Evolution of Higher Education Spend in SA !!!

Based on Budget Figures from the Department of Higher Education and Training

The graphic above shows the evolution of budget allocation to public universities by South Africa's national Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET). In the ten years between 2007/08  to 2016/17 financial years, the DHET's annual spend has increased from a total of R13,06 billion to a total of R36,86 billion, which represents an increase of 182% over the ten year period. The total budget is made of two broad areas, namely what is referred to as Block budget and Earmarked budget. Where the Earmarked budget includes spend on buildings and infrastructure, teaching and research as well as the national student financial aid scheme, otherwise known as NSFAS.

Interestingly, the Earmarked budget portion has shown the biggest increase over the past ten years. The annual spend by the DHET in its 2007/08 financial year was R2,82 billion compared to R15,18 billion in the DHET's 2016/17 budget and this represents an increase of 438% in the Earmarked budget. Of this Earmarked budget, the largest growth has been in the amount the DHET allocates towards NSFAS. This amount was just over R1 billion in the DHET's 2007/08 financial year and is a staggering R8.89 billion in the 2016/17 financial year. To put this differently, in the  2007/08 financial year the NSFAS allocation was 7,8% of the total budget allocated by the DHET towards public universities and in 2016/17 NSFAS accounted for 24,1% of the DHET's total budget allocation towards public universities.

There is no doubt that government spend on higher education and training has increased over the years, what is revealing is the increase in the budget allocated towards NSFAS. It would be expected that, all things being equal, there would be a proportional increase in the number of graduates over the same period. However, the number of graduates from institutions of higher learning in South Africa over the years does not seem to have grown at the same rate as the money spent by government to fund public universities. In fact as indicated in a previous post, only 3% of adults aged 25 years and older have some form of degree. This suggests that funding may not be South Africa's problem in producing graduates, there must be something else is at play which prevents a large number of those enrolling at university from graduating with some form of a qualification.

Our Politicians must show political will to create effective government !!!