Pretoria - Higher Education South Africa (HESA) has pledged its support to any initiative aimed at providing a greater set of study opportunities for school leavers.
This follows an incident on Tuesday where a parent was killed during a stampede at the University of Johannesburg.
"In order to learn from the UJ incident, HESA will examine the experiences of its 23 member institutions relating to admissions in 2012 with a view to analysing trends, distilling lessons and facilitating mechanisms through which promising practices could be shared across the university system," HESA said.
HESA noted that a number of school leavers cannot be accommodated within the present public higher education sector, pointing to the urgent need for the development of a coordinated, flexible and differentiated post-school education and training system consisting of institutions such as teacher education colleges, FET colleges, agricultural colleges, nursing colleges and universities.
It called on government, business, universities, the FET college sector, civil society organisations and communities to offer constructive solutions to the admission challenge.
On Tuesday, Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande said government was considering halting the late application practice and planned to roll out a centralised applications system, already being used in KwaZulu-Natal.
Last week, the minister reminded school leavers of the various options available to them, saying they should consider public FET colleges where a wide range of in-demand skills was on offer.
He said there were opportunities beyond universities, in learnerships, artisan training and internships, public FET colleges, which offer both NC (V) and Nated (N) courses, as well as nursing and agricultural colleges.
"Public FET colleges, in particular, offer skills that are in line with the country's growth and development imperatives. Even as we speak, our economy has a higher and more urgent demand for artisans, technicians, engineers and other scarce skills that can be sourced outside of universities," said the minister at the time.
He added that there was financial assistance available for deserving students from poor families through the National Financial Student Aid Scheme (NSFAS). Students that attend private higher education institutions do not qualify for government's student financial aid.
