BY AKANYANG MEREMENTSI
For how long will we continue to blame the poor performance of our students in the country on the Department of Education alone and not the students themselves too? Aren’t they, the students, the ones learning, if not failing to learn?
But of course one would have to also take into account the failure too, on the part of the country’s education system which for more than a decade now has continued to produce the ‘so-called illiterate and incompetent future generation’ as they are now known.
One cannot understand let alone comprehend the audacity the Young Communist League has in trying to dictate to the University of the Free State what admission requirements it should set for the new entrants and what not.
In its ill-informed and dictatory statement to the university – the YCL said the introduction of the innovative ways’ by University of increasing its admission points requied for entrants into the university from the previous 28 to 30 is “inconsistent”. With what, exactly?
The increase, according to the YCL, was just another way in which UFS could “further exclude black students from being admitted in the institution”, a decision which it ‘vehemently opposed’. The league said the point system used by universities was “inconsistent and [had] been a tool to ostracize students from disadvantaged backgrounds.”
The league said:
The point system does not take into consideration that students from privileged schools have more subject options as opposed to schools in disadvantaged communities. The point system and the number of points one needs is applicable regardless of how many subjects a student has. A student can have only six subjects and still be required to meet the same requirements with someone who has 11 subjects.
It further accused the University for not offering Music subject to the “disadvantaged communities whereas in private school there is an entourage of subjects offered where students can easily meet stringent requirements set out for entry”. This in the YCLSA’ view, read the statement, was a “creation of a white elephant in UFS and [affirmation] that the institution will forever be white”. Now who’s a racist?
The 12 month programme, allegedly, created to assist students from disadvantaged communities, said the league, was a “mockery” because it only “prolongs the number of years which students study and moreover it increases the already high costs of tuition and expenses of staying in university.” The programme is one that is used by many Universities, including the North West University at Mafikeng campus.
The the pointing system, – as one understands it and although, admittedly, it somehow disadvantages students who are/were from the poorer schools that were not well-resourced enough and some of whose students voluntarily failed to study hard enough to reach their ‘expected’ potential and meeting the pointing system required of them by higher learning institutions like UFS – is not used for the purpose of ‘excluding the black students from being admitted in the institution’ as alleged the league. Instead, it is used to raise the high level of intellect on students. More than that, it is used as a yardstick on how much efforts the students themselves willing to put into their school work in order to reach and even exceed their ‘expected’ potential and results.
And this is something that the league itself fails to understand and one thinks that even the Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande cannot ‘intervene’ on this matter unless of course the system was used on ‘racial lines’ or to/on black students ONLY, something that is presently non-existent in this case.
So, please YCL, no matter how hard it might be for the students to meet the required pointing system – you still cannot dictate to the university on what’s always best for the students, except on other politically-motivated matters as they, the university and its entire teaching stuff members, are experts and professionals in their respective fields of study and one trusts that they actually know what they are doing and why they are doing it.
And whether you collectively “fight tooth and nail” and “mobilize [your] structures” to scrap the system should it be implemented as you see it as “racial tactics policies” – it is still the UFS’s prerogative, one that you presently cannot do anything about.
Akanyang Merementsi blogs at Akanyang Africa.
Tags: entrance requirements, university, ycl