Minister applauds UKZN fee initiatives while calling for better gender equity

The department of higher education & training has given the nod to the University of KwaZulu-Natal for its concessions on student fees and called for better engagements between the institutions and NSFAS. However, the department slammed the university's gender representation at senior level.

Nobuhle Nkabane led a departmental visit to the University’s Westville campus on Thursday to monitor the registration process and ensure that the 2025 academic year started effectively.

Among the highlights was the revelation that the university was having one of its most seamless registration periods, having not had a student protest for the first time in many years.

That has been largely attributed to some key arrangements regarding the repayment of students' debts.

Vice-chancellor Prof Nana Poku said the university has managed to bring stability even when NSFAS responses have not been as efficient as students wanted, though they are working on it by putting in place a number of mechanisms, including having constant engagement with them through their representative council and restructuring their finances to put the students' needs first.

That includes the decision which allows unfunded students up to three years from the start of 2025 to settle their historic debts accumulated as of the end of 2024.

“The concessions that come with student debt is that every single student, except those employed full-time, is given 36 months to settle their debt. At the same time, any new fees that they incur each year they are also expected to settle within that period,” said Nontuthuko Mbhele, UKZN CFO.

“As part of the three-year historical debt period, we are encouraging students to settle their debt by offering them some kind of incentive based on the amounts they pay.”

Mbhele said the historic debt owed by students to the university stood at R2.1bn at the start of the year. Despite that, however, she said the university council took a decision in 2020 to not charge interest on student debt until the end of 2027.

“That moratorium remains in place until the end of 2027 which coincides with the period for students to settle their historic debts.”

Nkabane hailed those initiatives for accommodating students from underprivileged backgrounds and assisting the government in its mission to reduce poverty and increase access to higher education.

“We have an obligation to adhere to the constitution. We have to ensure access to education and further education and balance that because that access must also come with success at the end of the day.”

She commended the decision to put a moratorium on charging interest on student debt.

Nkabane further commended the relations between the university, the SRC and all stakeholders. She said constant engagement should be a priority to maintain stability in all institutions of higher learning.

“There must be an open-door policy where our students are able to reach out to your office and say ‘these are the pressing issues that our students on the ground are facing and we want your intervention on this and that’ and you respond. We want to see affect and outcome.”

However, Nkabane raised concern with the gender makeup of the university’s executive management, with its nine males and four females. She said that was particularly appalling since the country is hosting the first ever G20 summit on the continent and UKZN will be hosting a session on gender transformation.

“I’m told that UKZN will be hosting the gender transformation education working group. So I want to see if you will be ready because it’s on July 1. I don’t know how you will deal with gender transformation when you are not leading by example since your DVCs are men but we will see how then you manoeuvre and manage it. But it’s very bad. It is not a good reflection for us.”

Nkabane said NSFAS had not communicated its funding decisions for the 2025 academic year to the university as yet.

The university said NSFAS, which funds 75% of its student population, had yet to conclude its funding decisions and communicate the allowance amounts for 2025 which has seen the institution disburse the first circle allowances based on the 2024 allocations.

“That is a worrying factor on my side particularly since we had engagements with the AG last year and that was one of the key issues that they flagged — our NSFAS decisions are taking time. The key issue they picked up is that there is a misalignment in terms of the data that the university has and what NSFAS has.”

The department felt that the late release of the matric results by the department of basic education might be one of the factors that stops NSFAS and universities from making timely decisions.

She said they engaged the DBE last year on addressing those issues in future and considering going back to releasing results earlier.

“This would allow universities to make their decisions on registrations on time and put us in a position to make funding decisions early.”

In the meantime, however, Nkabane urged higher education institutions and NSFAS to communicate more with each other to avoid funding delays. She said institutions should communicate whatever they have concluded regarding registration as it happens so that they do everything concurrently.

“If we wait to conclude every registration process, there will be pressure again on NSFAS when they receive those registration data from all the universities in South Africa, so let’s share as much information as we can, timeously.”

She also directed the university to extend its registration period, which was meant to come to an end tomorrow (Friday) by a further week, noting that its previous registration extension had only been for certain programmes but not all of them.

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