Prof de Villiers, who assumed his position in April, spoke to Business Day this week about how continuing troubles at NSFAS have stymied universities' efforts to meet transformation objectives.
The funding shortage at the multibillion-rand scheme means fewer disadvantaged students will gain access to a university, explains Prof de Villiers. "We want to increase access (to higher education) so we have NSFAS, but it is not well run. So focus on (fixing) that," he advises.
Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande this year said that a probe into corruption at the scheme would be launched.
The scheme gets a significant portion of the department's budget - set at R39bn for 2014-15, of which NSFAS was allocated R9.5bn, and expected to rise to R46.3bn in 2017-18. But the distribution of the scheme's loans has been at the centre of violent student protests on campuses throughout the country in recent years because of a funding shortfall.
Refreshingly, Higher Education spokesman Khaye Nkwanyana concurs with the rector's assessment that the problems at NSFAS need urgent attention.
"We agree with him on ... corruption. We have taken a decision to institute a forensic investigation on (the scheme). The minister will make an announcement soon when we start probing," he says.
The department is convinced there is organised collusion in universities between certain officials and students to redirect "this huge government money" through corrupt means at the expense of poor black students, Mr Nkwanyana says.
"We allocated R9.5bn (to the scheme) this year alone, the highest ever, for 405,000 beneficiaries in both universities and colleges. But we already have students who did not get it.... It is a serious issue for us as a department, hence the forensic investigation," explains Mr Nkwanyana.
Addressing the troubles bedevilling NSFAS, as well as funding in general, is perhaps as equally pertinent as the debate on transforming SA's universities, which hit headlines recently, says Prof de Villiers.
For its part, Stellenbosch University last year awarded R588m in bursaries and loans to 37% of its students in need of financial assistance - 55% of which went to black, coloured and Indian students based on merit and financial need. "Because greater diversity is a priority for us, we want to award even more recruitment bursaries," says Prof De Villiers.
The University of Cape Town was gripped by the #RhodesMustFall movement, which successfully agitated for the removal of a Cecil John Rhodes statue, among other reforms on campus.
A group of Stellenbosch students and staff have also mobilised a movement called Open Stellenbosch, through which they called for transformation. The group wants the university's Afrikaans policy changed, its institutional culture to diversify and for Stellenbosch to acknowledge its complicity in apartheid.
But the university is doing everything possible to transform itself, says Prof de Villiers.
Its language policy gives equal status to English and Afrikaans, and wants to provide 75% of its modules in both languages in the coming years. Postgraduate classes are entirely in English, he adds.
At his inauguration this year, Prof de Villiers announced the immediate removal of a plaque honouring Hendrik Verwoerd and ordered it be sent to a museum on campus. He also reiterated the university's apology for apartheid, first made in 2000.
"Stellenbosch is not an Afrikaans university, neither is it an English university nor a Xhosa university. It is a multilingual, world-class university that is a national asset," according to Prof de Villiers.
The composition of the university's student body, he says, has become more diverse and the numbers reflect this narrative: it has gone from having just 762 black, coloured and Indian students in 1990, to registering 11,386 such students, who make up 37.76% of Stellenbosch's 30,000 total student body this year.
The goal is 50% black, coloured and Indian students by 2018, when the university will celebrate its centenary.
But what about the composition of its staff?
The university is focused on "growing its own timber" to grow its black, coloured and Indian academic staff, he says. But "it will be very difficult to change the professoriate. After my five-year term, however, it will be different," says Prof de Villiers.
The clock is ticking.
Source: Business Day via I-Net Bridge
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