Great! On 3/7/10, Dominic Tweedie <[email protected]> wrote: > > [image: Sunday Independent banner] > > > Stop garnishing former students > > > Caiphus Kgosana, Sunday Independent, Johannesburg, 7 March 2010 > > POOR students should be given access to free tertiary education and race > should be scrapped as a tool to identify those in need. > > Beneficiaries of student loans who have been blacklisted by the National > Student Financial Aid Scheme for failure to repay the loans should have > their names taken off credit bureau blacklists. > > The debiting of salaries of former student loan beneficiaries through > garnishee orders to force them to repay has been declared unconstitutional > and should be stopped. > > These are some of the recommendations of an expert panel appointed by Higher > Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande to review the functioning of > the state-funded financial aid scheme for students at colleges and > universities. > > Independent Newspapers has a copy of the report compiled by the review > panel, chaired by Professor Marcus Balintulo. The report is expected to be > published in the next two weeks. > > If its recommendations are accepted, the higher education landscape could > see radical changes. > > This comes in a week that the SA Students' Congress (Sasco) tried to shut > down nine of the country's major universities in protest against excessive > tuition fees and the exclusion of students who fail to pay. Sasco is > demanding free education. > > The report recommends that the government should draw up policy that would > give effect to providing free higher education for poor students. > > "The review committee recommends a higher education student financial aid > model that progressively provides free higher education to undergraduate > level students from poor and working-class communities." > > Students from lower-middle-income families should be provided "student loans > on favourable terms", the report recommends. > > A move towards free university study for poor students was one of the ANC's > resolutions at its Polokwane conference in 2007. > > It is likely to go down well with the ruling party, its alliance partners > and Sasco. > > The report also calls on the government to substantially increase funding of > higher education and the financial aid scheme to increase the number of poor > students in higher education institutions. > > The fund was allocated R2.1 billion in this financial year, which will rise > to R2.7bn next year. > > The panel has suggested that race be removed as a means of identifying a > student's financial needs, saying the race-based formula is discriminatory. > > "Patently this is wrong, particularly so in view of the... emergence of a > black middle and upper class and the spreading of seriously low levels of > poverty among white students as equity and redress policies are beginning to > show results," the report says. > > It said this should be replaced by a class-based formula. > > From: http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5380487 > > > > -- > You are subscribed. This footer can help you. > Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to > this message. > You can visit the group WEB SITE at > http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery > options, pages, files and membership. > To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . > You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to > put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to > this address (repeat): [email protected] . >
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