POLITICS

DHET predicts its own collapse - Belinda Bozzoli

It’s the poor who will suffer most when the higher education system implodes, says DA

The Department of Higher Education and Training predicts its own collapse

The Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) has, in its Annual Report, made the startling prediction that, unless something drastic is done to improve its own staffing situation, and particularly “if it continues to expand without due consideration for the need to recruit skilled staff, it could lead to a total collapse of the administration system of the Department”. 

Needless to say, the Medium Term Economic Framework (MTEF) contains no indication that further funding will be made available to the Department to enable it to avoid this disastrous situation. 

This is a very serious matter. The lives and futures of nearly two million young people, as well as the economy and society into which these young people are going to ultimately work, depend upon the efficient and effective running of this Department. 

Of particular concern are the one million students in TVET colleges – for, while universities run themselves with broad departmental oversight, the TVETs are run by the Department in a much more hands-on manner. The Department accredits all TVET courses, it employs the staff at the colleges and it presides over the teaching and examining of all programmes offered.

The DA has already raised deep concerns that the Department has taken on more than it can manage.

Since 1994, overall student numbers have increased dramatically, putting major pressure on student funding and the administration thereof. More recently, the Department has had to absorb all 50 TVET colleges from the Provinces, a process which has entailed taking on nearly 40,000 new staff as well as multiple administrative burdens. It is now also in the process of absorbing the Adult Education sector without any noticeable or substantial improvement in basic funding for operations.

We have pointed out how the TVET exam system is showing cracks, with unprecedented and widespread cheating having occurred this year. Then, of course, the long-standing certificate scandal – in which tens of thousands of students have been unable to find employment while they wait for the formal issuing of their certificates – continues unresolved. 

The DA has received numerous complaints from students at these colleges that the Department is unable to respond to their concerns. We are now also receiving complaints from staff teaching in the Adult Education sector who are not being paid due to inefficiencies related to the transfer of this sector from the Provinces. One moderator for the TVET exam system has told us the Examinations Department is “chaotic”, while others have expressed concern about the quality of marking. 

But universities and TVETs are only part of the story. The Department is also responsible for 21 Sector Education and Training Authority’s (SETA’s), many of which are corrupt or failing, the unconvincing National Skills Fund and numerous agencies which provide essential services such as accrediting courses, degrees and programmes, evaluating and protecting quality, and of course, in the case of the profoundly inadequate National Students Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) which is meant to provide students with funding. 

The Higher Education Department has not, until now, suffered from the disastrous administrative weaknesses displayed in other key parts of the State. All the signs are that it is now beginning to do so.

The role of Treasury in this and other serious problems in the field of Higher Education needs to be challenged. For Treasury to expect the DHET to take on such huge new burdens with a minimally expanded administration has been reckless and thoughtless. Not only has the DA consistently warned consistently of these problems, but, at least two years ago, the Auditor-General himself warned that the Department was unsustainable. 

But this is symptomatic of the ANC’s style of governing. Quick to offer expanded services to the poor, to merge and centralise, yet it the government has been far slower to put in place the means whereby this expansion can be properly funded, managed or supported. 

Ultimately, it is the poor who will lose. A failing Department of Higher Education will fail the poor above all. It is they who will bear the brunt of under-funding, whose applications will get lost, whose teachers and lecturers will not have the required qualifications, whose exams will be crooked and whose certificates will never arrive.

Issued by Prof Belinda Bozzoli, DA Shadow Minister of Higher Education, 4 October 2015