The State, Education and Equity in Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Impact of State Policies by Enver Motala

Author:Enver Motala [Motala, Enver]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138723641
Google: sFTgtAEACAAJ
Goodreads: 39232610
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

Human capital theory and South Africa’s demand and supply dilemma

Educational policy in South Africa has become one element of broader economic policy as a new human capital view of education has taken hold. In western society, educational purposes have often had a purchase on contradictory demands. These can be broadly categorised as nation building, as producing informed citizenry, as relating to the production of a skilled workforce for the labour market, and finally as meeting individual needs for employment and self-development. The notion that there is a direct relationship between education and the economy, and particularly that the former can be manipulated to affect the latter, is of relatively recent vintage and has yet to be proved (Porter, 1993:37; Jansen, 1997). Evidence of a tension between the redress and human capital theory assumptions are to be found in the present education and training discourse. The emergence of human capital theory has been central to the shift of focus of educational practices away from social and cultural concerns to those of individuals and the economies in which they operate. Some argue that the South African government’s articulation of an export-orientated macroeconomic policy will accommodate human capital based approaches to education and training at the expense of broader social goals (Samson & Vally, 1996).

A current theme through much research on education and training provision and the labour market argues that human resource capacity is best improved by skilling the labour force through better education and training. It is problematic to reduce human resource development (HRD) strategy to supply-side interventions, and adjustments to improve the skills balance in the workforce will be frustrated unless complementary demand-side, industrial and labour market measures are brought into play as well. Such a strategy insists upon an active state taking responsibility for repairing deficiencies in the market mechanism while also restricting unnecessary rigidities in the labour market. Human capital related HRD relies on many assumptions - for example, that improving the skills capacity of a workforce automatically implies that value has been added and thus a surplus can be extracted from this labour force. The net result is a productivity gain to the economy and a wage premium to the worker. However, this theory ignores crucial issues. Firstly, workers may not have the time or the inclination to achieve higher skills levels and secondly, companies may not agree to provide the requisite training or even hiring these newly skilled employees. Inducements such as flexible, accessible or affordable training can be made available to those workers that do not seek out this supply-side training. Similarly, inducements should be made available to employers who do not appear to require highly skilled workers. Nevertheless, an important caveat is that some employers would prefer not to have the risk of employing more highly skilled employees for fear of incurring higher costs or employee under-utilisation (Robertson, 1998:3). In much the same way that it is impossible to fatten a farm animal by constantly weighing it, so too the acquisition of additional skills does not automatically make a worker more employable.

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