Topic: Many people in South Africa are unable to pay for tertiary education, even though their academic results qualify them to be accepted. So should the state be expected to provide free tertiary education?
I have chosen to discuss the topic of whether the state should be expected to provide tertiary education or not. This is a controversial and well discussed topic. I intend to discuss the pros and cons of free tertiary education and conclude with my own personal thoughts on this matter.
Pros: The reason people are with the push for free tertiary education is that it helps the people coming from disadvantaged backgrounds that are not able to afford it and should instead be seen as an investment which can yield great returns economically, culturally, socially and even politically.
If we look at the bigger picture south Africa will not suffer any financial loss from free education and according to Mukovhe Morris Masutha director of the Centre for Emerging Researchers said “Free education is not a cost to the state, because South Africa will, in fact, make money from free higher education” and “Our economy is currently performing poorly as a result of low investment –– people don’t invest in SA, because it is expensive to invest in the country. Ensuring that the bulk of our population is skilled will lead to attracting investment into SA, thus making money for SA.” He believes that free education basically funds itself as this investment turns to skill and will turn the citizens into more qualified people. If our citizens had free tertiary education they would be able to challenge a wider range of challenges that comes to them and will provide them with the bases of getting into their dream jobs, and with tertiary education you are more accepted by society as you have a degree on your profile. This also expands global opportunities as they have better skills with education after school it provides a meaningful contribution to your community and one would become an educated person in society and that would generate more possible entrepreneurs as they have learnt more skills and have entered into a chosen field.
On the other hand, if people have to pay to go to university, they would value the education more. In this situation, student’s motivation for achieving good performance is expected to be high. Then, if the government of a country takes policy to fully finance the college education, the government has to limit the number of colleges and universities since their budget is not limitless and it will produce many problems. And Top up fees enable more investment in universities. It will also help attract and keep the best teachers and researchers.
Also, everybody will get an equal chance to pursue higher studies, independent of their economic background and enabling merit to become the sole criteria this will result in increase in level of competition. It will be certainly beneficial to everybody those who could get admissions. Brilliant students will build a strong nation.