Prior to the advent of South Africa’s democratic dispensation in 1994, the higher education funding framework, administered through what is today the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), recognised that universities were not solely sites of academic instruction and research. Importantly, the subsidy formula explicitly provided for student development programmes, enabling institutions to cultivate well-rounded graduates through structured co-curricular and out-of-classroom learning initiatives.
These programmes were instrumental in nurturing what we now refer to as graduate attributes: leadership, critical thinking, ethical reasoning, civic responsibility, and workplace readiness. Student development was not incidental; it was funded, intentional, and embedded within the institutional mandate.
In the post-1994 era, however, amid necessary and urgent efforts to expand access and redress historical inequities, the dedicated subsidy for student development was gradually eroded and ultimately removed from the institutional funding formula. While this shift enabled massification and broadened participation, it also produced an unintended yet deeply consequential outcome: the systematic underfunding of holistic student development.
This erosion has disproportionately affected historically disadvantaged institutions, many of which lack the discretionary resources required to sustain robust co-curricular programmes. As a result, countless students, particularly those from vulnerable socio-economic backgrounds, graduate without adequate exposure to structured developmental opportunities that cultivate employability skills and social capital.
The consequences are evident in persistently high graduate unemployment rates and recurring employer concerns about work-readiness. South Africa is not confronting a shortage of graduates per se; rather, it faces a deficit of work-ready graduates equipped with both disciplinary knowledge and transferable competencies.
Addressing this structural gap requires a deliberate and strategic policy intervention.
Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs), established under the Skills Development Act to advance skills development aligned with labour-market needs, are well-positioned to play a transformative role. SETA funding should be intentionally leveraged to support accredited, structured Outside-the-Classroom Curriculum Programmes that operate alongside formal academic studies.
Organisations such as Pathwayz Development and the South African Council of Graduates offer viable institutional platforms for designing, standardising, and implementing such programmes at scale.
These initiatives should:
- Be formally structured and scaffolded across the student lifecycle
- Be credit-bearing, or aligned with national qualification frameworks where appropriate
- Integrate experiential learning, leadership development, digital literacy, and workplace readiness
- Be co-developed with industry partners to ensure relevance and responsiveness
- Include rigorous monitoring, evaluation, and certification mechanisms to ensure quality and measurable impact
By repositioning student development as a funded and accredited component of higher education, supported through strategic SETA partnerships, South Africa can meaningfully bridge the divide between academic achievement and employability.
This is not merely a funding challenge; it is a systemic design imperative. If universities are to produce graduates capable of contributing meaningfully to both the economy and society, holistic development must once again be treated as a core, properly resourced function of the higher education system.
Reinstating structured support for outside-the-classroom learning is not a nostalgic return to the past; it is a strategic investment in the future of South Africa’s graduates.
