Varsities swamped

[BigAl-sa]

How many years of experience do you have again? I remember you talking about how you build yourself up to where you are now. That's a lot of experience.

That chip is on both shoulders I see...

 

[Seriously]

There was a kid that worked every day, all day, all the time to get the same degree I have. I being the kid who slept-in, only really came to tutorials, and studied two days in advance. My academic record isn't stellar, but it's good enough to get me into academic programs and scholarships. I'm glad with my course of study though, because mathematical sciences aren't very dependent on studying. If I studied language I would have failed in the first semester. I'm not tooting my own horn, because I messed up quite a bit in some things and burned some bridges.

There is no chip on my shoulder, other than University being far too slow paced and having negatively influenced my personality in retrospect. Where school succeeded, but University did not, was make it compulsory to sit in on lectures. I honestly can't wait for the day that Online Education becomes a big thing, because then kids like me can actually study a degree in a shorter space of time and spent less time getting into bad habits.

The ultimate point was that scores on a report card tells you very little about a candidate. I had an A average in Matric, and that wasn't down to working hard or earning anything. I'm proud of my degrees, but I don't think it kept me up on sleepless nights or anything; it was far more relaxed doing it than I could ever be in the work place, and I'm not alone.

You stated that you battle to find a job? I think you must re-evaluate your commitment and attitude then you will succeed. It seems from here it's not the education that are failing you!

The BSc gets you the interview, your attitude gets you the job.

You beast you beat me to it!

 

[mic_y]

firstly, many of these numbers are quite misleading. Many people apply to multiple universities, to see where they are accepted, so the number of applications is not directly related to the number of actual students that will join.

Secondly, I think that the entrance requirements will probably halve the number of actual applications. Just because someone has applied, doesn't mean that they are eligible to be accepted in to the course.

What is worrying is the absolutely chaotic state of FET colleges and other alternative tertiary educational institutions...

 

[Seriously]

What is worrying is the absolutely chaotic state of FET colleges and other alternative tertiary educational scammers.. Like.........(famous thread on MyBB)

FTFYa

 

[koeks525]

What happened to the two new universities that were being built? When are these opening and how many students will each be taking in? SA should really do something about the tertiary education sphere...I'm trying to think which one would be better - building new universities in the country or expanding existing universities in the country?

How many students passed matric with a "Bachelor's Pass"? Also how much space is there available, with all universities added up? I would like to see these numbers.

How many universities could the nkandla money have built? At least one IMO.

Hahaha...for real!! I wonder how much does building one university cost?

firstly, many of these numbers are quite misleading. Many people apply to multiple universities, to see where they are accepted, so the number of applications is not directly related to the number of actual students that will join.

Secondly, I think that the entrance requirements will probably halve the number of actual applications. Just because someone has applied, doesn't mean that they are eligible to be accepted in to the course.

What is worrying is the absolutely chaotic state of FET colleges and other alternative tertiary educational institutions...

+1

 

[Garson007]

I'm trying to think which one would be better - building new universities in the country or expanding existing universities in the country?

Expanding current ones would be far too expensive. Almost all of them are in lucrative built-up areas.

Build a University on cheap land like the Karoo (just make sure its close enough to construction resources, of course). The University will attract capital investment in terms of people setting up shop for the new inhabitants.

It seems from here it's not the education that are failing you!

Never said it was. I don't blame the lack of job opportunities on my education. I blame the market and my own personality.

I blame the education system for reinforcing bad habits I have.

 

[Seriously]

/Snip
I blame the education system for reinforcing bad habits I have.

Absolute BS! On that note then I have to blame my parents for conceiving me because I am to lazy and slack to pull up my socks to do my part!!

 

[Paperweight]

Everywhere else in the world, everyone goes to university. The only difference is which university you go to. Your marks tell you which university you go to, unlike here they tell you "are you going to university?"

I'm quite sick of it to be honest. This mad rush in January where mediocre students scramble to secure a varsity. Around 180,000 students qualify for university education but some don't get a chance. They have to settle for expensive colleges. Expensive colleges of lesser quality that have the nerve to say our fees are R50 000 a year but don't worry you'll get a free laptop.

We should aim for an educated society. I want first world problems where the bachelors degree means nothing because the lady at McDonald's has one too.

Instead of building universities we keep pretending as though FETs will fix everything. Meanwhile, the student will look for jobs in 3 years and encounter adverts that say "Must have BCom, BSc degree". We can push this generation through FETs and then what?

Anyway we should ask ourselves what's the difference between a university and FET anyway? They do the same modules basically. If this government doesn't want to build universities let these FETS turn into private universities then. Because at the end of the day, no matter how superficial, the degree that says Bachelor of gets you in the door.

 

[dlk001]

SA’s skills shortage substantial - Adcorp

Johannesburg - The Adcorp Employment Index for November and December last year shows that South Africa’s skills shortage is substantial and is not being met by the local supply of high-skilled workers.

The restrictions on foreigners living and working in South Africa should be relaxed, since this would supplement the dwindling local supply of skills. Employment figures grew by 23 861 jobs over the same period.

Adcorp’s labour market economist Loane Sharp says: “These stats suggest that the living standards in South Africa have remained relatively high during the global financial crisis, certainly compared to other English-speaking countries where emigrant South Africans have taken up residence; and that South Africans who emigrated to other countries prior to the 2008 financial crisis were possibly over-confident about the security of their jobs in foreign countries.

Temporary jobs

“The biggest gains occurred in the informal sector, which created 12 722 jobs during the two-month period, as well as the temporary work sector, which created 5 922 jobs.

“ For the first time in 16 months, permanent work grew as well, adding 5 271 jobs during the month,” says Sharp.

“Since January 2013, the informal sector has generated 73 799 jobs, compared to a total decline of 241 536 permanent and temporary jobs, reflecting the growing importance of the informal sector in the South Africa labour market.”

Significant job gains were observed in construction and transport which grew by 7.4% and 6.5%.

The financial sector, in contrast, shed 13 000 jobs and the mining sector scaled down by 1 000 jobs.

Financial crisis

The January index also examines the effect of immigration and emigration on the South African employment environment.

“Since the global financial crisis in 2008, approximately 359 000 high-skilled South Africans have returned from foreign work assignments,” Sharp says.

Adcorp was able to estimate the net number of high-skilled immigrants returning to the country using wage data for high-skilled workers.

Data from Adcorp’s recruitment subsidiaries that specialise in placing high-skilled personnel - categorised as workers who earned more than R400 000 per annum in 2013 - provides an interesting opportunity to estimate the number of South Africans who have returned from abroad since the global financial crisis began in 2008.

Sharp says the South African economy demand for high-skilled workers has remained relatively stable over the past decade and he named a few reasons:

>> There is a consistent shortage of high-skilled workers amounting to around 829 000 unfilled vacancies, i.e. positions that could be easily or immediately filled if only the requisite skills were available;

>>The unemployment rate for high-skilled workers has remained roughly constant at around 0.4% (compared to an unemployment rate of 37% for the workforce as a whole).

>>At the same time, the supply of high-skilled foreign workers has been negligible due to strict immigration measures adopted by the home affairs department in 2002, which were further tightened in 2008 and 2010.

Pool of graduates

This information indicates that the average real wages of high-skilled workers (after-inflation) have increased from R265 680 per annum in 1997 to R423 730 per annum in 2013 – an above-inflation increase of 5.1% per annum. In money-of-the-day (i.e. pre-inflation) terms, wages have increased from R112 966 per annum in 1997 to R423 730 per annum in 2013 – an increase of 11.2% per annum.

“What is notable about this is that there was a relatively uninterrupted period of expansion of high-skilled workers’ wages from 1997 to around 2008. Since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, wages of high-skilled South Africans have declined by 23.0% in after-inflation terms,” says Sharp.

This decline is consistent with an increased supply of 359 000 additional workers, namely South Africans returning from work assignments abroad. This is a sizeable number, representing 18% of the total pool of managers and professionals in South Africa and 12% of the total pool of graduates.

 

[dlk001]

I'm trying to think which one would be better - building new universities in the country or expanding existing universities in the country?

I think building new tertiary institutions but most importantly, having them adequately resourced to provide quality education.

 

[Nicodeamus]

I think building new tertiary institutions but mostly importantly, having them adequately resourced to provide quality education.

First they need to fix our current universities. I still won't send my child to any of the old homeland universities.

 

[koeks525]

I think building new tertiary institutions but most importantly, having them adequately resourced to provide quality education.

The reason I am thinking this, is that the new universities will not have a reputation of some sort when they begin. Do employers not consider where the applicant's for a job studied and the reputation of the university?

 

[CR34M3]

I read an article last year dwelling on why there is such a big drive for people to go to university. The salary gap between someone with a university degree and someone without one was given as the primary reason. This gives arise to the notion that if I just get a degree I can get soooo much more money. I can't remember the numbers they quoted -- I'll dig a bit more and try to find the article.

Can anyone with a bit more international knowledge comment on this? Compared to other countries, is the salary spread between different jobs smaller than in SA?

EDIT: Not the one I was looking for, but it'll do.
SOUTH AFRICA: High returns from post-school education

South Africans who obtain a degree earn on average between 2.5 and four times more than people who do not complete schooling, the first major study on the returns of post-school education has revealed. Degree-holders are also three times more likely to get a job - in a country where more than one in four people are unemployed.

Even in this article from 5 years back they already make note of graduate unemployment...

"Of concern is that graduate unemployment doubled between 2001 and 2007," the report stated. But a key finding was that obtaining a post-school qualification "dramatically improves a student's opportunity to become employed or self-employed".

 

[daveza]

Expect a flood of first year drop-outs and a lot of unpaid student loans.

 

[cr@zydude]

Expanding current ones would be far too expensive. Almost all of them are in lucrative built-up areas.

Build a University on cheap land like the Karoo (just make sure its close enough to construction resources, of course). The University will attract capital investment in terms of people setting up shop for the new inhabitants.

I don't think that anything stops the current universities from opening new campuses though.

How many universities could the nkandla money have built? At least one IMO.

None. One new business management building at NMMU cost R 112 million.

The Herald

As for new or expanding universities, I think that there are parts of the country which are still under served. Since NMMU was formed Saasveld went from being a farming school to now offering B Coms and education.

 

[Gibson]

The reason I am thinking this, is that the new universities will not have a reputation of some sort when they begin. Do employers not consider where the applicant's for a job studied and the reputation of the university?

Not sure on undergraduate, but for postgrad (research) work a lot seems to ride on who you studied under and their position in the field. So if a new university can provide exceptional professors it could still come out with a glowing reputation

 

[Mystic Twilight]

The reason I am thinking this, is that the new universities will not have a reputation of some sort when they begin. Do employers not consider where the applicant's for a job studied and the reputation of the university?

Yes they do, if the pool of job seekers is saturated with graduates. In SA's job climate, having a qualification of anything (within reason) yields much better than the same person who has no degree.

My understanding of FET is that they are similar to technikons, if not the same, except they specialise in practicality instead of dabbling in some theory. I keep hearing artisans being mentioned. Given the current state of education, in my opinion building more universities doesn't solve the problem, it just relieves the stats on the number of unemployed and converts unemployed into varsity drop outs. I'm not saying don't build more universities, having more will increase numerically the number of graduates yearly, but it will also numerically increase the number of failures, if not expanding it geometrically given how ill-equipped the majority of high school leavers are. FET, technikons and non-degree institutions should, in theory, be a better choice given the current average of matriculants (and the level of those post matric and never completing matric), since it should, in theory again, allow you to raise the base skill that society has. A very big gaping issue I'm seeing is that all these institutions require you to finish matric. In a perfect scenario that isn't a problem, but given the current context, it would be beneficial to have institutions that allow for further training without matric being a necessity which will therefore allow those unable to become CEO's to at least have a way to feed themselves in a sustainable manner, such as carpentry, etc. Im not referring to cleaning or gardening, but jobs that in the past used to have guilds and were propagated through apprenticeship and worked under a master of the trade. Of course this doesn't help when every second adolescent is busy dreaming of driving fast cars, drinking champagne and eating sushi off a sexy body.

I read an article last year dwelling on why there is such a big drive for people to go to university. The salary gap between someone with a university degree and someone without one was given as the primary reason. This gives arise to the notion that if I just get a degree I can get soooo much more money. I can't remember the numbers they quoted -- I'll dig a bit more and try to find the article.

Can anyone with a bit more international knowledge comment on this? Compared to other countries, is the salary spread between different jobs smaller than in SA?

EDIT: Not the one I was looking for, but it'll do.
SOUTH AFRICA: High returns from post-school education

Even in this article from 5 years back they already make note of graduate unemployment...

Depends on country, web pages like 9gag often have jokes about getting a job at McD if you have no degree. In places like Tokyo and Hong Kong, the guy standing behind the bank teller busy filing your deposit has a BCom degree whereas here they probably just finished matric.

 

[dlk001]

The reason I am thinking this, is that the new universities will not have a reputation of some sort when they begin. Do employers not consider where the applicant's for a job studied and the reputation of the university?

It will indeed take time to build reputation but if academic quality is perceived to be high, graduates will be employable.

 

[ponder]

So if a new university can provide exceptional professors it could still come out with a glowing reputation

Yip, you just need the right people as with everything else in life.

 

[dlk001]

I read an article last year dwelling on why there is such a big drive for people to go to university. The salary gap between someone with a university degree and someone without one was given as the primary reason. This gives arise to the notion that if I just get a degree I can get soooo much more money. I can't remember the numbers they quoted -- I'll dig a bit more and try to find the article. Can anyone with a bit more intern...

It varies a lot depending which career you take and determined by supply-demand.

e.g. The salary gap between a Civil/Mining engineering graduate and technologist has narrowed. If everyone goes for an engineering degree, then there will be higher demand for technologist who are equally critical in implementation of the engineering designs.

B.Tech degree in Civil with 8yrs can earn 650k which is a competitive salary for a BSc degree in Civil with 5yrs experience or more.