HR Pulse

R113 million deficit for tertiary institutions: Where did all the money go?

Figures released by Stats SA on Wednesday state that tertiary institutions in South Africa, for the 2013 financial year, recorded a deficit of R113 million. If these bodies are so much in debt, this begs the question: where did all the money go?

Throughout this year, tertiary institutions have been dogged with many, many troubles. The year kicked off with rampant strikes at campuses, such as the Durban University of Technology (DUT), where students attacked campuses and even went so far as to assault innocent employees who were valiantly trying to perform their jobs and protect university property. The reasons for these strikes were the lack of funding being forthcoming in the National Students Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).

Reports yesterday state that the department of higher education is looking to hire more academic staff members for tertiary institutions and is seeking R169 million for this project. Surely if they knew that there was such a shortage of academic staff members, why didn't they use the R113 million for this purpose? It's not like they were short of money. According to News24, tertiary institutions received the following monies in the 2013 financial year:

• Cash receipts from operating activities came to R53 101 million, an increase R4 478 million from 2012 while other receipts increased by R2 29 million, and
• Grants increased by R2 183 million.

The department of education should be wary of pouring money into a black hole...

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.