The reduced enrolment numbers and soaring rate of students abandoning their studies due to the crippling effects of Covid-19 lingers on for the private higher education sector with several institutions battling to stay afloat.
Some institutions were forced to cancel certain courses because of the dwindling numbers and students not adapting to the remote learning environment.
Damelin, an education brand of the Educor Group, is one institution plunged into a refund nightmare with scores of students who could not complete their studies demanding to be paid back their tuition fees.
Kaleigh Padiachy, one of the affected students, said she had to quit her studies because of a registration error after paying tuition fees in excess of R8 000.
“I’ve been waiting since March for my refund because I was registered as a full-time student instead of part-time. I work full-time, so I wanted to do correspondence. This is a lot of money and the institution has been giving me a run around,” Padiachy told Sunday World.
Another student, Mashudu Sibadela, said he was ecstatic when he registered for a course in information technology. However, his excitement was short-lived.
“We were told that the course will not go further because there was insufficient number of students. By that time, I had already paid about R3 000 towards the course. For the past three years, I’ve been waiting. When I call the college, I’m told that they have approved everything and that I will get the refund,” said Sibadela.
While public institutions rely heavily on government subsidies for survival, private institutions do not. A chunk of their operational budget comes from student fees.
Michael Thurley, Educor chief operations officer, told Sunday World that fraudulent and fake claims and corruption between certain campuses has delayed some refunds.
“With an excess of 60 000 students in the Damelin system, we try to manage and control student refunds through various mechanisms. In the height of Covid-19, we had the lowest number of outstanding refunds in terms of stats,” said Thurley.
“Student refunds is our priority and we would have settled all of it before year-end. The value of the refunds is about R1-million and most of the refunds are from Damelin.”
More than 400 students are affected by the refund debacle.
Educor is one of the largest private education brands with ICESA Education Services, Cityvarsity, Intec College, Lyceum, Central Technical College, Damelin Correspondence and Central Technical College under its wing. It also has various campuses nationwide.
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