Higher education set to focus on skills development

“The problem at the moment is that we are a one route nation; everybody goes through to matric and goes to university. If you haven’t gone that route you are a ‘nobody’ and that is wrong,” Nzimande said.

He was speaking at the Progressive Professionals Forum’s 1st anniversary at Gallagher Estate in Midrand, themed the State of Transformation in South African Higher Education.

Nzimande noted that South Africa faced high youth unemployment levels as well as high skills shortages, which he believed was due largely to this ideology.

“We have too many South Africans for instance who never finished primary school, they can’t access colleges and universities. What do you do with them?”

Existing institutions such as adult education centres were restrictive because they only catered for furthering students’ current education levels, he said.

Although Nzimande lauded the work of these institutions, these only addressed part of the needs of South Africans, he said.

“Another South African will have Standard 2 and may only be interested in acquiring a skill in baking.”

In a bid to address this challenge, the Department of Higher Education and Training was set to pilot community colleges next year for those that had never attended school, and school leavers that wished to acquire a skill.

“We are defining our mandate as that of post-school education and training… because our responsibility as a department is to look after education and training needs of all those who have left school, and are unlikely to go back to school including those who never went to school,” Nzimande said.

These colleges would have no entry requirements and will be designed to cater for the particular needs of students.

“You must come in whether you went to school or not. If you have never gone to school you must be taught literacy, if you left school in Standard 2 they must tell you the options or things you can do,” he said.