Student protests will spread from universities to Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges if they increase fees or fail to accommodate the hordes in need of a post-school qualification.
This was the stark warning from chairwoman of Parliament’s higher education oversight committee, Yvonne Phosa, after the department presented a progress report this week on the transfer of the TVET colleges from provinces to the national level.
She said the “clarion call” had been that those who could not go to university should get a college education, yet the department was urging caution in ramping up enrolment numbers before there were adequate facilities and lecturers trained to accommodate them.
“We’re expected to come up with radical and innovative solutions,” Phosa said.
She was responding to the department’s deputy director-general, Firoz Patel, who warned that the three factors - student numbers, facilities and lecturers - had to be kept in balance, even if there was a need to increase enrolments drastically.
There are just over a million university students, compared to 700 000 in TVET colleges.
The government policy proposes the ratio should be three to one in favour of the colleges to fill the gap in technical skills in the country.
Bheki Mahlobo, also a deputy director-general in the department, said college principals had agreed at a meeting this week not to increase fees above inflation.
However, Phosa said as with the universities they should not raise fees at all “before they start trouble”.
The department should quantify the costs of a zero percent increase for TVET colleges urgently, she said.
“Prevention is better than cure,” she added, referring to the #FeesMustFall protests that shook university campuses across the country and Parliament over the past few weeks.
Saturday Star