UCT and SRC strike deal to help students with outstanding debt

Hundreds of students marched on the University of Cape Town campus last week protesting against financial exclusion. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks / GroundUp

Students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) returned to lectures on campus on Monday after several days of protests over student debt. This comes as an agreement between the UCT council and Student Representative Council (SRC) was reached on Thursday, 20 February.

The first week of lectures had been disrupted by hundreds of students blocking entry and marching on campus. This forced some lectures to move online.

SRC members demanded that management give concessions to financially excluded students who were academically eligible to register but unable to settle their outstanding debt.

In a statement on 21 February, Norman Arendse, chair of the UCT council, said that the university’s historic student debt currently stands at R864m.

The SRC and UCT jointly proposed on a case-by-case basis to consider, among others, students who are academically eligible but lost financial aid funding; students who have made significant partial payments to their 2024 debt; and students who have secured loans or bursaries for 2025.

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The last category has 1,189 students who are “self-funded” and have not made payment towards their fees, which the university deems “high risk”. These students collectively owe UCT about R123m.

Arendse stressed that the university will not be “covering or waiving” the debt and that students would remain responsible for their own debt.

In a statement on Friday, the SRC said: “While this is an improvement from the initial position of the university executive, which had initially refused to grant any concessions, we maintain that more needs to be done. We remain unwavering in our commitment to ensuring that the doors of learning are open to all students, regardless of their financial background.”

This article was originally published on GroundUp.

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