Student protest damage to universities will cost billions to repair: Nzimande
Higher education and training minister Blade Nzimande says the destruction of infrastructure at universities during student protests will cost billions of rands to fix.
Nzimande was addressing the portfolio committee on higher education on Tuesday on the strategic plan for up to 2025 and the budget for it.
"We have possibly have reached a billion rand over the last five years. That's a huge amount of money that could have gone to make such a huge impact on the system."
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The department has also raised concerns of budget cuts that forced it to reprioritise funding to support the National Student Financial Aid Scheme.
"The reprioritisation of the budget and dealing with the shortfall in NSFAS did not start with student protests. We started much earlier than that.
"Already, last year it was becoming clearer to us that the fact that we are going to extend the academic year is going to have a huge implications not listed for NSFAS."
