Funding, inequalities, and access: An amalgam of challenges in South African higher education

The context of funding, inequalities, and access to higher education in South Africa is an ongoing challenge that has been tackled by government and private institutions. The nature of these challenges found in various public institutions of higher education across South Africa include limited social mobility, underrepresentation of certain groups in higher education, and financial insolvency of poor South Africans. This paper explores the source of the problem embedded in the history of South Africa because of the existence and intentions of apartheid and colonialism. A desktop method is used to collect the literature review on funding, inequalities, and access challenges. These includes the content and contextual analysis of the interconnection of the systemic, institutional, and personal challenges in higher education. John Rawl’s Theory of Social Justice underpins this paper as a lens to analyse the application of funding, inequalities, and access in higher education. The recommendations on the challenges are presented by addressing the problem of funding, inequalities, and access to higher education such as expanding access to higher education (e.g. expanding access through online learning platforms), implementing affirmative action policies (e.g. increase students enrolment from the disadvantaged communities), increasing public funding, generating third-stream income funds, provision of scholarships and bursaries, corporate sponsorship, and students’ agency.