The National Development Plan of South Africa on higher education : a progress review

Abstract

This dissertation gives a review of progress made in the National Development Plan (NDP) on higher education institutions in South Africa. The NDP is a blueprint that aims to make South Africa a better, more vibrant and first class country to tackle unemployment, poverty and inequality, with all the goals achieved by 2030. The South African government has had plans and policies in place with the goal to eradicate the triple threat of poverty, unemployment and inequality previously but many of these plans have failed largely because of lack of sufficient implementation. In order to win this battle, the NDP places education at the forefront as the tool to realise positive results over the triple threat. This need for a breakthrough cannot be realised without producing an educated citizenry with tertiary qualifications, especially in the fields of engineering, mathematics, science and technology. What this thesis shows is that there have been unintended disruptions in the early stages of the implementation process, with tertiary student protests across the country�s universities and colleges with regard to issues such as tuition fee decreases and free education, and other challenges such as the political winds blowing the numbers off of the ruling party�s grip, resulting in the loss of key metros. The latter challenge is most likely to lead to the scrapping of the NDP, as a new party might bring with it a set of new ideas and policies to address the challenges faced by the country at the time. What also threatens the realisation of the NDP goals is the much anticipated Elective Conference of the ruling party in 2017, because as history informs, the new leadership, much like with the change of political party in power, will most likely want to introduce a different Plan, depending on the winning slate. It was stated that since this work can only be improved on as it was conducted during the early days of implementation, and while some of the mentioned challenges are still getting resolved (e.g. the Commission looking into the feasibility of free education was still in progress when this work got completed), government needs to listen to the people and consider increasing funding for university subsidies, in order to accommodate the large university intakes and to keep experienced staff in these institutions and to help realise the goals of the NDP for higher education.