a lot of our boys are stealing in town. You find them when you drive out in the evening. Why are they doing that? Some of them are really just acting criminally because they do it to have beautiful things and so on. We did the research. But others simply do not have a meal. So for me, those who are enrolled are having a tough time experiencing equality in terms of a full stomach, or the necessary resources like textbooks or to get access to electronic resource centres, or to have a proper laptop or whatever. I mean the tools, that’s imperative. And now you don’t eat. It’s a vicious cycle. It’s not conducive for [poor students]. And then in our case, the ones that we send home by the thousands, what happens to them? And you know, often TUT is not the preferred institution among prospective students because of all the disruptions. So we might be the last resort. Still the financial issues matter to poor students here. I am not saying we should have fee-free education, because that would have disastrous implications. Just look at what happened elsewhere in Africa.
So what did universities do?
If the narrative of student protestors is to be believed, universities and their leaders are singularly unresponsive to these four intersecting crises (subsidies down, fees up; enrolments up, throughput rates down). ‘Tell me,’ I asked one of the student leaders in a moment of exasperation during the #FeesMustFall protests, ‘what is it that you asked that we did not do?’ The question was rhetorical, because at UFS we went out of our way to address every material and intellectual need of our students. My directive to my senior team was simple: do not fight with students or workers on things we can agree on. And so when the invasion of the rugby field happened (problem one) and the assault that followed (problem 2), the principal of a Cape Town university called me and said: ‘Of all the universities, and all you’ve done, this should not have happened to UFS.’ We all thought so, and we were devastated by a faction within the SRC leadership who claimed that, after decades, ‘nothing had changed at UFS’. Fortunately, virtually everyone connected to the university knew better.
UFS was fortunate to have a council that took pride in its commitment to have one of the lowest fee structures in the country. This meant that even though UFS did more than most institutions in terms of academic innovation – such as the compulsory 101 core curriculum and the funded study-abroad programme for undergraduates – the institution ran a tight ship, keeping its fees low and its staff remuneration at 53 per cent of expenditure regardless of the fluctuating levels of the annual subsidy. If any university had a pro-poor fee structure, it was UFS. But you would not know that from the fierce protests of 2015–2016.
Like many other universities, Stellenbosch University (SU) used its own internal funds to add substantially to the government’s loan and bursary allocations in order to meet the expanding needs of a growing student population. According to its leader, SU managed a total of R658,7 million in student bursaries, of which R155 million came from within its own funds, thereby covering 24 per cent of its total student body. With an on-average poorer student body, UFS covered 47 per cent of its student body, with R48,4 million coming out of institutional funds from a total of R427 million available for financial assistance. More than anything else, these institution-held funds directed to student funding signalled commitment to poor students, for such money could easily have been deployed in running the general operations of the university.
In addition, as indicated earlier, universities often stretch the ‘payment due’ dates to enable students and their families to raise the funds needed for studies. Most parents eventually find some funding to cover historical debt from previous years and current obligations in the present year of study. Invariably, this has an impact on the cash-flow status of a university and could lead to serious crises with regards to payroll. But universities go to the line to enable families to come up with funding, which serves both the student, enabling him or her to study, and the institution, enabling it to operate.
Many universities have a variety of textbook ‘buy-back’ schemes to help students purchase books cheaply. (This sometimes becomes a racket, with all kinds of instant entrepreneurs willing to scam desperate students.) Students share books. Publishers increasingly offer online and cheaper mass-purchase options. Students themselves organise book-return sales. Lecturers rely on book notes placed on Blackboard or other technology platforms. These schemes, with or without university facilitation, enable students to access expensive books without which they would find it hard to prepare for assignments, tests, and examinations.
Since the 1990s there is hardly a university without a centre for teaching and learning, or some centralised facility that provides additional tutorial classes; coaching in academic writing skills, study skills, and note-taking skills; sessions on reading and preparing for assignments; and countless other interventions that help bridge students from schoolwork to university studies. Academic support programmes of varying ideologies and approaches sprang up everywhere decades ago, and some universities have set up whole campuses to enable students with weak school results to do a bridging year before applying for degree studies.
Free or subsidised food schemes are often provided to cater for students in dire financial need. Some universities have gone further, providing free health services and even gym or fitness centres. In other words, universities across the country have gone to the wire to provide from within their own resources the people, resources, and facilities to meet students’ emotional, nutritional, intellectual, and financial needs.
In the end, it did not matter, for what protesting students were looking for was something much more fundamental: the resolution of a systemic failure in the funding of higher education. All other remedies were dismissed as well-meaning but misguided, even if a massive safety net was now in place for vulnerable students. But that systemic failure went beyond universities – it was, fundamentally, a critique of post-1994 society itself and the failure of the state to live up to societal expectations of what the ‘new South Africa’ was supposed to be.
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