Not in agreement philosophy of 'free advanced education

On Saturday 17 October 2015, the Second National Education Summit High, organized by the South African Department of Higher Education, together with a wide range of stakeholders, issued Durban Statement on Transformation in Higher Education. After listing the significant transformation gains, a statement addressed to the seven questions must be addressed immediately.

The first three relate to an indefinite "initiatives" regarding student finance and debt, fee structure and the National Student Financial Aid Scheme or NSFAS, which is needed to strengthen. The statement concluded by calling for the relevant role players yearly progress reports in each of the seven nine immediate medium resolutions.

On Tuesday 20 October, the eyewitness News, entitled "SA varsities stalled", he mentioned that the students reporting back.

On Wednesday, 21 October, the Times headline screamed cameras "Students storm the parliament," followed by ". For the first time in history, stun grenades were fired in the parliamentary district, when hundreds of students protesting against increased tuition fees of students walked through the door"

On Friday 23 October cameras Times reported that President Jacob Zima, after meeting with student leaders and university officials said the press conference at the Union Buildings in Pretoria: "We have agreed that there will be an increase of 0% of university tuition fees in 2016 . "

It is the largest and most efficient student campaign in post-1994 South Africa.

The strategy is aligned non-partisan, non-formal leadership mobilization through social media is remarkably similar manner Manuel Cast ells, the networks Outrage and hope: the social movements in the Internet age, describes the new forms of social movements - from the "Arab Spring" to Insignias movement in Spain and Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States.

One thinks that some student leaders must be read Castles, and he will be very impressed by them.

Unfortunately, it seems that students read Thomas Piety 2014 book on the inequality of wealth and capital in the twenty-first century.

Free higher education benefits the rich

Media and student spokesmen slip and slide effortlessly between 'free higher education for the poor "and" free higher education for all. "These are two vastly different concepts.

When journalists and talk show hosts to contact me for an opinion, they always ask, "Is free education a good idea, and where will the money come from?" The short answer is: "No, and there is not enough money in any country's development of free higher education."

Examples are most often cited as Norway, Finland and Germany - the richest and most developed countries in Europe - but never Africa or Latin America.

To my knowledge, after independence, all African countries have national, flagship public universities offer free higher education. In his book 2008 Scholars in the market: the dilemmas of the neoliberal reforms in Maker ere University, Mahmud Madman describes this eloquently:

"The goal ... is to train a small elite on full scholarships, which include tuition, board, health insurance, transportation, and even a 'boon' to cover personal needs ... From the student perspective, it was a great opportunity; from the view of society , an extraordinary privilege. "

This generosity of the elite had two consequences.

First, when Maker ere University could not pay its staff, has introduced a two-tier system: free public higher education during the day and private fee paying students in the evening. By 2008, Madman this 'commercialization' of Maker ere described as a devaluation of higher education in the form of low-level training without research.

Another consequence is the mushrooming of low quality private universities', charged exorbitant fees for qualifying low currency on the national and international level without value.

Who's got access to a full scholarship leading universities? Children of business and political elites who themselves went to the top schools locally and internationally. A few extremely talented poor students and gained entry to free higher education. The rest, who come from poor schools, completed (if you are lucky) in low-quality, fee paying no university institutions.

On the more technical economist's perspective, Sean Archer of the University of Cape Town argues that free higher education is regressive: the poorer members of society end up subsidizing the rich.

This is the story of free higher education in Africa and Latin America - and Piety classic example of how a national strategy, sometimes unintentionally but often deliberately, the privileges of the elite.

What is cynical in South Africa is that we are privileging elite under the slogan of pro-poor policies.

In the 2004 article "The financing of higher education" in the Oxford review of economic policy, Nicholas Barr emphasized that in OECD countries, public universities have repeatedly stated that low or no tuition fees to ensure greater equality of educational opportunities by providing greater access.

But, says Barr, such reasoning is incorrect because it is a great support to public universities collect students from middle-and high-income.