{"id":207359,"date":"2017-10-25T08:42:36","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T06:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=207359"},"modified":"2017-10-25T08:42:36","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T06:42:36","slug":"why-south-african-universities-cant-afford-free-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/207359\/why-south-african-universities-cant-afford-free-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Why South African universities can’t afford free education"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lazy students who take longer to finish their studies are the main reason that free education is not possible, according to statistician-general Pali Lehohla, who was speaking at the launch of Statistics South Africa’s report on the finances of higher education institutions on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Lehohla said free tertiary education would be possible if it were not for university students taking more years to complete their courses than required to, reports IOL<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This has resulted in a major backlog of students at these institutions, he said.<\/p>\n

“If you look at countries like Korea and Switzerland, the governments are paying for university, fully. \u00a0(In South Africa) there are 400,000 out of a million that should not be there, they are just sitting there like a cloud. If they were not there, it is possible that government could pay for it.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are not moving at a pace they are meant to. Now you need to\u00a0solve that situation so that you do not have that 400,000 because they clog that system.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething is happening in the system that is trapping\u00a0students in there, they are not getting out. We are paying for people that should not be there and that is what is making\u00a0university so expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2016,\u00a0975,837 students enrolled in higher education institutions.<\/p>\n

Funding<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Lehohla, the country\u2019s 26 higher education institutions received money in three main ways over the course of 2016 –\u00a0\u00a0R30 billion in the form of\u00a0grants,\u00a0 R21.6 bilion from tuition fees and R15.7 billion in the form of donations.<\/p>\n

Lehohla said South Africa\u2019s public\u00a0higher education institutions had a total income from operating activities of R67.4 billion.<\/p>\n

“This represents an increase of\u00a0R6.4 billion from the income received in the 2015 financial year of R61 billion. The largest contributor to total cash receipts from\u00a0operating activities for the 2016 financial year was other receipts, R37.3 billion, followed by grants which was R30 billion.”<\/p>\n

In 2016, higher education institutions\u2019 main costs were compensation of employees (R33.7 billion) and purchases of goods and services (R21.6 billion). The purchase of non-financial assets (such as buildings, equipment, etc) cost R6.2 billion, and other payments amounted to R3.3 billion. Interest costs were R369 million, the report said.<\/p>\n

You can find the full report here<\/strong>.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0The best subjects to study at South Africa\u2019s top universities in 2018<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Statistician-general Pali Lehohla has named “lazy students” as one of the biggest reasons why South African universities can’t afford to offer free education.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":50574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26,7137],"class_list":["post-207359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline","tag-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207359"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207375,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207359\/revisions\/207375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}