a month before the unrest. And because we worked closely with the SRC in setting the fees, they understood that all of the students on financial aid were completely covered. We do not have any ‘top ups’ or other things that they have to pay, and therefore they face a zero per cent fee increase anyway. And secondly, because we’ve got a significant number of middle-class students, more than 50 per cent, who can pay the full fee, we can cross-subsidise the so-called ‘missing middle’ students,1 which other campuses generally can’t. So even the students from households with up to R550 000 in income can get the necessary loans and financial aid from us. These students do end up with debt when they’ve graduated, and of course the debt is bigger when the fee increase is bigger, but it’s relatively manageable.
So the zero per cent fee increase campaign which started at Wits got exacerbated at the [Durban] Summit on Higher Education Transformation convened by Blade Nzimande in October 2015.2 The minister was incredibly condescending and dismissive of the students, as was reported to me, and that created a solidarity. And of course on many of the campuses, particularly the historically white campuses, the challenge is this ‘missing middle’ group of students because they don’t get the benefit of financial aid; they’re struggling. At the Summit, our SRC initially said that our campus wouldn’t be able to join this campaign, because they didn’t have a problem with the fees. But once the protests took off, there was this need for national solidarity, so it affected us too.
This middle group was not a new phenomenon in universities, but now it had a name. The ‘missing middle’ refers to those students who do not qualify for the government’s National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), because although their parents earned above R120 000 per year, this income was insufficient to pay the overall costs of a university education, which could run on average between R80 000 to R100 000 per annum. Here is a typical student story presented during one of my daily ‘open door sessions’ with students; let’s call her Katryn:
My mother is a teacher and my father has his own company. We did not qualify for NSFAS. The problem is there are two of us here at university, and even though to save money we decided to stay at home rather than in residence, my parents simply cannot afford to keep both of us here. My dad’s company has also been going up and down. He is still waiting to get paid by a government department. One of his friends also dropped him. Can you help us?
Katryn is one of many students who are not ‘the poorest of the poor’, to use a familiar South African expression; they fall between the cracks. And this newly visible demographic of students who were both not poor enough and not rich enough was beginning to gain traction within the public debates and the campus protests around fee increases.3 There was no plan for them. The poor were bailed out by government and the wealthy bailed themselves out. But the ‘missing middle’ were feeling the pinch of the annual tuition as they struggled to stay in the race, particularly at the historically white campuses. And it is this group, says Adam Habib, that identifies the student protests as ‘not a working-class revolt; you’re seeing a middle-class revolt in these universities because of the “missing middle”’.
Explosion in student numbers
If the decline in government subsidies placed pressure on institutional budgets, the rapid growth in student numbers exacerbated the situation to a crisis point. What was once an elite university system would quickly become, under the dual post-apartheid imperatives of democratisation and deracialisation, a massified system of higher education. The doors of culture and learning, to draw on the inspired Freedom Charter of the ANC, were now truly thrown wide open. In fact, university enrolments increased from 493 342 in 1994 to nearly 1 million (969 154) in 2014, with a targeted 1,6 million enrolments by 2030, according to a government White Paper.4
There were three major problems with this otherwise welcome development. First, the system had no capacity to absorb these large numbers as infrastructure crumbled under the weight of massification. Second, the majority of students now entering universities were academically weak because of a largely dysfunctional school system for the majority of learners, thereby creating massive inefficiencies in higher education. For example, cohort studies showed that of the students pursuing a three-year bachelor’s degree, less than 50 per cent would attain that qualification within six years.5 Third, the preference for university studies – a deep-seated reaction to the colonial and apartheid distaste for academic education for the ‘natives’ – created the so-called inverted pyramid in which the majority of post-school learners were in universities (about 1 million) and not technical and vocational education (about 700 000).
In short, there was less money but more students. With typical understatement, the Council on Higher Education (CHE), a statutory body that advises the minister of higher education, would muse that the ‘growth in student enrolment was not matched by a proportionate growth in subsidy’.6 Moreover, there were more students enrolled but fewer students graduating, creating very high inefficiency costs in an already faltering higher education system.
Ihron Rensburg: The student body shifted and is shifting at UJ. A decade ago, only 8 per cent of those in the first-year class came from Quintile 1 and 2 schools [the poorest schools]. It’s 28 per cent today; and of course it’s not just that grouping. It’s also your Quintile 3 and 4 schools and even in Quintile 5 schools [the most privileged schools], where you’ve got working-class children who don’t qualify for state aid. So it’s a big shift and what that means is parents go out of their way to put their children in there.
Here are two critical observations: the rapid growth in the number of poor students and the demand this places on financial aid within one university, a confluence that would explain the ferocity of the protests at UJ and other universities with such remarkable shifts in campus demographics. That growth also impacts on the efficiency of the higher education system, as the UJ vice-chancellor explains:
Ihron Rensburg: Of course the pressure is on universities to improve success rates. As Sizwe Nxasana [the experienced banker appointed by Nzimande in August 2015 to turn around the NSFAS] argues, whether it is to finance that poorer group or the ‘missing middle’, he needs to mobilise close to R10 billion a year. He can only mobilise that kind of resource from the private sector, from development finance institutions such as PIC, Development Bank and so on, if there is a yield for those who put money in; they don’t want to put money into a bottomless pit. There needs to be some recycling of that fund. In order for that to happen, our current on-time graduation rate of 29 per cent or so needs to improve by 10 ten per cent, he says; ideally by 20 per cent. So from 29 per cent, if you can get it closer to 35 or 36 per cent, there’s an ability to turn around the situation, meaning there is money coming back into universities for such a potential scheme for the ‘missing middle’. But if there is no new or improved performance of the system, that [investment] scheme is going to fall.
Lourens van Staden, the vice-chancellor of one of South Africa’s most consistently turbulent universities, the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), looks like a bunch of taut muscles rolled into one. This pugilistic-looking character is not one you would want to meet in a dark alley, for he looks like someone who would enjoy boxing your ears just for fun. This image has served him well, deployed as he has been by various ministers to bring a semblance of peace to the most difficult campuses in the country. This is an unusual role for an unusual South African: a white man of Afrikaans heritage who is fluent in an African language. True to his image, Lourens van Staden does not flinch from telling you exactly what he thinks.
Lourens van Staden: Well, I disagree with the government’s National Development Plan (NDP). Where have you seen a system where there are more students in universities than in colleges and elsewhere in the post-school system? This thing should be turned around. But the current system they tried to build is useless. Sorry, I’m straight; it’s useless, the so-called TVET [Technical and Vocational Education and Training] colleges. So where do the students go? Don’t think they are stupid. Our kids are intelligent. They know these colleges – what would it help them to go there? Where else can they go?
Career-focused training colleges are theoretically ideal for absorbing the masses of students, but in the South African context this option is unattractive. The college cultures are decrepit, staff attitudes are negative, the work ethic is poor, competent lecturers are in short supply, and what should