Business Day
*Call for US-type ‘gap-bridging’ colleges* *Sue Blaine, Business Day, Johannesburg, 21 July 2010*SA SHOULD introduce US-style community colleges at which youths could be prepared for further study at a vocational college or university, senior Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) official Michael Cosser said yesterday.
Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande is planning a summit on further education and training for September and five task teams have begun to re-examine the sector, looking at its legal framework, how examinations are conducted, the programme offerings, funding and operational support for the colleges.
Adding community colleges to the education setting in SA would remove the pressure on universities to bridge the gaps in high school education that lead to universities spending increasing portions of their budget on programmes to bring school leavers’ knowledge and academic skills up to the required level.
“It would be a gap-bridger. A year when they (school leavers) can get up to speed and not put pressure on the universities,” Mr Cosser said.
The US-style community colleges are primarily two-year public institutions providing higher education and lower-level tertiary education, granting certificates, diplomas and associate’s degrees, according to Wikipedia.
SA’s post-school education and training landscape was the opposite of many other countries, with higher education enrolling twice as many students as further education and training colleges, and SA had about 2,8-million young people not in the education system, training or working — “a serious problem”, said Mr Cosser.
“Present needs are not being met ... What we have now seems not to be working ... We need something else,” he said.
While Dr Nzimande had suggested SA should expand its college sector for further education and training to take on 1-million students within five years, from the 125000 currently enrolled, Mr Cosser said he believed community colleges better fitted the bill because they offered an easier move to further or higher education.
Mr Cosser proposed that SA do away with the current education system with three “bands” — the general education and training band (up to grade 9), the further education and training band (up to grade 12 level) and the higher education and training band — and replace them with two broad phases, basic education and post- basic education. This would fit neatly into the recent splitting of the education ministry into two, basic education and higher education and training.
SA should also return to a model in which nursing, teaching and agriculture colleges provided vocation-specific training, said Mr Cosser. This was a proposal that had already been made by the African National Congress at its tide-turning 2007 Polokwane conference, and by Dr Nzimande since taking over at the ministry.
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