South Africa is ranked 146th out of a total of 148 countries by the World Economic
Forum for its education system and last in science and mathematics, and yet the
government spends up to a fifth of its budget on education. Only 40% of pupils who start
schooling in grade 1 will pass matric (grade 12), with just 12% maintaining high enough
marks to qualify for university entrance. Any research to boost learning in South Africa,
at any level, should be welcomed.
The primary goal of higher education institutions is to provide education to post-school
students, but the institutions need to be financially viable. Most higher education
institutions in South Africa rely heavily on financial support from the government in the
form of subsidies (up to 40% of total income in some cases) for funding to remain
financially viable. Therefore, government subsidies represent a significant investment
into higher education and student retention needs more research in South Africa. Many
of the universities in South Africa, especially those that are financially sound, do not
take much notice of student dropouts and those that do pay attention, do so firstly at the
postgraduate level. The return on investment for master’s and doctoral students is much
higher than that for undergraduate students. Understanding the basic elements of the
funding framework for South African universities is vital in the understanding of financial
losses from student dropouts.
The underlying factors that determine the base of funding for higher education have
remained the same since the introduction of the Holloway formula in 1953 to the current
New Funding Formula (NFF), implemented in 2004. Large amounts of funds are still
invested in higher education and there is a national shortage of high quality students in
scarce skills, in particular students with a postgraduate qualification. Dropouts result in
fewer graduates and large amounts of funding and human capital are wasted on
educating students who will never complete their studies. Postgraduate studies have a
potential greater loss and a prediction of the expected and unexpected loss for these
students may encourage institutions to examine student retention more closely. The
latter is an area for concern and needs to be assessed and addressed as soon as
possible. / MCom (Risk Management), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NWUBOLOKA1/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/12034 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Styger, Anton |
| Source Sets | North-West University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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