South Africa’s higher education system is under increasing pressure following the release of the 2025 National Senior Certificate results, which recorded the highest matric pass rate in the country’s history.
On Monday, the Department of Basic Education announced that the class of 2025 achieved an overall pass rate of 88%, up from 87.3% in 2024.
While the results have been widely welcomed as a success for the schooling system, concerns are mounting about the capacity of higher education institutions to absorb the growing number of school leavers.
With hundreds of thousands of learners qualifying for post-school opportunities each year, limited university spaces, rising tuition fees and heavy reliance on the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) continue to raise questions around access, affordability and quality within the sector.
Education expert Professor Jonathan Jansen has warned that the high matric pass rate does not necessarily translate into readiness for university success. He argues that the Grade 12 results have become a weak predictor of academic performance at tertiary level.
“The schools produce more graduates than there are places for in universities. One of the reasons for that is that the Grade 12 results have become quite meaningless as a predictor of success at university,” Jansen said.
He added that a significant number of students who obtain bachelor’s passes struggle academically once admitted, with many failing in their first year or taking longer than the minimum time to complete their degrees.
“We have a highly inefficient system that takes students from school to university. The solution is not to build more universities, which would be a massive waste of public funding. The solution is to increase the examination standard and make it much higher,” Jansen said.
Listen to the full interview with Professor Jonathan Jansen Sishi below:
Meanwhile, alternatives such as Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges are not always accessible either. Private TVET institutions can be just as costly as universities, placing them out of reach for many families. At the same time, bogus colleges continue to exploit desperate students, often leaving them with debt and unrecognised qualifications.
The Department of Higher Education and Training has acknowledged the ongoing challenges. Director-General Dr Nkosinathi Sishi said the department is focusing on expanding access through digital and flexible learning models.
“Nowadays it’s largely the digitalisation of the system to allow learners located anywhere, whether in workplaces or institutions, to log in electronically and benefit from the infrastructure the department is working on,” Sishi said.
He noted that while universities currently have the capacity for about 230,000 new students, the number of learners exiting matric each year far exceeds that figure.
“We continue to battle this, and we take responsibility for it. We are working with our institutions,” Sishi added.
Listen to the full interview with Dr Nkosinathi Sishi below:
VOC News
Photo: DBE/X
