
The Tertiary Education Funding Crisis: How Corporates can Make a Difference
The current model of student funding is unsustainable and needs a new one that is centered on providing loans, rather than grants, to every student, no matter their income status, at tertiary institutions. According to Universities South Africa student debt stood at R16.5bn in March this year. This year 120 000 students may not be able to graduate because they owe higher education institutions – collectively this group owes universities around R7bn. Student funding policy should be based on honesty, affordability and pragmatism. Up to now, student funding policy, like most ANC government policy has either been based on ideology, wishful thinking and not on financial realities.
The webinar will bring together a panel of corporate and related experts in our country to discuss the funding crisis our country is faced and to come up with possible solutions for the future. The webinar will be attended by industry experts, academia, students, alumni, Government and other interested parties. It will be a less formal, roundtable like discussion with a facilitator, and will last for approximately 90 minutes,. No formal presentation will be required. We will provide you with a short list of questions which the facilitator will pose to the group as a whole. Whoever feels comfortable in doing so can then answer the questions. We will not put any of our speakers under pressure to answer questions they are not comfortable with. The purpose of the webinar is to share knowledge and information and to assist students all over the country.
Register For The Webinar Here