Timeline: 2019-2023 (completed)
Funder: Department of Higher Education and Training, administered and managed via Universities South Africa (USAf)
Principal investigators, Vimal Ranchhod and Nicola Branson (Co-PI from 2021), were joined by student researchers Aliya Chikte, Noreen Kajugusi, Matthew Kensett, Tshepo Molokoane, Nuvika Pillay, and Justin Standish-White.
The project’s motivation was to contribute to improving the long-term sustainability of the public university sector in South Africa. Disruptions in the university sector during 2015 and 2016, including student protests against fee increases and the need to insource staff, had raised concerns about financial stability.
The research aimed to estimate the cost of producing undergraduate-level graduates. The link between aggregate costs and tuition fees was unclear due to the complexity of universities and the various services they provide. Specific costs associated with teaching and training at the undergraduate level were unknown as there had been no costing exercise in South Africa in recent decades.
Four reports were produced during the project:
- A desktop literature review on relevant and related literature.
- This was done primarily to identify the methods that have been used elsewhere for the purposes of estimating the cost of producing graduates. Based on this review, we used an Activity Based Costing (ABC) approach in both the macro and micro studies.
- A macro-level study.
- In this report, we estimated the cost of training students at the undergraduate level in South African universities. We estimated both the annual cost of providing training, as well as the aggregate cost incurred to train students up to the point of obtaining their undergraduate qualifications. We perform our analyses for twenty-one of the twenty-six public universities in the country, utilising university level financial data combined with student and staff HEMIS data.
- A micro-level study.
- This report developed a framework to calculate the cost of producing an undergraduate-level graduate at the programme level. We examine the mechanical engineering and bachelor of arts programmes at two institutions in South Africa and developed a method that draws on data collected for routine administrative purposes. The method developed can be replicated for other programmes, repeated periodically, and applied, broadly, to other universities.
- A concluding synthesis report.