Key Points:

  • To be internationally economically competitive, South Africa needs the input of skills and capabilities. In a CDE debate, education experts were asked to provide their views on the importance of South Africa producing internationally competitive graduates.
  • The National Commission of Higher Education observed that there are critical shortages of skills in the areas of economic development, governance, and management.
  • South Africa’s coal mines are world-class facilities. Running and managing them requires people with world-class skills, talent, and capabilities.
  • Since South Africa is part of the international community, higher education in the country needs to compete in the open world market with other international providers and offer quality programmes to learners from anywhere in the world.
  • If South Africa’s standards are not in keeping with those available internationally, then it will lose its students to foreign institutions.
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