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Wits fees must fall. My uncertain thoughts.

I'm going to start this off with a few disclaimers, because I expect to be disagreed with from all quarters, and maybe get called various contradictory things:

As the title indicates, I'm very unsure at the moment. Granted, I tend to be unsure about things in general, but in this case, my opinions have changed and expanded as developments arose, and I’m confused beyond mere reason.

I'm privileged. My fees are taken care of, as are my living expenses, etc. As such, I can't pretend to understand exactly what it's like to be unable to complete my degree for financial reasons.

I struggle with race-relation issues. I've always considered myself relatively enlightened in this regard, being raised in a household with a certain ethos, and having had various remarkable people to look up to growing up (people who could casually talk about spending time in solitary confinement, or being beaten by police). That said, I'm not an objective judge of how 'relatively enlightened' I actually am. My main issues aren't so much around recognising the problems, as much as they're around the approaches to solving them. To be clear I don't subscribe to that "I don't see colour" or that "it's been 20 years" bullshit.

This might upset you if you're for or against the #WitsFeesMustFall movement, and that's partly because I'm still trying to figure it all out. I'm happy to talk it out, be informed etc.(it’s quite possible I’m wrong about many things), as long as I'm not faced with nonsense like "you don't understand", "you're wrong just because", "shut up you're privileged" or "[insert various expletives/labels]". If you don't want to actually converse, that's fine. Leave me alone.

This might end up being a long read. I’ll use bullet points and headings to add some structure, and some people don’t like that. It might also be boring. we’ll see.

I haven’t included references for everything I’ve written. Some are included as hyperlinks, though. This isn’t academic writing, but I have made an effort to be factual.

I’m no expert, and am not involved in formal ‘student politics’, so don’t be surprised if I’m missing some current insights. That said, I keep my ear to the ground.

I tried adding some GIFs to make it a bit lighter, but they don’t seem to want to work work, so that’s that.

On Tuesday, when things were still heating up, I responded to a tweet at me about #WitsFeesMustFall with a few of my views in a long reply thread. Things were a bit clearer to me then, and it seemed straightforward. Pretty much everything I said there and a lot more will hopefully be covered here.

The way the fee increases were proposed was unacceptable

I use the word ‘proposed’ lightly, because they weren’t proposed, they were stated. We were given the figures (were we? I don’t remember any official communication with the figures), and that was that. In the past (or at least in 2014), things worked very differently. The heads of all student councils were invited (and required) to attend a presentation by Prof Kupe (DVC: Advancement, HR and Transformation), at which we were provided with the proposed increase figures (ranges, for degrees like my own) and the basis for them, and all present were able to interrogate the proposal and its intricacies. This process was arranged in conjunction with and overseen by the SRC of the time. Some of us came in our numbers, ready with questions and our own figures and statistics, while others were unprepared and disinterested.

While I don’t remember all the details of it, and my notes from the time were in a file that has since been lost, there are some relevant things to note from that meeting:

The CPI (pretty much a measure of inflation) was about 2 points higher at the time than it is now. I know because I went to the meeting prepared to argue using it (unsuccessfully). As is the case this year, government funding wasn’t kept in line with inflation.

There were some big new expenses, some as a result of government changing the rules about VAT. I was aware of the impact it had, having seen it from the other end, at Faculty Exec, WHSL Board etc.

The MBBCh and Dentistry proposed increase was 12%, ostensibly because we had to pay for ‘technological advancements in the field’, to which we took strong exception, because what even.

The growing NSFAS issues were discussed at length.

The university loses out on a lot of funding because of its high rate of converting students from undergrad to postgrad (who bring in better funding).

It was confirmed that the upfront fee would not increase. At least.

Later that week, student councils negotiated fee increases with faculty designees, with the MSC representing one or two other councils at their request. The process was largely for show, but things got heated at times, and inroads were made, although we left feeling disheartened. The process was more or less rigged.

The ‘proposed’ increases were crazy high

Having not had any presentation, discussion or negotiations, we have no idea where the increase figures came from. Here are some things to think about though:

As mentioned above, CPI is 2 points lower, or thereabouts.

We have no idea where this money is going. There is no transparency, and, while things do take time, we don’t see many improvements to facilities, increased capacity, or these ‘technological advancements in he field’.

The CPI is sitting at about 4.5%.

In MBBCh, a lot of the teachers aren’t paid university employees, and do in fact work for the Department of Health, NHLS, etc.

In MBBCh, our fees are subsidised more.

Textbooks cost a crapload. Borrowing from the library isn’t necessarily the answer either. I’ve done it for some blocks, and it’s hard to get the right book consistently because it’s in demand, and you know you’re depriving someone else of access to it. On top of that, the VAT issue led to a situation in which the WHSL had no budget for print books, apart from an MSC donation.

If you work it out, 12% equates to about a doubling every 5 years. A doubling.

Things that cost money that we do, in all fairness, have to think about:

The accelerated transformation process involved reallocating R45 million.

Insourcing of all workers would have necessitated an additional increase of 15%. Personally, I don’t think all employees need to be insourced, if it can be ensured that they’re not exploited, the same way that we can avoid buying clothes made in sweatshops if we make an effort. That said, I’m not completely informed on this issue.

Running a university, including staff, facilities, teaching resources, research equipment, air-conditioning, maintenance, etc etc etc. Still, we have no idea how much this costs and where our money goes. We don’t even know if the university is sitting with a surplus or deficit.

Because we have no idea about a surplus/deficit, we can’t know if a 0% increase (as some expect) is remotely feasible. Probably not, because maths. (See the CPI above).

The quality of the MBBCh degree is worth far more than what we currently pay. I genuinely believe this. That doesn’t mean the fees should be higher.

One thing to add here, which was put very well by my friend Creaghan Eddey, and which I will now paraphrase: this isn’t about the value of the education, it’s about the cost of the education.

The fee increase hurts the poorest students and the middle class students. Many middle class students, often not eligible for bursaries, have to fund their degrees using family resources, student loans, part-time jobs and any other means they can get their hands on. More fees means more debt, less family financial freedom and more work, and this isn’t always enough to cover the cost. For many, this is an expense on top of accommodation, supporting a family as a breadwinner and daily living expenses.

The poorest students can’t afford the fees at all, without bursaries. Bursaries are few and far between, and the NSFAS crisis this year hit students hard. And bursaries aren’t the panacea they might seem, especially for Health Sciences students. Many of us register in the first week of the year, well before bursaries have paid out, and the upfront fee needs to come from somewhere before registration. The 2015 upfront fee (R9340) is about triple, for example, the South African minimum wage for a domestic worker. Adding 10.5% to that is another R980.

It’s clearly exclusionary, and, to put it simply, you can’t change something without changing something. I’m less worried about future students, and more worried about existing students, ones who have spent so much time and money, only to suddenly find their fees unaffordable midway through their degrees. I admit that there’s no contract, but it’s a bit like doubling (see the part about doubling above) the price of taxi ride halfway through the journey, except that if you get off, you end up where you started instead of halfway there. (That’s a pretty useless analogy, but maybe it works).

“Get a job! I did.”

Round of applause for you. It’s impressive. It really is. You managed to find a job, one that paid enough, and one that allowed you enough time to study. It is admirable, and apart from the applause bit, this isn’t sarcasm. I have a LOT of respect for students who are able to do that.

But maybe you can’t find a job. Maybe the job you found doesn’t pay enough to fund your university fees. Maybe your job has to also pay for groceries, accommodation, a sibling’s school fees, a parent’s medication, for transport and for textbooks. I have a part-time job, and I’m perpetually bordering on broke, despite not paying for for fees, textbooks or groceries. I’m incredibly fortunate in the way the company I work for operates, so I can work at times that suit me. It must be near-impossible to consistently attend part-time work when your unit is on call every 4 days, or you have exams going on.

Of course, I do encourage students from all walks of life to get a job if they are able. If you don’t need the money, contribute to a bursary fund.

“Education is a right”

Yes. The Bill of Rights enshrines the right to basic education. Tertiary, not exactly. You see, when it comes to ‘further education’, all that’s a given is that it’s something “the state, through reasonable measures, must make progressively available and accessible”. I don’t know enough (anything) about constitutional law, so I probably shouldn’t be saying much here. But that seems vague, and I don’t know where to find specifics.

There are two main concepts to be taken here. Firstly, logistics. In 2014, 36 843 matriculants qualified for Bachelor studies. Wits has space for just over 30 000 students, and UJ close to 50 000. But they don’t just take in students straight out of matric; AND not every province has a functional university; AND, because Wits is an excellent university, it attracts students from across the country; AND we have a number of international students. I haven’t gone and checked the total university capacity for the country, but it seems like the number of places is a big limiting factor.

Secondly, the responsibility of providing access to ‘further education’. I’m not sure what ‘further education’ includes. We don’t know what “reasonable measures” are, or if the state has made it “progressively available and accessible“. Somehow I doubt it. Apart from the occasional #BladeMustFall hashtag, why isn’t the government being held accountable? When I asked this somewhere the other day, a very informed lady told me that the university will most likely be used as a means of communicating with government in a more formal, direct way. I hope this is true, and would really like that to be made known.

University education should be free

From the get-go, I’d like to state that there is no such thing as free university education. Unless we find some altruist who will build and maintain the university, and some staff who will teach for free, there is no such thing. One can’t have something out of nothing. It has to come from bursaries, government or other students’ fees.

As things stand, a fair bit of money comes from bursaries, and scholarships made available by the university itself can be considered, indirectly, to be paid for partly by students’ fees. So maybe government is the answer. Government already does fund the university, although we know it doesn’t provide enough. We also know that the Bill of Rights explicitly states that it is the responsibility of the government.

We assume it’s impossible, because it would require a lot of money. But Brazil, a country whose GDP isn’t that much higher than our own with comparable tax rates, manages to. It also makes economic sense. Ask Finland. So what? We have the solution? We can stop now? Not exactly.

It’s possible, perhaps, but it would take a lot of planning. We’d need to make sure the government, in order to save money, couldn’t just cut costs, thereby dropping our standard of education. I tweeted something about this the other day, in fact.

Also, we’d need to get the government to do this in the first place. Considering we are the electorate, it’s up to us. Despite this, it doesn’t seem to be considered a politically popular move. We’d need to make government do it, and do it well.

Again, it comes down to government. The money is there, sort of. At least, some of it is. If we pretend the average annual fee is R50 000, the cost of Nkandla could pay for 4120 students. I’m in no way saying that the university is blameless, and I think I’ve made that abundantly clear, but, the Bill of Rights says it is the responsibility of government, and government could maybe do it, so why are the majority of us blaming the university entirely?

“Why does this have to become a race thing?”

I tend to avoid discussing race on social media. I prefer to do it with individuals, and even then, not often. Partly because direct discussion isn’t always helpful (and indirect information is) and partly because I find it bloody scary. This isn’t a post about race, and I doubt I’ll ever do one, and as such, I won’t be getting into any measure of detail. There are some things we can take as a given:

The people who say they “don’t see colour” are either lying, or, if they aren’t, are actually being counterproductive. Shut up.

20 years isn’t a very long time at all. The fact that your grandparents couldn’t attend university affects your chances of attending and paying for it. If I nod when you exasperatedly say “It’s been 20 years!”, it’s because you’re right, it has only been 20 years.

Black people are poorer. White people are richer. I’m leaving other races out for simplicity. A lot of the more well-off black people have still been raised in an environment from which they can better empathise with a cause like #WitsFeesMustFall.

Black people aren’t entitled or lazy. I’m sad I even had to type that sentence, but some people seem to need to be told. It’s very possible that our generation is, but it’s also possible that previous generations were, at some stage i their lives. I don’t know.

I don’t know if it has to “become a race thing”, but I can see why. Different priorities, mainly. Different perspectives. It’s the reason the faces at the forefront of the movement were black, while those complaining the most about being inconvenienced were not. Also, the past week’s events have brought a lot of white and Indian racists in particular (blatant and subtle) out of the woodwork.

I’ve sort of spoken about actual racism and racial prejudice in one brief go, but I’m leaving it that way because this thing is already long. I’d like to encourage more white students to become more involved or supportive, and I’d like the more confrontational students to put aside their angry responses to welcome these students, but maybe that’s too optimistic.

One last thing I’d like to add into this section is the word ‘militant’. I’m sick of it. I’ve been known to use it myself, and probably still will in the future. Still, I think the term tends to be racially biased. The colour of your skin can often determine whether you’re ‘passionate’ or ‘militant’. How convenient.

If you’d like to tell someone they sound racist, here’s a helpful video.

While we’re on the topic of labeling people, don’t just label people as ‘liberal’. The word used to have a meaning, but it’s been bastardised by parties on both sides for various gains.

“My marks alone aren’t good enough. I have to be rich to get into university”

This exasperated sentiment has been used a lot recently. I can’t find one of the well phrased ones now, but that’s the idea. I’m not a huge fan of it, to be honest. I’ve already stated that I consider the high fees exclusionary, but consider the above statement counterproductive, although I can only speak froma health sciences perspective.

Having been part of the team deciding the revised MBBCh admission criteria, I came to understand the link between income (and therefore race) and high school academic performance. As you might suspect, there’s a strong positive correlation. Strong enough that admissions based just on those results would shock you (or would shock me, at least). Of course, there are some exceptions to this pattern.

Except there is little evidence that good high school (or NBT) marks above a certain minimum significantly impact performance at university. Even if they did, we need to ensure the system supports those who need it, to achieve meaningful (this word is here on purpose) transformation.

While we’re on the topic of university performance and transformation, there are a few other things to add:

Students don’t just fail/repeat years/units/modules because they don’t enjoy studying. Students get ill, and sometimes can’t access good healthcare. Students’ family members die and they have to arrange funerals, take care of siblings, and find second jobs.

Language is a massive barrier to education. The Bill of Rights makes mention of accessing education in your home language where possible, but sort of implies that it’s kind of too difficult. It’ll be ages before we have the expertise (and vocabulary base) necessary for anything like this, and even then, we’d need to have the discussion about its value in a global context. Still, it needs to be acknowledged that a language barrier adds a whole new level of difficulty to one’s studies, and that much more can be done to address this (see this excellent ‘paper’ by a parent of one of our students if you’re interested in this, and a lot more about it).

The events of the past few days have impacted some adversely, but a few days off for something this important isn’t the end of the world. Stop patronisingly saying “if they don’t stop protesting and start studying they’re going to have to pay fees for an extra year”.

“Who we choose to lead us doesn’t matter now”

(This section won’t be based in any fact, just opinion.)

It does to me. It does a lot. It was wonderful to see the current and previous SRC presidents, two very capable, inspiring young women, take positions of prominence in everything that happened. I didn’t stay long enough to see everything on Friday happen in person, but I managed to catch the rest on TV, and follow it on Twitter. It upset me to see them sidelined, to see their rightful roles be taken by someone who no longer represents me in any way, shape or form. This will unnecessarily upset some people so I’ll leave it there. I would just like to clarify that I am in no way represented by an unofficial, populist anti-semite, who appears to me to serve no agenda but his own, and clearly has a score to settle. There have been all sorts of ‘leaders’ popping up, having no clear idea of what is going on or what they would like to achieve beyond a few cheers. Luckily, there are certainly some insightful students, within the SRC and without, who can hopefully provide more direction and reason.

“Habib is the worst person ever”

No. He isn't actually. I’ll be brief about this, so here are some points about him:

Whether or not we like it, it’s because he’s quite so in favour of student rights and willing to engage with students that this week’s events went the way they did. There’s a bit of irony there, I guess.

He happens to hold the office during a period in which the winds of change have approached gale force nationwide.

He wasn’t sitting in his office one day, thinking about how much he hates students when he suddenly cried, “Aha! I’ll increase the fees because I hate students muhahahahahaha!” The man is clearly no puppet, but that doesn’t mean he’s the cause of everything bad (and, somehow, none of the good) that happens at the university.

While we know there was no violence, it took real balls to go in and face the students in order to meet their needs, and a lesser VC would have dealt with it VERY differently, and could have. Instead, he humbled himself and showed a lot of trust.

He didn’t deserve some of the nonsense he got. Being shepherded to the bathroom, getting permission to phone family, having his family harassed, and infuriating tweets like this horrendous one. (What does that even mean?! It’s demeaning, and nonsensical.)

It seems to me that he honestly believes in similar ends, and has given it a lot of thought and put it to sound strategy, instead of the myopic views sometimes shoved in our faces. For example, this surprisingly appropriate piece shows a lot of foresight, and I expect a lot of people haven’t taken the time to read it, because it’s easier to have strong opinions and someone to call an enemy. His suggestion about using the NSFAS funding as collateral for student loans is something I consider particularly interesting, and, if I understand things correctly, keep interest rates for them down.

No, I haven’t been paid or anything for this part :P. I think it’s quite fairly written.

They weren’t held hostage

The members of council weren’t held hostage. Habib said it himself. Carolissen, said it too, and had private security leave. They went there of their own accord. I do believe that. At the same time, having your movements and activities monitored, and being told that you aren’t leaving until matters are resolved to another party’s satisfaction doesn’t sound quite so ‘free’ does it? And the agreement reached? A refusal to leave until demands are met sounds like duress to me. The students are key stakeholders, and should have a say in the university management, and be able to negotiate, but unilateral decisions are bad for the university and, ultimately, bad for the students. I don’t necessarily think this was the case here, but it could easily have become so, and some points of Saturday’s agreement imply a very one-sided perspective, instead of a service-provider negotiating with those who access its services.

The agreement

A bit surprising, to be honest. As I said above, parts of it seem unilateral. It doesn’t seem like the result of negotiation at all. Still, we can’t predict what will happen next. My hope is that it’s not a matter of simple progression, of meeting one side’s wants each time, simply because I cannot see that being the long term solution. My hope is that what has been happening is the very important, and very strategic process of:

Disrupting

Reframing the conversation

Fixing the power differential

Negotiating fairly

And it seems things may go this way. At least, I really, really hope they do.

Conclusion

I don’t really have one. I’m still far from sure about anything. Anyone who is probably doesn’t know how life works. A few things I do know:

The fee increase is massive. It hurts poor and middle class students the most.

The way it was handled by the university was inappropriately furtive and one-sided.

Don’t tell people to get a job. Except hippies. I’m fine with that.

Don’t be a racist wankhandle.

Tertiary education isn’t exactly a right, but it isn’t exactly not one either.

There’s no such thing as free education, really.

Government should be held far more accountable. It is an instrument of the people, and the people forget that too easily.

It is sort of ‘a race thing’. Don’t take it personally, whichever side you’re on.

There was a need to be forceful, and it was achieved remarkably without being violent. There wasn’t a need to be quite so disrespectful, or misdirect the anger.

What happened this week was amazing af. It was history happening right before our eyes, and in our ears, and on our screens. Let us hope it bears fruit, and that it results in real solutions, not appeasements.

See you tomorrow at Main Campus.

PS. This was longer than I thought it would be, and I left a LOT out. As it is, some people will think I have too many opinions. I’m open to chatting, especially to the many people I know who are better informed, more involved, and a lot more empathetic than I am :)

That’s all for now

Faheem

Update [19/10/2015]

I fixed the typo. Some commenter I couldn’t reply to pointed it out.

I also have a few brief bits to add following today’s events, some of which aren’t universally palatable:

Senate House was not ‘stormed’ today. A bit of glass seems to have been broken, but everyone walked in quite calmly. The change of venue was not part of the agreement as far as I know.

While it was in no way right, it was a strategically smart play on Council’s part to simply not arrive. They conceded far too on Friday night/Saturday morning (see above regarding the not-hostage scenario), and, faulting the protesters on a technicality (if this venue and ‘storming’ nonsense even qualifies as that), they had an excuse to not show up, however weak it may be. Not arriving tipped the students over, and chaos ensued, which works well in terms of their image, kind of. There’s more nuance to this, but I’ll leave it here.

Shouting “you are privileged!” at someone is not helpful.

Feminism does matter, even now, and boy (girl?) are there some sexists out there.

While I made my position on the whole “Get a job!” nonsense clear above, this doesn’t mean that a sense of entitlement is a non-issue. I’ve been saving the concept for another post which I haven’t got around to writing yet, but I’m concerned that it’s a generational issue. Today I was reminded of a late family member who managed to get to India to study (wasn’t allowed to here, of course), having been supported in part by his younger sister who had to drop out of school to cook and sell food at a market, and he, while studying in India, worked loading and offloading ships on the docks to pay for tuition and accommodation. It seems stories like that are becoming rarer. Of course, that’s easy for me to say, having my fees paid without difficulty.

That guy should not have tried to drive over students, and the reporting of that, along with the ‘storming’ phrasing, has shown a media bias for the most part. There has been reporter bias from the other side too, but from far fewer sources.

Lying on the road is not an effective means of holding those responsible accountable. As I implied above, we’re cutting government too much slack, and blaming the university too much.

Don’t claim to be entirely non-violent then blockade entrances while wielding large sticks. I had a slight confrontation with a chap sitting on a turnstile today, and it didn’t work out very well for either of us.

This is an important struggle, but don’t compare it to anything previous generations had to endure in a misguided need to find purpose.

Still no idea what the objective is? Not sure how much quality you’d like to sacrifice for price? That’s a problem.

Faheem :)

PS: A few days after this was first posted, a few of us drafted a proposal with broad suggestions regarding how increase halts and fees could potentially be funded. We got some positive feedback at some public meetings, and we passed it along to a SAUS delegate, but nothing happened beyond that. I’m under no illusion that we had some sort of Panacea, but I really hope there are others out there who are willing to do some investigation and solution-building.

#wits #witsfeesmustfall #witsfeeswillfall