Student Funding (In)equity in South African Higher Education Fuelling or Failing Futures?

The question of what would constitute a just and equitable student funding model remains a major research and policy concern for higher education (HE) in Africa and beyond. Out of decades of austerity, marketisation and related neoliberal conceptions of education and society, and the normalising of debt as a primary means of funding students in higher education, inequity has persisted and the very soul of public HE is at stake. In this chapter, with South Africa as our focal point, we explore the intersection of student funding policy and inequity by critically reviewing and analysing the evolution of post-apartheid South Africa’s student financial aid models to illuminate the gaps, sore points, uncertainties and deficiencies that have triggered sector-wide unrest and instability in the recent past. We argue that the project of reimagining a New African University would be incomplete without considerations for new, just and inclusive models of funding students. We conceptualise the increased reliance on student tuition fees to compensate for austerity cuts and other dimensions of marketisation of HE as a foundation of inequity in HE experiences. We advance that, to the extent that cost-sharing models remain a barrier to equitable HE participation, they are failing instead of fuelling just futures in education. We reassert the call for African HE leaders and policymakers to recognize the pitfalls of HE marketisation and begin to reimagine a free African University, free from destructive from market logics. Finally, we put forward social solidarity, and transitional and reparative justice as core tenets that should guide South Africa and Africa’s pursuit of a just, equitable and sustainable student funding model.