Honourable House Chairperson,
The ACDP agrees with Minister Manamela that on the state of readiness of the post school education and training system, readiness is not about ticking boxes or filing reports, but about ensuring bursary systems function, applications are cleared, institutions are safe and teaching begins without disruption.
However, the ACDP submits that the post-schooling system is not working, evidenced by students protesting outside of SONA because of the systemic failures with registration and accommodation.
Honourable House chairperson, we may all agree that learning and development are key to transformation at an individual and societal level and that lifelong learning is the step up to economic acceleration. We may have agreement but we do not share urgency.
In our communities around the country—Mariannridge, Gugulethu, Chatsworth, Soweto, Eldorado Park, Vosloorus, Wentworth, to mention a few—prison is the university that many of our young men enter to get a qualification, and prison may be the first time that a young man would possibly see a social worker or a career guidance counsellor.
A qualitative paper by research gate produced findings which reveal that the massification of higher education, the increasing rate of students dropping out, infrastructure deficits, student accommodation and challenges around funding, have given rise to numerous issues such as riots and protests which have in the process damaged university infrastructure.
The paper concludes that without an alignment between what higher education produces and what the market needs, there is likely to be an increase in the production of graduates who struggle to find employment, further impeding the need for inclusive socioeconomic development.
The ACDP cautions that the misalignment between market demand and higher education supply is perhaps the greatest omission by the Higher Education Department contributing to our graduates becoming unemployable.
Unless speedily addressed, Minister, your department will go down in history as the one which contributed to the highest youth and graduate unemployment rate that South Africa has ever had.
I thank you.
