Technical and Vocational Education and Training Colleges in South Africa have been shaped by economic inequalities, shifting curriculum and qualification policy, and insecure work conditions aggravated by some aspects of neoliberal models of educational delivery, combined with bureaucratic control, leading to schizophrenic institutions. They are part of a vocational education system that has been the subject of many reforms, and is regarded as a relatively weak part of the overall education and training system (Allais, 2013; DHET, 2013; Taylor and Shindler, 2016). TVET colleges have been reinvented in numerous ways—renamed, restructured, given new governance models. The current 50 Technical and Vocational Education and Training colleges, previously Further Education and Training Colleges (FET), were created by merging 152 Technical Colleges. The shift from Technical Colleges to FET colleges gave them substantially increased autonomy, through the FET Colleges Act of 2006 which gave councils wide-ranging powers, including hiring lecturers directly. This was supposed to enable colleges to function as ‘responsive providers’. The shift from FET to TVET was supposed to signal a stronger focus on the vocational side of their work, after political shifts and a location under a new Ministry of Higher Education and Training. Policy makers and industry continue to argue that the TVET system remains weak and that the TVET colleges do not meet their needs (Kraak, 2010; DHET, 2019; Allais and Marock, 2020). Reforms since the transition to democracy have led to an institutional environment that is complex and expensive, without much visible improvement in the system (Kraak, 2010; DHET, 2012; Allais, 2013; Ngcwangu, 2014). The qualifications system is enormously complex: layers of new qualifications and ways of designing qualifications have been added, without removing the previous ones. Recent changes to post-school funding led to a dramatic change, whereby college students were eligible for funding that was previously allocated to university students. This has affected the nature of the student body. TVET policy is developed nationally, focused on colleges and formal provision separately from sectoral industrial strategy. While in theory colleges should play a role in local economic development, and industry representatives are therefore included in governance structures, there is often tension between local, sectoral, and national economic needs. In short: these institutions, which serve students with weak educational achievement and generally from poor families, have enormous expectations put on them in a context of muddled governance and constant policy reform.

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