Creative pathways can help school leavers find their place in society

The recent registration period at SA universities has been a bittersweet spectacle. On one hand, we celebrate the “best results since the dawn of democracy” from the Matric Class of 2025, who achieved an 88.2% pass rate. On the other, we face a mathematical impossibility: of the 345,000 pupils who qualified for university,there are only 235,000 available first-year spaces.

This leaves over 110,000 qualified young people in a state of academic limbo. Without a strategic shift toward alternative pathways, we risk consigning a massive portion of our most successful cohort to the “NEET” category—those not in employment, education, or training. The crisis is underscored by Statistics SA’s harrowing data: youth unemployment stands at 58.5%.

Among the 15-24 age group, one in three young people are currently idle. This is not merely a social issue; it is a systemic failure to align the talents of our youth with the needs of the economy. While universities are vital for professional and academic careers, the SA landscape has a desperate, unfulfilled demand for technical skills in masonry, electrical work, and agriculture.

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To resolve this, the state should invest in “geospecific” training. For instance, the North West and the Free State should be hubs for expanded agricultural technical institutions, allowing students to contribute directly to their local provincial economies. SA would do well to look at India’s national skill development mission.

Launched in 2015, this initiative set a massive goal to train 400-million people in sectors ranging from health care to IT. Their success proves that vocational education is not a “consolation prize” but a primary engine for economic growth and global competitiveness. It is time to dismantle the stigma that a university degree is the only valid path to success.

Not every pupil is inclined toward academic study, nor does the economy require every worker to hold a bachelor’s degree. Now, the state and the private sector must do theirs by ensuring that a “no” from a university is not a “no” to a future.

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