What will school and university cost in 10 years?
Nobody can promise a figure — but the mechanics are knowable. Education costs have historically risen faster than general inflation, and a gap that compounds for a decade grows large: a fee of R50,000 today, rising at an illustrative 8% a year, is R107,946 in ten years — 2.16 times today's price.
The same arithmetic can work for the saver: money set aside early compounds the same way the fee does. The real question is which curve gets the head start.
Why education inflation runs hot
School and university fee increases have historically outpaced general inflation in South Africa — a widely reported pattern, year after year. The exact gap moves around, and nobody can promise next decade's number. What matters is the direction: when fees rise faster than prices in general, the cost of education grows in real terms every single year.
And because each year's increase lands on top of the last one, the effect isn't a slow drift. It compounds.
What compounding does to a fee — an illustration
Take a fee of R50,000 a year today, and let it grow at an illustrative 8% a year (an assumption, not a forecast). The arithmetic is exact:
- In 10 years: R107,946 a year — 2.16 times today's fee
- In 18 years — a newborn reaching university age: R199,801 a year — almost exactly 4 times today's fee
- For comparison, at a general-inflation-style 5%, the same fee reaches R81,445 in 10 years
That last line is the point. The difference between 8% and 5% looks small on paper, but over ten years it opens a gap of about R26,500 on a single year's fee — and education is many years of fees.
The phases stack differently for every family
'Education' isn't one bill — it's phases. Primary and secondary are long runs of annual fees, each year inflated a little further than the last. Tertiary is shorter but often steeper, and can add residence, transport and equipment on top of tuition. With more than one child, the phases overlap — two or three inflated fee lines running at once.
That's why there is no single 'cost of education' figure: the total depends on which phases, at which institutions, starting how far in the future. The mechanics, though, are the same for everyone — today's fee, an inflation assumption, and the number of years for compounding to work on.
The same curve, working for you
Compounding doesn't care whose side it's on. The force that turns R50,000 into R107,946 over a decade does exactly the same to money invested for that decade — and growth above education inflation is the education-specific version of a real return. The head start is the heaviest input, and its mechanics are unpacked in "What does starting 10 years earlier actually do? (compound growth)"
The honest caveats
- 8% is an illustration, not a prediction — actual education inflation differs by school, by phase and by year
- A projection is only as good as its assumptions; the calculator keeps them visible so they can be changed
- Fee inflation and investment growth are different rates — a projection lives or dies on the gap between them
Terms used on this page
- compounding
- Growth on growth: returns earn their own returns. It is why time in the market matters more than the size of any single deposit.
- real return
- Growth after inflation — the increase in what your money can actually buy, not just the number on the statement.
Reviewed July 2026