South Africa averages about R30bn. Or, government could run a budget deficit that is R15bn larger, and borrow the sum needed which would make only a minimal dent South Africa’s debt-to-GDP ratio. A more sophisticated way of doing this would be issuing a government bond on the open market.65 Government routinely spends amounts of R15bn. To put the number in perspective, the projected amount to be spent on infrastructure between 2009 and 2030 is R1tn.
But the costs reduce further when we consider that free education would neither have to reach all students, nor need to be implemented immediately. If we limited it to undergraduate students, this would mean that about 800 000 students, by current numbers, would remain, reducing the funding needed to about R12bn. If we further assume that wealthy students, who make up the top 20% of income-earners, would also be excluded, the number reduces further to about 640 000 students or R10bn. Now, instead of needing to raise an additional 1.5% of revenue, government would only need to raise 1%. If the programme was limited to students currently on the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), funding for only 400 000 students would be needed, or about R6bn; R6bn to provide free education to all NSFAS students is an astonishingly low amount.
Yet the amount falls even further if free education is implemented progressively. If the project was piloted in the first year, to 10% of all students, that would cost only R1bn. This would still cover an enormous 100 000 students. The pilot could be tried in a given number of universities, or it could be implemented in a specific cohort of students, for instance final-year undergraduates. Each year, the project could expand proportionally so that government would only need to raise at most R3bn per year. So, we could pay for free tuition for more students than are currently on the NSFAS, over a period of five years, by raising only R11bn. The costs would be even lower with private-sector assistance. The facts are clear: free education is not only possible, it is also affordable.
Frustratingly, government refuses to accept this because it uses the extreme definition of ‘free education’, which means funding everything immediately. But just because something is not necessarily feasible tomorrow does not mean that nothing can be achieved urgently; the false dichotomy between a pure loan system and a Swedish utopia is a hindrance to progress. Rather, government should be thinking about how education can be made progressively free, dramatically easing the burden on students by eliminating tuition fees. This would require immediate bold steps, not endless task teams. Even if government doesn’t have the vision to implement free tuition – which it should – it could lower fees dramatically. If government intervened to reduce fees from an average of R15 000 to R5 000, this would represent major progress.
Moreover, the cost of free education would be offset by other economic benefits. Funds used by government to alleviate the burden on poor and middle class families would find their way back into the economy through relative increases in consumption and saving, and concomitant decreases in private debt. Free education could save families as much as R45 000 per year if they have several children in higher education at the same time. Similarly, levels of youth indebtedness would fall dramatically.
Further savings would come from streamlining NSFAS. In his Budget Speech of 2015, Minister Blade Nzimande noted that NSFAS was faced with ‘serious corruption’.66 This is in part because of collusion between university finance departments and students. It is very difficult for NSFAS to know whether information regarding students’ backgrounds is accurate, and with ever-rising fees the incentive to cheat always grows, even for relatively well-off students. This problem would subside under my proposed model, since most of those in need of funding would get it. It would be much easier to spot lying in students who were in the top 10% of income earners, given the schools they are likely to have attended, their residential addresses, and their parental occupations. Not only would students benefit greatly, but NSFAS would become more efficient because its job would become much easier.
Ironically, a report commissioned by Nzimande’s department puts the benefits of free education best: ‘a well-educated population is socially beneficial: graduates tend to earn more and therefore pay more tax; education is a fundamental right; fees discourage low-income students and thus perpetuate inequalities; and student living costs are already beyond the reach of many families, especially when coupled with the costs of foregone incomes.’67
Counterarguments
The main argument against free education is that it ‘benefits the rich’. But this is only a problem if the policy includes rich people. As I have already suggested, there are ways around this. To avert this problem, an assessment of how many students can afford to pay fees is necessary. As we have noted, there are about 400 000 students on NSFAS’s books. Clearly, embarking on any free tuition programme would begin with covering the neediest students first. Dealing with this group could take as long as three years, so that the system of providing free education for the needy could be tried long in advance of any worries of the poor subsidising the rich. And means-testing could be done at the highest end of the income spectrum relatively easily given the availability of the evidence. Essentially, the problem of benefitting the rich does not arise if we exempt the rich from the programme.
A second counterargument is that higher education is an inherently elitist enterprise, and that other developmental needs are more pressing. The first response is that multiple priorities can be tackled in the South African budget. Demonstrating that free tuition is relatively inexpensive also takes the sting out of the ‘trade-off’ argument. Second, this argument misunderstands the term ‘elite’. It is true that universities benefit a relatively smaller number of people, compared with, for example, the public healthcare system. But universities’ uses are not weighed solely by the absolute number of people they serve. Rather, they are felt through the second and third-order goods that flow from the system. One thousand more doctors is a small number, but the relative benefits to a healthcare system are tremendous. There may be more people in the secondary school system, but universities are where all teachers are trained. The same is true for professions like engineering and law. Further benefits come from scientific knowledge which feeds these fields. And the philosophical and social scientific research that provides policy solutions for social issues is crucial. Therefore, to relegate universities to a position of unimportance because they cater to a relatively small group is wrong-headed, more so when we consider the possibility of opening the doors of learning to the poor.
Another objection is that free education will mean lower quality. But there is a difference between free education and unfunded education. Free education in the sense that I use it, really means ‘free for the end user’, and not ‘unfunded’. The question, therefore, is who will fund free education, not whether it will be funded. To universities, if they get the same amount of money, this should make no difference to the quality of the service they provide. Indeed, such an argument also relies on a link between money and quality. This link has been called into question by academic Robert Samuels, who argues that universities often use additional money to increase their prestige instead of improving students’ educational experience.68
A final concern worth considering is the effect that state-funded free tuition would have on university autonomy. This concern is a real one. It is possible that if the state bears a larger burden of funding, it could abuse this position to dampen critique and force universities to abide by its will. While this concern is serious, it is also crucial to realise that the state already funds half of the university sector. My view is that the definite benefits that free education would provide outweigh the possible harms of state encroachment. Preventing undue state encroachment would still be possible via the democratic process, or through the courts. And, in some cases, state encroachment might be a good thing, especially when it comes to the question of transformation, or getting universities to focus more on teaching and less on global rankings. Universities could, of course, avoid the problem of state bias by raising more of their own funding. But that may mean that they are held hostage by donors. State power may be a lesser evil in this regard, particularly in the democratic context.
Conclusion
In the debate over free education, what is frustrating is not that there are two sides at loggerheads, it is that there is so little real appetite for change. Most people with the ability to make education free write it off without even giving the idea a chance. This is exactly the problem in our political landscape today: whatever a handful of commentators