Vote for free education

To my fellow students I am given once again to reflect on the pathetic leadership provided to the students of South Africa by the ANC government, and in this case by the SACP’s Minister Blade Nzimande, and the ANC’s Youth Militia of Cosas, Sasco, ANCYL, YCL and PYA.
I recall that they all promised us free higher education if we voted ANC, and that we were thus induced to vote ANC.
I am reminded that all of the above conveniently refused to implement free higher education, because Sasco’s plan, which is the only plan the ANC has, is complete rubbish, as it is impractical and unsustainable.
Therefore as an act of charity I enumerate the only plan for free higher education, and remind the public that Minister Nzimande was given this plan and that Sasco and the ANC’s youth militia was unable to develop a better or even equally competent plan, despite their vast resources.
So if we continue to have people being denied their right to a higher education, perhaps Minister Nzimande should resign and the ANC’s youth militia should be disbanded because they are evidently not adding value to JZ’s term as president.
In order to achieve a state of wholly sustainable, non-subsidised, absolutely accessible further and higher education, changes must be made such:

That the state will stop funding universities and FET colleges altogether, and that the state will instead transform NSFAS into the NSFAS Education Bank, being initially a wholly state-owned enterprise, this will cause the universities and colleges to become more competitive and to actually demand quality output from their staff, rather than the quantitative processing that we have at present
That the state will allocate the whole of the responsibility of supervising the funding of PhDs and Masters by dissertation to the statutory research councils, under the direction of the NRF, which in turn will work under the auspices of the NSFAS Bank
That the state will deposit 100% of the annual budget for higher and further education with the NSFAS Bank as interest bearing deposits (at 2.5% per annum), which are to be lent out to students
That every person who applies for further or higher education, through the National Student Information and Application Service (as announced in 2000), will be allocated a NSFAS Bank account, and those that do not thereafter enrol for further or higher education will be able to use this account to access other developmental opportunities like job creation and entrepreneurship through the co-operation between NSFAS Bank and the NYDA
That the commercial banks should sell their student banking divisions into the NSFAS Bank in exchange for minority equity and service level activities, viz a viz the transformation of every student banking branch into a NSFAS Bank branch
That the universities and FET colleges will reprice their courses, programmes and services to reflect the whole of the per capita cost, without the current deduction for the subsidies
That the universities and FET colleges will be able to charge a once-off acceptance of a placement fee of R100 per student, and will issue every registering student (who needs one) a NSFAS laptop that connects to the university’s wireless network. This R100 is to be used as the donation to create a non-profit educational trust (for each student) where the university is the first trustee and the student is the beneficiary, this trust and not the student will be the debtor of the college or university, this trust must proscribe financial exclusion, and must prescribe academic support services and student employment, and also contractualise the basis for academic participation, progression and exclusion as well as the basis for mutual intellectual property creation and ownership rights. The trust will continue for as long as the student is registered as a student, enrolled for CPD and/or is a graduate in good standing with that institution
That the first entry students will continue to enrol and register for their courses in terms of their Grade 12 points, into either the mainstream or extended curricula
That the NSFAS Bank will lend annually (at an interest rate of 5% per annum) each enrolled student’s trust an amount of money by settling with the university or FET college concerned each enrolled student’s trust debt, inclusive of tuition fees, accommodation, transport and subsistence fees (if they are studying a programme which is not available, or which they did not gain admission into, in their home district municipality), study and course materials, practical and laboratory supplies, equipment and any other professional or vocational equipment required, the cost of the NSFAS laptop and insurance thereon, as per the scale of allowances prescribed by NSFAS Bank
That universities and FET colleges which are charging more than NSFAS Bank is paying will be advised to lower their price levels or resolve their debtors situation on their own
That the graduates will be required to repay their student loans from their student trusts to NSFAS Bank over the first ten years of their taxable employment, wherein the whole of the capital loan amount for the degree as a depreciable asset is to be depreciated according to the straight line method at 10% per annum and the whole of the interest on this capital loan amount is to be deductible against their taxable income, this will mean that graduates will pay very little if any income tax in the first ten years after graduation and that those graduates who are unemployed or in low paying jobs, will receive tax refunds by paying their student loans
That the whole of the cost of Continuing Professional Development for which all graduates are to enrol shall also be wholly deductible against their taxable income and that the CPD programmes for all professions must be the sole province of the universities and FET colleges
That over 20 years, the state will continue to place the annual budget for higher education on deposit with the NSFAS Bank until the repayments make it possible for the NSFAS Bank, which should by then have received more than R200 billion in deposits to lend out, to be wholly self-sufficient
That if we are to assume that our suggestion for the merger of the Seta and FET college systems (as we made in 2002) does come to fruition, then in addition to the annual budget for higher education, the state will also place the whole of the annual SDL-Seta budget on deposit with the NSFAS Bank, for the use of students at FET colleges who are doing learnerships and/or NQF 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 level courses

NB. This plan was developed by the South African Liberal Students’ Association for the DA Youth and Students Organisation, and is the intellectual property of the Democratic Alliance www.da.org.za