positive.
“There is a great deal of optimism for higher education,” he said.
Professor Malegapuru Makgoba, former vice-chancellor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, called for university principals to be held accountable.
He said funding, knowledge production and university leadership were the subjects that needed the most urgent attention.
“We are appointing leaders using old methods.
“We need to review the way we appoint vice-chancellors, do they fit in the mission of an appropriate university in South Africa and how we want to see it,” he said.
“There is a need to hold vice-chancellors accountable and say the buck stops with you.
“Leaders of the universities are accountable, if the buck passes, he must be kicked and do something that is honourable,” he said.
The commission on leadership, management and governance proposed that university councils be examined with a view of finding a compromise between internal and external members.
There was also a view that the salaries of executive management be reviewed.
It was recommended that the transformation of universities be pursued as a matter of urgency with the current governance model of the senate, council and SRC to be reviewed.
There was a view that the Higher Education Act should be amended to limit the tenure of council chairmen, to avoid “permanent residency”.
Teboho Thotela, the deputy president of the South African Union of Students, said they wanted to see a “paradigm shift” towards a society that wanted an increased quality of higher education and quality of life for students.
“We are glad the summit challenged the dominant narrative that there is no intellectualism in protest.
“We remain aware that malicious damage to property reverses the gains made by student protest,” he said.
Thotela said the summit needed to acknowledge the lack of African intellectual enterprise and the frustration at the slow pace of transformation within higher education.
CAPE ARGUS