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If NSFAS is pleading poverty how are we going to solve youth unemployment?

Earlier this week, we reported that the South African Students Congress (Sasco) called for SA students at tertiary institutions to go on strike against the National Students Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). Students at many institutions heeded Sasco’s call; however, the strike seems to be a wasted effort as the NSFAS is pleading poverty which means that even if they wanted to pay more towards students’ education, the body wouldn’t be able to. So how are we going to fix the staggeringly high youth unemployment rate?

According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), South Africa has the third-highest youth unemployment rate in the world and estimates that approximately 50% of individuals between the ages of 15 and 24 – precisely the people who should be preparing for (or firmly entrenched in) tertiary education - are unemployed.

With funding from the NSFAS not being a viable solution to our youth unemployment situation, one’s thoughts turn to the youth wage subsidy proposed by the Employment Tax Incentive Act. This act proposes giving companies an amount off their PAYE for each unemployed youth who wouldn’t have had a job unless that company had employed them. However, to get a position in a company you need a qualification and to make this happen you need to go to a tertiary institution.

I wonder how this catch-22 situation will be solved?

Lia Marus is the editor of HR Pulse. She has a BA in French, Italian and Linguistics from UCT, an MA in translation from Wits and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from the Wits Business School. She is currently studying towards her LLB through Unisa. Lia started her career off in corporate communications, where she worked as a sub-editor, researcher and marketing coordinator. She then heeded the call of the publishing world and went into the business-to-business publishing field. She worked as a sub-editor as well as a chief sub-editor. Before joining ITWeb, she managed an HR guidebook at a leading international publishing company.