Guest: Prof. Ahmed Bawa - Chief Executive Officer of Universities South Africa

University education generates both private and public goods. Universities generate public goods when they supply the health system with high quality doctors, nurses and clinical technicians; when their research yields innovative technology that meets the country’s needs, or makes new medical discoveries such as that made recently by one of our universities, about malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Conversely, university education generates a private good when graduates, by virtue of their high-level skills, get better-paying jobs and lead relatively better standards of living than their peers with no post-school education. Universities South Africa therefore subscribes to the principle of a cost-sharing model to cater for the cost of the public goods of higher education on the one hand (through government subsidy), and that of the private goods on the other (through tuition fees).