"They hoped for a shot at a coveted spot at one of South Africa’s public universities, and with it a chance to escape the indignity of joblessness that afflicts more than a third of the nation."
"The stampede embodied the broad crisis in South Africa’s overstretched higher education system as it struggles to extend opportunities once reserved for whites to all South Africans. It is a problem of grade school mathematics: Too many students are seeking too few seats at the country’s public universities, which turn away more than half of their applicants, leaving few options for most high school graduates."
"Not only that, the squeeze plays into a wider problem of unemployment among young people. The jobless rate among youths is nearly 70 percent, a staggering problem that even a college degree does not promise to solve."
"Access to higher education for all South Africans was one of the most cherished goals of the struggle against white minority rule."
"Under apartheid, higher education for black South Africans was tightly controlled, and blacks were restricted from many forms of skilled employment. The University of Johannesburg was formed in 2005, when the once all-white Rand Afrikaans University was merged with two other schools."
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