South Africa unveils tools to fund postgraduate education
South Africa has unveiled a toolkit for philanthropic donors supporting higher education amid a shortage of funding for postgraduate students. The webinar on August 20 was organized by the Independent Philanthropy Association South Africa (Ipasa), Daily Maverick reports.
The event was attended by representatives of foundations, universities and scholarship-program specialists. Ipasa programme manager Louise Starrock said the materials were developed after several months of consultations, as many donors lack a shared knowledge base for work in this area.
Funding gap
Lynn Morris, deputy vice-chancellor for research and innovation at the University of the Witwatersrand, said the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, NSFAS, receives more than 50 billion rand annually to support undergraduate students. At the same time, the budget of the National Research Foundation for postgraduate education funding in 2024 amounted to only 1 billion rand, she said, and had approximately halved compared with 2017.
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Morris noted that students who received full funding for undergraduate studies have almost no comparable support after moving to postgraduate education. According to her, around 80% of student debt is at the postgraduate level, while about a quarter of doctoral students at the University of the Witwatersrand do not complete their studies.
New resources for donors
The Ipasa package includes a guide to developing funding programmes, a handbook on supporting postgraduate education and research, a step-by-step roadmap, and templates for agreements, selection criteria, budgets, and monitoring and evaluation systems. The materials also describe models of top-up funding, co-funding and support for educational institutions, rather than only standard full-cost scholarships.
Representatives of the Cyril Ramaphosa Education Trust and the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation stressed that scholarship support should not be limited to tuition payments. They named psychosocial assistance and mentoring among the important components. Ipasa's resources became openly accessible after the webinar concluded.
