Confirming assets is pretty much impossible. So administrators keep their eyes open. After a while an administrator can tell how poor they are based on their lifestyle or how they dress. Recovering loans after graduation can be tricky, too, but it is an essential part of a country's plan to balance tuition with financial aid. Using their own money, students make a tuition deposit in February or March, at the beginning of the academic year, and are supposed to pay all of their tuition by June, the middle of their academic year.
Many universities insist that students pay off past debts before starting a new academic year.
The country faces a yawning gulf between the imperative of access and the inability of many families to pay fees, says Colin Bundy, vice chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg. To try to improve access to poor students, the country set up a National Student Financial Aid Scheme. To improve the plan's ability to recover loans, the government now makes employers take loan-payments out of employees' salaries. In the end, says Mr. Johnstone, of Buffalo, many countries will find that combining steeper tuition with strong financial aid is the best way to pay for the increased capacity of their colleges, while at the same time insuring equitable access. Tony Gillotte, Geoffrey Maslen, and Linda Vergnani contributed to this article.