The promises made by the ANC have forced an inevitable fiscal expansion. Government departments across the board are increasing the size and scale of their operations. The government’s budget requirement is necessarily growing and the government’s income is not going to increase sufficiently to cover the expense. The government is going to have to choose what is strategically important: Housing, crime, universal healthcare, job creation, free primary education, free secondary education and the list goes on. The fact is that at some point we are going to have to curb spending or we are going to be too indebted for the government to do anything but to repay loans. Higher education is a priority in a skill scarce country but is it really worth it when few people leave school sufficiently qualified to enter a university, if they even finish school. It is important to improve the basics before we begin looking at further expansion

Currently the premier universities of South Africa receive less than a fifth of their income from government subsidy, the vast majority of income comes from fee income. Currently the system is structured so that the more wealthy students cross subsidise their poorer compatriots through financial aid, where the university uses fee income to pay for the tuition fees of poorer students through bursaries and low cost loans. Poorer students in the long run pay considerably less than the rich. If university policy continues to follow a similar line of thinking richer students could be carrying nearly the entire burden of cost through this system. This is what would happen if university was free: Taxpayers would pay for university tuition and with the way our tax system is structured the proportion of burden would rest on the rich. There is one important difference fees induce excellence where taxes do not.

Currently the premier institutions of Higher Learning in South Africa compete for the scarce resources that students bring with them. In order to get those resources universities must offer excellent degrees, good teaching and opportunities for student development. It is for good reason that students would rather attend an excellent university than a mediocre one. It is thus in the university’s best interests to be efficient in the use of resources providing the best possible education to its students. This system creates a positively reinforced cycle better education attracts resources which in turn provides better education. Resources attract better academics, which in turn produces better research to be taught to students. Government subsidy places no pressure on institutions to perform and especially in the current form where poorly managed universities are rewarded with better funding than well managed ones.

If the best universities in Africa are going to be forced to stop charging fees and the government will unlikely be able make up the short fall this must necessarily result in one of two things: fewer students graduating or the quality of university falling to abysmally poor levels. This can only result in lower productivity in knowledge creation and skills diffusion, the two things necessary for economic growth in South Africa. Free university education is not a goal that can be realised in the near future and rather the government should spend more of its resources improving primary and secondary education, providing South Africa with the next generation of university students, it should be instituting policies that encourage all universities to cross-subsidise their poor students and should set up funding systems that promote excellence rather than mediocrity.

Shannon Bernhardt is a third-year UCT student doing a Bachelor of Social Science in Politics and Economics.