Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items

The future of universities – Prof Burger part of DHET Expert Panel on University Fees

17 June 2025 | Story Lacea Loader | Photo Supplied

Prof Philippe Burger, Dean: Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of the Free State (UFS), has been appointed as a member of a team that will represent Universities South Africa (USAf) in a DHET Expert Panel on University Fees. The panel, which comprises representatives from USAf, the DHET, and NSFAS, focuses on the affordability of tuition fees and the future sustainability of the sector, looking at potential solutions for tuition fees beyond the 2025 academic year.

With more than 30 years of experience in higher education, mostly in management positions, Prof Burger understands the sector well. Combined with his expertise in macroeconomics, fiscal policy, and public sector economics and finance, he is uniquely positioned to make a significant contribution to this task team.

Universities matter

Despite the high national unemployment rate (32%), Prof Burger points out that unemployment is largely a problem of the unskilled. “The unemployment rate of people with university degrees is about 12%, much lower than the national average,” he notes. “South Africa has a large shortage of skilled labour, which it needs to grow the economy and improve lives.” He trusts that universities can fill this void, in addition to providing the thought leaders needed to take the country forward.

Although universities in South Africa are experiencing financial pressures, they continue to lift thousands of people to better lives each year. Universities make a profoundly positive contribution to the country and its population, and Prof Burger believes that once the public is fully aware of this, it will support broader discussions in favour of higher education.

The challenge

Universities face several cost pressures that are causing an increase in cost at a higher rate than consumer inflation, Prof Burger explains. “For instance, we buy equipment, software, and journal subscriptions that are all priced in US dollars. Affected by the exchange rate, these types of expenses have increased by much more than the price of consumer goods in South Africa over the past ten years.” According to Prof Burger, increased operational costs, coupled with constrained university income, necessitate a model that will provide universities with enough income to cover their costs while delivering quality education in the long run.

The solution

“There is an argument for universities to become more efficient, and there is certainly room for universities to look at their cost structures, but there is also a limit to what we can do,” Prof Burger says. “It is important to stress that we cannot talk about the sustainability of universities and not contextualise it within a framework that seeks to deliver quality learning, teaching, and research. In the absence of that quality, we will not be able to address the skills shortages and thought leadership that the country needs. And that is the sustainability we need to talk about – the sustainability of quality education and scholarship,” he concludes.

News Archive

UFS committed to a two-language model

2010-08-13

Prof. Jonathan Jansen

The University of the Free State (UFS) will continue to use a two-language model while it builds capacity for research and teaching in Sotho languages.

This was announced by the Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS, Prof. Jonathan Jansen, when he delivered the 29th DF Malherbe Memorial Lecture on the Main Campus in Bloemfontein yesterday, on the topic: The politics and prospects of Afrikaans, and Afrikaans schools and universities.

“In the course of time black students will learn Afrikaans, white students will learn Sesotho, and all students will learn decent English,” he said.

“Classes will remain in English and Afrikaans, especially in the first years of study. Dual-medium classrooms will break down the racial isolation where outstanding university teachers are comfortable in both languages. Parallel-medium classes will exist where large numbers enable such a facility.”

He said schools and higher education institutions that continue to use language as an instrument of exclusion, rather than inclusion, would remain “culturally and linguistically impoverished”. He said the future of Afrikaans in these institutions lay in its inter-dependence and co-existence with other languages.

“A strong two-language model of education, whether in the form of double- or parallel-medium instruction within a racially integrated campus environment is the only way in which Afrikaans can and should flourish in a democratic South Africa,” he said.

“It is the only model that resolves two problems at the same time: the demand for racial equity, on the one hand, and the demand for language recognition, on the other hand.”

He said the idea of an exclusively Afrikaans university was a “dangerous” one.

“It will lock up white students in a largely uni-racial and uni-lingual environment, given that the participation rates in higher education for Afrikaans-speaking black students are and for a long time will remain very low,” he said.

“This will be a disaster for many Afrikaans-speaking students for it will mean that the closed circles of social, cultural and linguistic socialization will remain uninterrupted from family to school to university.

“Rather than prepare students for a global world marked by language flexibility and cultural diversity, students will remain locked into a sheltered racial environment at the very stage where most South African students first experience the liberation of the intellect and the broadening of opportunities for engaging with the world around them.

“The choice at the Afrikaans universities, therefore, must never be a choice between Afrikaans and English; it must be both.”

Download lecture

Media Release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Director: Strategic Communication (actg)
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl@ufs.ac.za
13 August 2010

Back

Economic and Management Sciences

Education

Health Sciences

The Humanities

Law

Natural and Agricultural Sciences

Theology and Religion

Open Distance Learning

Business School

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept