With no real clarity on the future of tertiary education yet, one question is critical regardless: what happens to the students not graduating within the recommended time frames, or not graduating at all? And how will tertiary institutions address the funding shortfall exacerbated by low student throughput?

Professor Thea de Wet, Director at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Academic Technologies, says South African universities are losing millions when students drop out. A total of 1,650 first-year students dropping out in 2015 would have cost a university more than R75-million in lost revenue, she said.

Slow throughput means that even if fees are taken care of, access can remain a problem. There are currently around a million higher education students in the system, 400,000 of whom are causing a bottleneck due to limited space and resources.

Former SA Statistician-General Pali Lehohla previously raised concerns that the poor throughput rate is clogging up the tertiary education system. In a 2016 report, Statistics South Africa found that the country’s universities were serving almost a million students, while the figure should be closer to 600,000.

And in recent news, Daily Maverick recently reported that the University of Cape Town’s law faculty was facing potentially serious consequences if it did not – among other things – improve its throughput, especially the graduation rate of black students, which ranged from 4-14%.

“When students complete three-year degrees in four to six years, fewer new students can be brought into the system,” says Stefan du Plessis, Commercial Director of Education Technology and e-Learning at Eiffel Corp, an education and training company for tertiary institutions. “This is an inefficient use of HEI’s infrastructure investment and government funding and contributes to the cost of education for all.”

Leholhla has also said that “congestion” in the tertiary education system is a burden for higher education institutions, and argued that the slow throughput contributes to the high cost of education for all students.

According to Lehohla, a steady increase in the number of enrolments over the last decade was not accompanied by the same increase in graduates leaving the system.

How bad is it?

The most recent data available is from a study by Stellenbosch University. After four years, the completion rate was 36.9%; after six years, it rose to 58.1%. The graduation rate for diplomas and certificates was 47.8%, while degrees came in at 61.6%.

Audited data from six institutions shows that between 11% and 31% of students completed their selected three-year qualification in the minimum allocated time of three years. This increases to between 38% and 57% after a further two years.

In 2008, the Human Sciences Research Council flagged South Africa’s student throughput rate as one of the lowest in the world.

Earlier in 2017, Universities South Africa (USAf), an umbrella grouping of South African universities, presented their concerns to the fees commission. USAf told the commission that when a student did not graduate, the expenditure over time that the student spent studying was forever lost to the system.

Why aren’t students graduating?

USAf CEO Professor Ahmed Bawa told the commission that according to the Department of Higher Education, black students had the highest drop-out rate, with 32.1% leaving in their first year.

The factors affecting student throughput are varied. Contributing factors include financial security, their level of preparation at higher education level; where they are housed (students in residence have an advantage: in fact, Rhodes University has the highest throughput rate, attributed to its residence system), and whether they have chosen a course of study that matches their interests and abilities.

Socioeconomic factors play a major role. But, found a study by the University of KwaZulu-Natal, so do myriad factors at least partially unrelated to economic status. These included institutional support, government policy, physical health and access to supportive healthcare, and other factors. The study recommended extensive reforms to campus support systems which in turn would require budget.

According to a colloquium held at the University of the Western Cape, other factors include insufficient tracking and monitoring of student progress, particularly in their first year; insufficient use of technological teaching support, and a lack of adequate transformation at universities that would enable student success. “Students need to be educated so they can contribute to society and be nimble and adaptable in responding to multiple, rapidly changing local and global challenges,” notes from the meeting read. “Student success is a shared responsibility.”

Money, money, money

Representatives from tertiary institutions that Daily Maverick spoke to were hesitant to comment on, first, the effect ongoing protests might be having on student throughput, and second, what effect the sacking of Minister Blade Nzimande might have on the future stability of the DHET. Just one – Andre van Zyl from the University of Johannesburg – commented that it was unlikely the Cabinet reshuffle would hugely influence the functioning of the university going forward.

As to the release of the Heher Commission’s report and President Jacob Zuma’s reported plan to push through fee-free tertiary education, analysts have raised concerns that proposed solutions to find budget would “rob from Peter to pay Paul”. City Press recently reported that the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, which co-ordinates scholarships, research and ethical practice in the social sciences field with the ultimate goal of advancing transformation and increasing throughput at postgraduate level, has had its budget cut by R35.6-million.

“This means that while the money could be diverted to fund Zuma’s free higher education plan, many other doctoral students who rely on the institute will lose their scholarships,” the report read.

At an estimate, some R30-40-billion would be needed annually to cover student fees alone, if tertiary education were completely subsidised according to President Jacob Zuma and Morris Masutha’s reportedly preferred proposal.

The Heher Commission, meanwhile, proposed that university students should rely on income-contingent loans from commercial banks, while TVET college fees should be fee-free, plus a stipend for students. Application and registration fees across the board should be scrapped, it recommended. Its report has received a lukewarm reception from banks.

Both the Heher Commission and the Davis Tax Commission have advised that fee-free tertiary education across the board would not be feasible. For tertiary institutions in a vicious cycle of low throughput, which both loses revenue and will cost additional budget to attempt to fix, the outcome of the fees conundrum has important implications – since if funds will come from scholarship programmes aimed at assisting throughput and transformation, for example, it could be an expensive solution.

Fatima Slemming recently argued in the Mail & Guardian that the higher education system had been awarding more PhD qualifications than ever in the last 30 years, and that those working on policy and curriculum issues had been fighting for a more “robust, sustainable model that can bring about significant growth in student participation and throughput rates at this level of study”.

Although this hadn’t happened overnight, she added, “it appears they have been heard. The government has expressed plans to include PhD education growth as a priority.” The government, she reminds us, has a vision of 5,000 new doctoral students a year until 2030, as per the National Development Plan (NDP).

For this to occur, however, tertiary education institutions will need research budgets, enough well-trained staff, and access to scholarships. The funding for undergraduate education will not be able to come at the expense of postgraduate education.

What can be done?

In line with the UWC Colloquium, Du Plessis says tertiary institutions can provide additional benefit from supplementing traditional teaching methods with e-learning and blended learning, as well as tracking student performance and identifying high-risk students. This does carry a cost, but it may be one of the more cost-effective options.

“Investing in data-driven student success strategies, leveraging technology-enabled learning and predictive analytics, and support institutions in identifying at-risk students early on to shape better outcomes,” he says.

Other institutions are relying on grants, where they are able to. The Cape Town University of Technology (CPUT) has received a multimillion-rand Teaching and Development Grant from the DHET, and has been using that to roll out interventions specifically aimed at improving throughput. In the Civil and Surveying Department, for example, they set up a recording studio to record lecturers, giving students access to recordings that would explain difficult technical concepts. The Engineering Faculty, meanwhile, rolled out an early intervention programme to track and assist underperforming students, says spokesperson Candes Keating.

University of Johannesburg Director of the Academic Development Centre (ADC) Andre van Zyl told Daily Maverick that both students and institutions had important roles to play in improving student throughput, as did the school system and broader communities. Universities, he said, should ensure that “its people, places, policies, programmes and procedures are intentionally designed to allow students to succeed. That means intentionally redesigning who we are and what we do to serve the society that we are a part of”. All students that universities accept must have a reasonable chance of success and institutions must put pathways in place to support and facilitate success, he added. “Institutions must think of student needs beyond what we would traditionally see as our responsibility. Many students are very poor and need a lot of support to put enabling structures in place.”

It was crucial to reduce drop-out rates, however, he acknowledged. “All universities lose money when any student drops out,” he said.

Lauren Kansley, spokesperson for CPUT, added: “Every student who drops out represents a loss of revenue to the university from subsidy and fees. This is difficult to quantify, as details per qualification and student differ. The more significant cost, which is even more difficult to quantify, is the lost opportunity to the students who drop out and the loss to the economy of more highly trained workers.

Whatever the ultimate solution for tertiary education, individual institutions will have to face an uncomfortable reality: the funds they have, though probably limited, will at least partially have to go towards driving greater student throughput. Otherwise, in the long term, the cost will be greater than they are able to absorb. DM

Photo: Students from University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) protest during the third week of ongoing protests against the cost of higher education, Johannesburg, South Africa, 03 October 2016. EPA/CORNELL TUKIRI