Chairperson, Minister Nzimande, hon members, as this is the very first budget of the new Department of Higher Education and Training congratulations are due to Minister Blade Nzimande and to his director- general, the newly appointed Prof Mary Metcalfe, as well as to all civil servants on the birth of this new baby of theirs. Actually, this is not a new baby, this is a reconstituted adult, and it is a reconstituted adult with a bad leg and a good leg. Let me speak about the bad leg first, so we don't end on a bad note.
There are provinces like Gauteng that cannot wait to hand over their Further Education and Training Colleges on 1 April 2010, the handover date, to the national department. Tshwane College South and North, in fact, are considered so dysfunctional that some see them as a perpetual source of civil disorder.
Not all of the 50 colleges nationwide are bad. Indeed, there are very many good ones. Most are adrift, though, in uncertainty about their academic programmes, their curriculum and particularly their finances for lack of leadership in the sector. Minister Nzimande has made some promises - and perhaps he made those in a populist moment - that he has had difficulty keeping.
There is not enough money to finance the expansion of the FET college sector from its current enrolment rate and there is some dispute over what that is. In our estimation, the current enrolment rate is: 125 000 full- time equivalent students, to reach a projected figure of one million in 2014, although that clearly is unrealistic. I assembled a group of duly distinguished education economists to look very carefully and from every angle at the budget over the next five years. Unless I am missing something, Minister Nzimande does not have the funds to achieve the desired FET growth. The quicker, therefore, he lowers expectations, in terms of the public perception of what is clearly a desirable thing, the better.
To his great credit, he has managed to squeeze a 20% year-on-year increase and then some more, amounting to R3,891 billion for FET colleges for the financial year 2010-11. Except for the last financial year, that is the one previous to this one, his predecessor obtained similar levels of increases in the region of 20%. So, this is not unusual. The projected increases for the next five years run at 5% per annum in the budget estimates.
Now, in terms of making assumptions - some reasonable and fair assumptions - about unit costs, we developed two scenarios. The high-road scenario will cost R28 billion over a five-year period, and the low-road one will cost R14 billion to achieve the FET enrolment rate of one million. We are therefore R23,7 billion short on the generous model, which we clearly cannot afford, and we are R9,5 billion short on the miserly one, which we also cannot afford. It is therefore no wonder that there is no year-by-year practical student recruitment, placement, teaching and infrastructure plan in existence to meet this challenge.
The Minister has referred to a strategy that does exist. But what we haven't been able to see is a practical detailed plan for how you find these students and place them, put the seats together for students, staff the colleges, recruit the lecturers, and so on and so forth. That kind of detailed plan does not exist. The reason for that is that this department has not succeeded yet in building a team that can actually plan properly in detail.
I want to say, on this note, that the role of promises in human affairs is about establishing trust. If one does not keep a promise, no one will believe you when you make another. Face is lost and integrity diminished. In other words - and I don't mean to preach - do not make promises you cannot keep and only make those that you can keep.
What is the solution? The DA proposes that the Minister use the bigger portion of the National Skills Fund and most, if not all, of the R6,7 billion set aside for the Setas to finance the more limited and realistic FET college expansion. Just to be very clear on this: We are not recommending alignment between the Setas and these FET colleges; rather, we are asking for the retention of the well-functioning Setas - and there are five of them - and the closure of the others, and to use that money. Put it in the hands of students.
This government is very good at taking nice and good ideas and turning them into review committees and commissions and bureaucracies. Of course we require some level of administration, but we must always make sure the money ends up in the hands of those who it was actually designed for. In this case, it is in the hands of students. [Applause.]
Turning to the good leg, our universities have reached the era of what one can call the "steady state". There are issues, for sure. Some universities, most notably multicampus ones like the Tshwane University of Technology and perhaps even the University of KwaZulu-Natal have struggled with governance issues post mergers. Academically promising ones like the Tshwane University of Technology, a very promising institution, should be helped in developing a stable governance model under very difficult circumstances, but the Department of Higher Education and Training lacks the capacity to give it the necessary attention. These institutions must be looked after.
Some of the universities of technology are universities in name only. Many of the historically disadvantaged universities - there are exceptions to this - simply cannot rise beyond the destiny their creators under apartheid intended for them. Graduation rates are poor at some institutions or, in some programmes of study, wasting the hard-earned money of parents on top of sending young people on misdirected career paths.
Universities have, though, achieved what one can call traction. There is evidence of year-on-year progress at most, if not all, of our core institutions. And that is a considerable achievement. To take universities to a higher level requires that the new Ministry, and Minister Nzimande at the centre of it, support vice chancellors in paying unrelentingly consistent attention to quality in every aspect of educational development.
Quality must be the mantra: quality in the ranks of the lecturing and professorial staff, in the ranks of the students that are admitted, quality in the programme of study, and quality in the teaching, in research and in administration. If we support universities and the FET colleges in the quality of what they do, the good students will follow in ever-increasing abundance. Quantity follows quality and not the other way round.
Given that, I want to say very directly to the Minister that he appears to be distracted by the ongoing housekeeping problems of the tripartite alliance - and I haven't completed my sentence - and by the ANC's obsession with racial bean counting that masquerades as the legitimate concern of empowerment and transformation.
I was puzzled by the fact that the budget makes no provision for the creation of universities in Mapumalanga and the Northern Cape.