How the global VET toolkit weakened local colleges in South Africa

Abstract

This paper explores the contrast between the policy vision for public technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges in South Africa, and governance and funding models that have shaped institutional forms and functioning over time. Policy aspires for TVET colleges to play a role in social inclusion and local economic development. The paper provides a historical tracing of shifting regulatory and funding models, a local manifestation of the global shift to market-based funding, pseudo-employer-led reforms and accreditation mechanisms introduced through new public management-style public sector reform. The result is complex policy levers with conflicting governance and institutional models, producing bifurcation and weakening institutions. Colleges have been renamed, restructured, given new governance models, and shaped by contradictory and shifting programme, curriculum and qualification policy. Today, they are public institutions required to contribute to public policy goals, but treated by funding mechanisms as providers competing for contracts with for-profit and private non-profit providers. Individualised capacity building and a governance system that has at its core the idea that vocational education should meet the short-term needs of employers have undermined institutional capacity and coherence, and ability to develop institutions that can actively engage with social and economic development and inclusion. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

Author Keywords

South Africa governance Reform privatization Technical and vocational education and training colleges

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations

Centre for Researching Education and Labour, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

Funding & Acknowledgements

Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, SNF

Funding text 1: This project was part of a larger six country study jointly funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), through their joint research program \u2018R4D\u2019, under the call \u2018Employment (SNSF grant number 400340_194006).\u2019 University of the Witwatersrand ethics protocol number H08/08/02.; Funding text 2: Second, after massive student protests shook the university system in 2014 and 2015, the student financial aid scheme, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), was substantially increased, in terms of the amount of funds provided to students and the financial threshold for qualifying for funding. Some students at TVET colleges had been included in NSFAS since 2007 (DHET ), but at this point, the number of students covered was substantially increased (Gigaba ; The Presidency ). By 2019, 266 063 students or 81% of all students enrolled in colleges were given this funding (DHET ). The effect of this has been to add another complex and potentially perverse set of funding incentives that are shaping TVET enrolments, as the living expenses are generous, in the context of extreme youth unemployment and poverty (Sachs et al. ). And while it looks like a big increase in funds to the TVET system, the bulk goes directly to the individual students, as opposed to building institutions.; Funding text 3: This project was funded by the National Business Initiative in South Africa. University of the Witwatersrand ethics protocol number H23/08/27.

Direktion für Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit, DEZA

Grant: 400340_194006

Funding text 1: This project was part of a larger six country study jointly funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), through their joint research program \u2018R4D\u2019, under the call \u2018Employment (SNSF grant number 400340_194006).\u2019 University of the Witwatersrand ethics protocol number H08/08/02.; Funding text 2: Second, after massive student protests shook the university system in 2014 and 2015, the student financial aid scheme, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), was substantially increased, in terms of the amount of funds provided to students and the financial threshold for qualifying for funding. Some students at TVET colleges had been included in NSFAS since 2007 (DHET ), but at this point, the number of students covered was substantially increased (Gigaba ; The Presidency ). By 2019, 266 063 students or 81% of all students enrolled in colleges were given this funding (DHET ). The effect of this has been to add another complex and potentially perverse set of funding incentives that are shaping TVET enrolments, as the living expenses are generous, in the context of extreme youth unemployment and poverty (Sachs et al. ). And while it looks like a big increase in funds to the TVET system, the bulk goes directly to the individual students, as opposed to building institutions.; Funding text 3: This project was funded by the National Business Initiative in South Africa. University of the Witwatersrand ethics protocol number H23/08/27.

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How the global VET toolkit weakened local colleges in South Africa

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