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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

Leader of Bafokeng nation delivers a guest lecture at UFS

2011-05-05

Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi, leader of the Royal Bafokeng, Proff. Teuns Verschoor, Vice-Rector: Institutional Affairs, Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of our university, and Hendri Kroukamp, Dean of our Faculty Economic and Management Sciences (acting).
Photo: Stephen Collett

Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi, leader of the Royal Bafokeng nation, asked the pertinent questions: Who decides our fate as South Africans? Who owns our future? in the JN Boshoff Memorial Lecture at our university.

He said: “It’s striking that today, with all the additional freedoms and protections available to us, we have lost much of the pioneering spirit of our ancestors. In this era of democracy and capitalist growth (systems based on choice, accountability, and competition), we nevertheless invest government with extraordinary responsibility for our welfare, livelihoods, and even our happiness. We seem to feel that government should not only reconcile and regulate us, but also house us, school us, heal us, employ us, even feed us.

“And what government can’t do, the private sector will. Create more jobs, invest in social development and the environment, bring technical innovations to our society, make us part of the global village. But in forfeiting so much authority over our lives and our society to the public and private sectors, I believe we have given away something essential to our progress as people and a nation: the fundamental responsibility we bear for shaping our future according to aims, objectives, and standards determined by us.”

He shared the turnaround of the education system in the 45 schools in the 23 communities of the Bafokeng nation and the effect of greater community, NGOs, the church and other concerned parties’ engagement in the curricula and activities with the audience. School attendance improved from 80% to 90% in two years and the top learners in the matric maths in Northwest were from the Bafokeng nation.

Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi stressed the need for people to help to make South Africa a better place: “As a country, we speak often of the need for leadership, the loss of principles, a decline in values. But too few of us are willing to accept the risk, the expense, the liability, and sometimes even the blame, that accompanies attempting to make things better. We are trying to address pressing issues we face as a community, in partnership with government, and with the tools and resources available to us as a traditionally governed community. It goes without saying that we can and should play a role in deciding our fate as members of this great country, and in the Royal Bafokeng Nation, as small as it is, we are determined to own our own future.”

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