.png)
50 signatures reached
To: TUT management & Ministry of Higher Education
End financial exclusion of students at TUT
Access to education is crucial for the growth & development of our nation. Yet students continue to experience financial exclusion which hinders their social mobility in a way that allows everyone regardless of social strata the abilities to to prosper through meaningful employment opportunities. It is time in SA to finally allow students who have yet to settle their accounts access to their qualifications so they can at least get the chance to acquire work so that they might begin the process to earn the money to settle those debts while simultaneously improving the families & communities which they come from.
It is crucial to assist those afflicted with poverty and are disallowed from continuing to advance this course of action by making costs near to impossible for students who could not qualify for NSFSAS subsidies and have little to no access to these kinds of funds.
Many of my own former classmates from TUT are facing this struggle and although others might get jobs outside of what we studied for many end up forsaking the work they did for a retail job which hardly used even 15% of the potential of these young people who eventually lose hope in the system and the claim that education is the key to success.
We can not watch so many once hopeful academically gifted former students be excluded on the basis of fees that they are not yet able to afford. At least by allowing them access to their qualifications might assist in ending many although not all of their woes by redeeming their hope in this mythical key of success our society keeps reminding us about.
Why is this important?
Without the qualification one studies for many doors remain inaccessible to the students who cannot afford to settle account while they have academically qualified to graduate. If the purpose of our nations creation was meant to usher in an age where social caveats become meaningless & society is developed by empowering those who were previously left out of the development of their fatherland then surely denying access to someone whose single mother might have been able to pay their fees but falls short because of the death or insolvency of a parent or guardian; should that person continue to live in the shadow of poverty accepting any menial work while depriving the nation of an educated and industrious talent?
Surely our nation can do better by a youth who offers so much promise for tomorrow; and surely a youth whose only solemn plea to its government and institutions of higher learning remains steadfast and sincere in the acquisition of education which is meant to benefit the entire society regardless of race, class, gender, religion, sexual orientation or whatever artificial social constructs that stop us from looking at people as they are; people.
The promises made to the parents of my generation are now long overdue; our youth need their society to raise them up because without our youth in a position towards social mobility the continued degeneration of our nation is a gurantee. Economic apartheid needs to be abolished so that no more African children have to feel outcasts in the land of their birth based only on the commas and numbers on their academic records instead of the fortitude of the discipline it took to achieve these qualifications amidst strenuous circumstances. We can no longer turn our backs on the vulnerable members of our society and expect them to fend for themselves and then wonder why crime, murder, drug abuse and the like continue to adversely affect SA's youth.
The time for change is NOW!