IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sza/wpaper/wpapers36.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The changing face of public funding of higher education, with special reference to South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Pierre de Villiers

    (Department of Economics, University of Stellenbosch)

  • Gert Steyn

    (Institutional Planning Division, University of Stellenbosch)

Abstract

Higher education displays characteristics of both private and public goods and there is a trend worldwide to expect individuals to pay more of the costs of their higher education. In South Africa public funding of higher education decreased from 0.86% of GDP in 1986 to only 0.66% in 2006. Due to the decrease in state appropriations, student tuition fees had to be increased to compensate for this loss of income. In the process staff numbers were kept relatively constant, while student numbers increased at a much faster rate. Two future scenarios, based on public higher education expenditure as a percentage of GDP and on real state allocation per WFTES, are included. Although the qualifications awarded per FTE academic staff member increased over time, the graduation rates of the higher education institutions in South Africa are worsening. High-level research, measured in publication units per FTE academic staff member, shows a disturbing decreasing trend since 1997.

Suggested Citation

  • Pierre de Villiers & Gert Steyn, 2007. "The changing face of public funding of higher education, with special reference to South Africa," Working Papers 05/2007, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:sza:wpaper:wpapers36
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/wpapers/2007/wp052007/wp-05-2007.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2007
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Higher education; education financing; qualifications;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education
    • I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance; Financial Aid
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sza:wpaper:wpapers36. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Melt van Schoor (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/desunza.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.