• The Department of Higher Education and Training has revealed more details that led to the decision to cancel the registration of four private colleges on Tuesday.
• Apart from not paying staff salaries, students complained that the four colleges had inadequate education, corruption and bribery, exploited poor students and didn’t respond to refund requests, and more.
• The colleges must now reimburse students and find alternatives for them to continue their studies.

On Tuesday, the Department of Higher Education and Training announced that it had revoked the higher education institution status of four private college brands belonging to Educor, one of the largest private university groups in Southern Africa.

According to the department, the decision came after Educor and its colleges had not issued audited financial statements to the government, including tax clearance certificates since 2020. A requirement for an institution to remain registered as a higher learning body in the country.

The four private colleges, namely Damelin, ICESA City Campus, City Varsity and Lyceum must now stop enrolling students for 2023, phase out students already attending the colleges and reimburse any student that has paid fees for education they will no longer receive as the department says the colleges must now cease all operations.

However, it was not only the lack of financial information for the last three years that caused government to revoke the statuses of the colleges.

According to Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande, who himself is facing criticism over the situation unfolding at NSFAS, the department has been receiving complaints from students of Educor “for some time.”

In a speech, Nzimande said the complaints allege that students at Educor colleges, including Damelin, INTEC College, Central Technical College and others, face poor quality teaching, lack of proper administrative support, poorly qualified staff, corruption and bribery, lack of response for refund requests, lack of professionalism, exploitation of poor students, and underpayment or simply non-payment of staff salaries.

The non-payment of staff salaries was also echoed by the South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU), which says that staff were not paid for November and December 2023 and that staff particularly at Damelin have been consistently not paid for most of 2023.

Damelin students left stranded

Additionally, Nzimande claims that Educor has in the past suddenly closed certain campuses without informing students beforehand, leaving them stranded.

“The sites of some institutions closed suddenly for reasons of failure to pay the rent, staff salaries and/or the municipality,” he explained. These sites include:

• City Varsity in Braamfontein, which closed because staff withdrew services after they weren’t paid salaries,
• Damelin campuses in Braamfontein, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, and East London, closed suddenly because they owed money to the municipalities, including unpaid rent,
• The only Lyceum College campus was closed because Educor did not pay the rent.

In October last year, the Damelin campus in Randburg had its electricity cut off by Johannesburg City Power which claimed the college owes the municipality over R2 million in unpaid power bills.

“There is not much information available about the current leadership structure at Educor and there is no credible evidence to suggest that the management of Educor is working to improve or correct some of the serious governance and compliance failures I have referred to,” said Nzimande.

“Under these circumstances and with the information at our disposal, it would be unconscionable to maintain the registration status of these four private institutions and allow ourselves to become complicit in gross governance and compliance failures.”

As for the students of the four colleges now left stranded as they lose their higher education registration, Nzimande asserts that there are a number of obligations Educor must put into action for their protection.

First, after informing students, the colleges are required to issue academic transcripts to all students and they must reimburse or compensate enrolled students for services paid for and not given. Importantly, the colleges must “make adequate arrangements for affected students to complete their programmes at a comparable public or private institution.”

The department believes that Educor had a total of 13 096 students across its campuses in 2022. It does not have information for exactly how many are enrolled across the four colleges in 2024.