The cost of invalid National Senior Certificates is wasting billions of rand on first-year dropouts that have received Bachelor passes.
This according to Jacques de Villiers, CEO of Growth Institute that said in 2013 the matric pass rate peaked at 78 per cent and a total of 171 755 qualified for Bachelor studies at higher education institutions. Last year, the number of students with Bachelor passes was 166 263. The minimum requirement to gain entry for a Bachelor’s degree is that a student must obtain 50 per cent in four designated subjects, 30 per cent in two others and proof of the school-based assessment in the remaining subject.
Statistics on Post-School Education and Training in South Africa: 2014, as published by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DoHET) in March this year, states that the total number of places that were filled by first time-time students at one of the resident public universities was only 69 589 and 41 109 filled spaces at Unisa.
De Villiers said that with the 171 755 students who are competing with those who did not get accepted in a previous year, the 114 848 available full-time and part-time places becomes inadequate.
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He stated that if a situation like this is allowed to continue for five years, at the start of the sixth year there will be 445 000 students competing for the 115 000 places available, which means that only 25 per cent of those who obtained a Bachelor’s pass will get into university.
Dr Andre van Zyl, an expert in the field of first-year successes stated, “Forty-one percent of students who enter university drop out, and up to 60 per cent of those who drop out, do so in their first year. This means that 7 380 of the 30 000 Grade 12s who will make it to university next year will not survive the 2017 academic year. We can deduce from these statistics that the NSC certificate with a Bachelor pass does not prepare the recipient adequately for university.”
“The total wastage on first-year dropouts is more than the entire 2016/17 NSFAS treasury allocation of R14.6 Billion,” De Villiers concluded.
