Racial disparities persist at universities – Survey

News24 02 June 2017

There are still deep racial disparities among young adults at universities in South Africa, the General Household Survey released last week shows, writes Alex Mitchley for News24.

Despite the fact that most students are black, the proportion of people in this population group who get an education remains low compared to whites. Just over 3.3% of blacks aged between 18 and 29 attended university in 2016, compared to more than 17% of whites. Of the 766,812 students enrolled in higher education institutions in 2016, 66.4% were black, 18.7% were white, 7.8% were Indian or Asian, and 7.1% coloured.

“The proportions between the same time periods have remained relatively stable. Deep and racial disparities persist,” Statistician-General Pali Lehohla said. The main reasons given for not attending an educational institution were no money for fees or poor academic performance. In addition, nearly 10% of men and 4.9% of women who took part in the survey believed education was useless.
Full report on the News24 site

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