After the Bell: Our new universities and the River of Employment

A few short months ago, back when the oil price was still about $60 a barrel, I commented on the fact that our middling classes spend a huge amount of time asking each other which school they went to.

While there is still some kind of strange hold by the older, traditional suburban schools, this sector is changing incredibly quickly.

And, finally, it looks like our higher education sector is getting a massive shake-up too.

I have to say, I always find it quite strange that there aren’t more players in private education. I’m sure that, like me, you will do anything, including giving up your last litre of fuel, to make sure your kids get a proper education.

Something that helps them to be happy and healthy and productive when they come of age.

Which means that the potential market for private schools, and then private higher education, is literally every parent everywhere who can.

This morning the education group AdvTech announced that its operating profit was up by 14% to more than R2-billion. Revenue from its school division was up by 10%, while its higher education section was up by 13%.

Looking at their financial numbers, student numbers, and the number of people enrolling and qualifying, are going up in exactly the way you’d think.

Another group, Stadio, reported last week that its student numbers were up by nearly 10%.

And, as you can imagine, both have big plans.

ADvTech has already opened its new “mega-campus” in Sandton. It cost R420-million to build and will accommodate 9,000 students.

And it says that the moment the government finalises plans to allow private institutions to be registered as universities, both Emeris and Rosebank College will apply to be recognised in that way.

It is fascinating to watch this play out. For generations the Wits Campus and then increasingly the Joburg campus of the University of Johannesburg have occupied the centre of educational gravity in that city.

Now, suddenly, Sandton has this huge campus.

You can imagine that for many parents and people caring for younger people, this is hugely convenient. You can drop them off on the way to work. Or, as these things sometimes go, they can drop you.

But has anyone given much thought to the unbelievable carmaggedon that already defines getting into Sandton in the mornings?

The same thing is happening across Africa – groups like Stadio and ADvTech and others are all spreading and growing, and growing furiously.

The obvious hope for all of us is that the kind of education they provide, the fact that so many more people will get qualifications, will finally move the economic needle.

From an investment point of view, I think you’d have to be totally useless, like incompetent to the level of Damelin’s last management, to mess that up.

It’s the most wonderful opportunity for educationists, students, companies and capital.

The people behind it, and the people that make these firms work, deserve all of the success that’s coming to them.

But we mustn’t forget what the rise of such good firms hides from view.

Parents are only looking for this option for their kids because the government has failed.

Every year, it seems, it gets harder to get into UCT or UJ or Wits, or anywhere, so many of our kids are left behind by the time they start primary school.

The government has failed our early development centres (what you and I probably call “creches”) for so many years that by the time kids get to high school, it’s probably too late.

Just last week, Daily Maverick’s Tamsin Metelerkamp reported how the Basic Education Department had not properly managed the money allocated to help these institutions obtain food for the young children they look after.

In so many ways, it’s the same old story: the government fails, the private sector fills the gap and a large portion of our society is able to pay for it.

The problem, of course, is that not all parents are able to pay for it.

There is a quote attributed to Joe Biden about education and the US. As quoted by Richard Cramer in What It Takes, and further reported by The Economist, Biden was sitting with old friends many years ago, discussing their children and their future options.

The book says that Biden was suddenly intense when he told his friends: “Lemme tell you guys something... There’s a river that flows through this country,” but most people, he said, don’t know about this river, while others can only stand on the side and look in. He then said that a few Americans got to swim in the river of power their whole lives and do whatever they wanted. “And that river," he concluded, “flows from the Ivy League.”

In the US, where wealth is now incredibly complicated, that’s obviously a reference to the top universities.

Here, all the people who go through our new, changing and impressive higher education systems will, hopefully, get to swim in the river of employment their whole lives. They will have jobs and incomes and families, they will start companies and simply make money.

But the rest, everyone else, will only be able to stand on the side and look in. DM