Exploring challenges, opportunities and prospects associated with higher education student funding in the context of South Africa

Abstract

This study was conducted in order to determine the challenges, opportunities and prospects for student funding in higher education in South Africa. The paper focuses on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (Mumanyi & Musundire, 2016). The number of higher education institutions, both government and private, and student enrolments have increased exponentially over the past few years, especially in South Africa. While this is welcome in terms of human capital development, it has brought new challenges such as limited state funding of higher education. A convenient purposive sample of 40 students and 20 lecturers from four South African institutions of higher learning were involved in this study. Questionnaires, focus group interviews and a review of the literature articles were used to collect data. The rate of return on investment and human capital theories underpin the study. The results indicate that in order to mitigate some of the challenges the government should adopt a cocktail of measures to fund higher education and keep costs down. These include but are not limited to government taking responsibility for funding higher education for all students, government funding only students from low-income families, cutting down costs by introducing massive open online courses (MOOCs), reducing bursaries or scholarships that are tenable at foreign higher education institutions, and these institutions engaging in entrepreneurial activities to revolutionise them as centres of economic activity.

To cite: Musundire, A. & Mumanyi, O. (2020). Exploring challenges, opportunities and prospects associated with higher education student funding in the context of South Africa. Journal of Management & Administration (2020/1), 101–122. https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC-1da02559bc