MANY private colleges are exploiting lecturers. A union is needed to solve the problem.
The colleges doing this are registered and even affiliated to government tertiary institutions.
There is no union available to look at this situation.
Most lecturers have Honours and Masters degrees and are passionate about their jobs, but are paid between R5 000 and R6 000 per month and are required to lecture between six to eight subjects per week.
Those colleges with national campuses demand that lecturers travel to those campuses, even in other provinces, when lecturers at these colleges leave or to lecture short courses during weekends.
Certain colleges employ lecturers just before lectures begin to save costs and are given little time to prepare, do research and prepare for tests and assignments.
The lecturers are pushed by management to complete the syllabus and to meet management’s planned deadlines.
There are certain colleges with classes of up to 90 students. Lecturers eventually suffer from burn-out.
Most students who register with these institutions are generally those not accepted at government universities and universities of technology.
They generally get lost among the large number of students in class since lecturers simply cannot give everybody the attention needed – and students are paying extremely high fees.
What is lectured is merely read out of the study guides as lecturers have no time available to properly plan a quality lecture.
Lecturers eventually leave within a short space of time and are then easily replaced with new university graduates every year.
Students have to adjust to having new lecturers all the time.
DISSATISFIED
