It's been a year since the start of the large-scale protests against university fee increases organised by the #FeesMustFall movement and the country has yet to find a way out of the impasse. The government's interim solution, the suspension of fee increases for this year, might have brought some relief to families battling to put their children through university, while unfairly benefiting the wealthy, but it was always going to be a temporary measure.Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande's announcement yesterday, after lengthy consultations, that fee increases for 2017 will be decided by individual universities, subject to an 8% cap, could surely have come a lot earlier. Any major disruptions to lectures now could severely affect the results of thousands of students at year-end.Our universities desperately need money. State funding on a per-student basis has declined over the past two decades as the country battles to meet urgent social needs.Starving our campuses of funding while student numbers inexorably rise can only erode the ability of universities to continue to be centres of excellence.The National Student Financial Aid Scheme will strive to ensure that next year's increases will not be borne by poor students and those whose families earn less than R600,000 a year.Predictably, Nzimande's announcement sparked protests and blockades on campuses, where the demand for free higher education seems to be drowning out all other voices. It is probably futile to point out to the protesters that a presidential commission exploring the feasibility of free tertiary education is to release its interim report in November.In the past year, hundreds of millions of rands of damage to our campuses has been wreaked by militants who believe that tossing petrol bombs is a legitimate form of protest.It is surely time for real student leaders to stand up and ensure that arsonists pretending to be students are not given free rein. Future generations of students will thank them...