Against the pedagogy of debt in South African higher education

Abstract

On the back of decades of austerity, marketisation, credentialization and related neoliberal conceptions of education and society, a student debt crisis has emerged in higher education (HE). Despite the well-documented history of government-guaranteed income contingent loans (ICLs) indenturing students and their present and future families, such loans continue to be canvassed by policymakers and interest groups as an ideal ladder of educational opportunity, particularly for students from traditionally excluded communities. In this paper, the author brings together insights from Jeffrey Williams’ Pedagogy of Debt, Carter G Woodson’s Miseducation, Ha-Joon Chang’s idea of Bad Samaritans, and Kwame Nkrumah’s theory of Sham Independence as conceptual building blocks to reinforce the wall of resistance against the orthodoxy of debt as a paradigm for HE funding in South Africa. To add to the student debt abolition movements and the voices calling for freeing public HE, this paper critically reviews the recommendations of South Africa’s 2017 Fees Commission Report. This is done to offer an analysis that makes explicit the likely impact of the proposed student loan policy on South Africa. As we imagine transitioning towards the new African University, this paper makes a case for freeing public HE for all, on the basis of mutual aid, transitional and reparative justice.