Becoming more private: Broadening the base of South African higher education

Abstract

In an era marked by declining government funding for tertiary education, the South African PSET sector faces an existential crisis. The silo-fication of the system means that the growing demographic of youth entering post secondary education is limited in the options available to them. The paper explores how reduced government funding has strained public universities, leading to widespread student protests, increased dropout rates, and compromised educational quality. Our focus in this paper is on the role of private higher education and, in its own right, collaborating with other parts of the PSET sector. What is needed is a HE system that facilitates much more coordination and collaboration and for the components of the PSET sector to find ways of working together to create a coherent, integrated network to produce maximal learning opportunities for students and to support the objectives of the NQF Act. This paper serves as a call for policymakers, educational leaders, government, and stakeholders to recognise and leverage the growth capacity of private higher education in shaping a resilient, integrated, and future-proof PSET sector in South Africa.