Staff Reporter

Nearly 10,000 university-owned residence beds are unavailable because renovations remain outstanding, as South Africa struggles to provide enough affordable accommodation for students.

Higher Education and Training Minister Buti Manamela said preliminary departmental information showed 9,907 university-owned beds were currently unavailable.

Speaking at Parliament’s student accommodation colloquium in Cape Town, Manamela said the shortage of beds was compounded by slow infrastructure delivery, maintenance backlogs and weaknesses in the system used to place and fund students.

“A bursary without a bed is access on paper. A bed without safety is shelter without dignity. And an accommodation system without accountability can become a subsidy for failure, exploitation and corruption,” Manamela said.

A Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) survey conducted in March found that TVET colleges had only 9,968 institution-owned beds, while 39% of the residences that responded were assessed as being in poor condition.

“A bed under construction is not yet a bed for a student. A bed standing empty because a bathroom, roof, bulk connection or procurement process has failed is also not a bed for a student,” Manamela said.

He said infrastructure projects were being delayed during feasibility studies, procurement, contracting and construction, as well as by problems connecting developments to bulk municipal services.

Maintenance was also being deferred until entire residence blocks became unusable.

“The problem is not only that we need more money. We also need better planning, stronger project-management capability and consequences for persistent non-delivery,” Manamela said.

Manamela said he has demanded a project-by-project recovery plan for the 9,907 unavailable beds, detailing the institution responsible, the bottleneck affecting the project, a revised completion date and what intervention is required.

The plan must also be considered alongside the government’s funded construction pipeline.

DHET and the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) have also been given 60 days to produce a reconciled national picture of student accommodation.

The assessment must identify available, occupied, empty, unserviceable and planned beds, as well as accommodation rates, accreditation status and major safety and delivery risks.

Within the same period, DHET and NSFAS must present Manamela with options for a differentiated student accommodation pricing framework for 2027 and proposals for a new model dividing responsibilities between the department, NSFAS, institutions and accommodation providers.

Manamela said the current system had produced problems despite attempts to regulate the student accommodation market.

A single accommodation funding ceiling had helped restrain prices, but could have unintended consequences, particularly because the cost of student housing differs significantly between locations, he said.

In expensive urban areas, the difference between the funding ceiling and actual accommodation costs could be shifted to students or institutional debt, while elsewhere the maximum allowance could effectively become the market price, encouraging providers that previously charged less to increase their rates.

Manamela said a future framework should instead consider factors including location, accommodation grade, room type, utilities, security, internet connectivity, transport and operating costs.

He also raised concerns about fragmented accommodation records.

Universities, NSFAS, accommodation providers and students could hold different information about registrations, placements, occupation dates, leases and payments, creating a risk that legitimate providers were not paid, students faced eviction or public money was spent on empty accommodation.

“Every rand paid for a ghost bed is stolen twice: once from the public purse and once from the student who needed a real bed,” Manamela said.

Manamela said a ministerial review appointed in 2010 and reported in 2011 found universities had 107,598 residence beds, enough for only about one in five full-time contact students at the time.

The estimated shortage was already 195,815 beds, while maintenance, refurbishment and modernisation requirements exceeded R4 billion in 2010 prices.

Government has since expanded student housing through infrastructure grants and the Student Housing Infrastructure Programme.

Manamela said 9,721 beds had been completed under the first phase of that programme by March 2025, with further projects under construction or in preparation.

But he said increasing the number of new beds would have to go hand in hand with recovering existing university accommodation that had fallen out of use.

The TVET residence condition assessment would similarly have to be converted into a funded repair and development programme rather than simply remain a survey, he said.

He said he intended to report back to Parliament before the end of November on the national accommodation baseline, the proposed 2027 model, the accommodation funding cap review and progress in recovering unusable beds.

“Parliament should be able to measure us against decisions, owners and dates – not merely against another statement of intention,” he said.

INSIDE EDUCATION

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