South Africa is grappling with a severe youth unemployment crisis, with statistics from the country's statistical agency, StatsSA, revealing a concerning upward trend in 2026. This crisis is not just an economic issue but a profound test of the country's post-1994 promise and its institutions' ability to prepare the future workforce. Every unemployed young person represents a lost opportunity, a missed contribution to the economy, and a potential crime statistic. The education system, particularly higher education, must be examined for its role in addressing this challenge.
Universities in South Africa have a primary mandate to respond to societal needs, but often, their leadership, curricula, and academic skills are out of step with economic and social demands. Many graduates leave university with theoretical knowledge but are unprepared to face problems, develop solutions, and create livelihoods. This is not an argument against academic scholarship but a call to ensure that scholarship is connected to the needs of society. Universities in countries with productive, competitive, and thriving economies are not isolated centers of learning but engines of innovation, skills development, and thought leadership.
South African universities must ask themselves critical questions about the value they bring to the national project and how this value will be measured. The public higher education system represents a substantial national investment, with the National Treasury allocating R48 billion in university transfers and R55 billion to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme in 2025. This investment carries a significant responsibility for universities to be financially astute, well-governed, and yield exponential knowledge dividends responsive to the economy's needs.
Concerns about institutional stewardship, poor management, financial misspending, unqualified academics, and the unemployability of graduates cannot be dismissed. Economist Dawie Roodt's critique of South African public higher education should prompt serious reflection. He raises a fundamental issue: with the substantial budget allocated to public universities, are they delivering the kind of value that South Africa urgently needs? The academic culture has been shaped by the imperative to "publish or perish," but this should not be the sole measure of academic excellence.
Regulatory bodies such as the National Research Foundation and the Department of Higher Education should judge universities not only by the number of papers they produce but also by the relevance of their curricula, the quality of the people they develop, and the problems those people are empowered to solve. The goal is not to replace fundamental research with applied knowledge but to bring the two into a more productive relationship. Knowledge should illuminate the world and help improve it.
A recent University of KwaZulu-Natal hackathon offers a practical example of this approach, where students from different disciplines worked together on problem briefs addressing pressing issues such as water, food, artificial intelligence, safety, and transport. With guidance from industry-based experts, they developed innovative responses to complex challenges. The most important outcome was not a winning team but the confidence and capability gained by students to develop solutions and ideas with potential investment value.
Universities must radically transform and move from observing the future to helping build it. This means designing learning experiences that develop problem-solving capability, entrepreneurial confidence, interdisciplinary collaboration, industry and community engagement, and ethical and sustainable judgment. When students move through a university that works this way, they leave as more than graduates; they leave as authentic scholars, people with the confidence, skills, and power to take on the systemic challenges that society faces.
Key points
- South African universities must ensure that their scholarship is connected to the needs of society and that they equip students with skills to contribute meaningfully to the economy.
- The public higher education system in South Africa represents a substantial national investment, carrying significant responsibility for universities to deliver value.
- Universities should be judged not only by the number of papers they produce but also by the relevance of their curricula and the quality of the people they develop.
