JOHANNESBURG – Poor students will not benefit from free higher education, according to the Centre for Higher Education Transformation.
It made submissions at the fees commission investigating the feasibility of free higher education, which has been demanded by protesting students at campuses around the country.
The Centre for Higher Education Transformation’s director, Nico Cloete, said: “All over the world in unequal countries free tertiary education doesn’t benefit the poor, it benefits the middle class because much higher proportions of them go to universities. A low portion of the poor actually qualify for university in SA.”
Cloete told the commission a free-for-all approach simply won’t work.
“We must have a different system for the poor, the middle class and … the elite,” said Cloete.
“This thing that you can have one system for everybody while people in the system are hugely different is not going work.”
The National Treasury will give its submission when the hearings continue in Vanderbijlpark, in the south of Johannesburg, on Friday.
Watch the video above for the full report on the fees commission.
eNCA
Facebook Comments