IT WOULD likely be five years before SA could expand the further education and training (FET) college system widely enough for the colleges to take on twice the number of students they do at present, Higher Education SA’s (Hesa) new president, Ihron Rensburg, said yesterday.

The government said last year it wanted the number of FET students to increase from about 400000 to 1-million by 2014, to make inroads into SA’s enormous youth unemployment problem.

Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande has also called on universities to help his department in this endeavour.

“It was imperative that SA built a well-functioning post- school education system because the country had 2,8-million citizens between the ages of 18 and 24 who were not employed, studying or in training, and this was the stuff of revolutions,” Prof Rensburg said.

A student number increase of this magnitude — 75% — would present major challenges — the training of about 20000 lecturers that would need to be done before the expansion process could really begin, Prof Rensburg said.

It would take one to two years to properly develop new qualifications, and at least about four years to train lecturers, which meant it was likely that the expansion could be delayed for another five years, he said.

Department of Higher Education and Training director-general Mary Metcalfe said while a lot would depend on the kind of training courses used to expand the sector, Prof Rensburg was correct in saying that expansion requires careful planning and consideration.

Prof Rensburg said Hesa had established a team of top academics to liaise with Dr Nzimande’s department on how to ensure that a new range of FET qualifications that go beyond matric level are of quality and can be used when graduates apply to further their studies at universities of technology.

“The college system now doesn’t really offer post-school education … We sit with a college system that cannot accommodate the genuine hopes, dreams and desires of our young people,” Prof Rensburg said.

The colleges could deliver mid- level skills the South African economy needs in order to grow the economy.

“We are just not in the game. India, Brazil, Russia and China are ahead of us and we understand that, but we don’t have much time. We have one or two years to put in train a plan of action,” he said.

The four countries, known as the Brics, are deemed to all be at a similar stage of newly advanced economic development.

Published in Business Day: 2010-09-10