The government would need R70-billion a year to provide free higher education for undergraduate university students and the country's current economic climate makes fee-free education not "affordable" or "desirable".
And focusing only on funding universities will not help the development and expansion of technical vocational and education training (TVET) colleges and the community college system.
This is contained in the Department of Higher Education and Training's submission to the presidential commission on the feasibility of fee-free higher education and training.
In its submission the department argued this is not possible.
"To provide free higher education for all the undergraduate level, would require that government provide full funding for all undergraduate students, including those able to pay for themselves.
"This would have an estimated financial implication of approximately R70-billion per annum to fund the system [as it currently is], which is an additional amount of approximately R42-billion per annum on top of the current budget," reads the submission.
The department warned that "this would have to increase year-on-year to match higher education inflation as well as the growth in the system to meet the National Development Plan targets [at about 10% per annum, year on year].
"However, this only refers to support student fees, and does not reference the erosion of systemic funding, which is equally important for the system to remain sustainable let alone to grow and improve," reads the submission.
Last year, President Jacob Zuma announced that there would be 0% fee increase this year, but the department has said another 0% fee increase without any significant investment in universities is not sustainable.
". should a second nominal 0% increase be implemented in the 2017 academic year, as is being currently demanded by students, an additional increase equivalent to R3.6-billion in 2017/18 would be required."
