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South African Higher Education Reviewed: Two decades of democracy
HIGHER EDUCATION
REVIEWED
Two Decades Of Democracy
South African
The Book of Expects_chosen cover.indd 1 3/18/2016 12:17:19 PM
The CHE is an independent statutory body established by the Higher Education
Act, no. 101 of 1997. The CHE is the Quality Council for Higher Education,
advises the Minister of Higher Education and Training on all higher education
issues and is responsible for quality assurance and promotion through the
Higher Education Quality Committee.
Published by the Council on Higher Education (CHE) in 2016
1 Quintin Brand Street
Persequor Technopark
Brummeria
Pretoria
South Africa
+27 12 349 3840
www.che.ac.za
© Council on Higher Education, Pretoria, 2016
All rights reserved. Material from this publication may not be reproduced
without the CHE’s permission.
ISBN: 978-0-9946785-4-3
South African higher
education reviewed:
Two decades of democracy
Eight task team reports
Foreword
A word from the CEO
Acronyms
1Overview
Task team members: Colin Bundy, Jon File & Mala Singh
Writers and editors: Denyse Webbstock with Glen Fisher
5
2Regulation
Task team leader: Felicity Coughlan
Members/contributors: Trish Gibbon, Brenda Leibowitz,
Luke Mlilo & Martin Oosthuizen
Writers and editors: Yunus Ballim with Ian Scott,
Genevieve Simpson & Denyse Webbstock
CHE research assistant: Michael Gordon
63
3Governance
Task team leader: Jairam Reddy
Members/contributors: Bennie Anderson,
Magda Fourie-Malherbe, Tembile Kulati,
Thami Ledwaba & Anthony Staak
Writers and editors: Lis Lange & Thierry Luescher-Mamashela
CHE research assistant: Ntokozo Bhengu
105
4Teaching and Learning
Task team leader: Matete Madiba
Members/contributors: Gerry Bokana, Vivienne Bozalek,
Siyabulela Sabata, Ian Scott & Yusef Waghid
Writers and editors: Sioux McKenna
CHE research assistant: Precious Sipuka
143
Contents
5Research
Task team leader: Prins Nevhutalu
Members/contributors: Rishidaw Balkaran, Robin Crewe,
Pamela Dube, Andrew Kaniki,
Steve Madue & Susan Veldsman
Writers and editors: Genevieve Simpson with Wieland Gevers
193
6 Community engagement
Task team leader: Brian O’Connell
Members/contributors: Samuel Fongwa, Glenda Kruss,
Sonwabo Ngcelwane, Jerome Slamat & Jayshree Thakrar
Writers and editors: Judy Favish with Genevieve Simpson
CHE research assistant: Neo Ramoupi
241
7
Task team leader: John Higgins
Members/contributors: Raphael de Kadt, Thandi Lewin,
Sean Muller & Chris Winberg
Writers and editors: Denyse Webbstock with Chika Sehoole
CHE research assistant: Mosa Phadi
279
8Funding
Task team leader: Jenny Glennie
Members/contributors: Glen Barnes, Gerald Ouma &
Charles Sheppard
Writers and editors: Charles Simkins with Ian Scott,
Rolf Stumpf & Denyse Webbstock
CHE research assistant: Michael Gordon & Genevieve Simpson
321
Two decades ago, South Africa entered a new era of democracy. The initial
euphoria has been tempered by the hard work that followed in transforming
and rebuilding the major social institutions of the country to address the vast
challenges of inequality, poverty and the need for economic growth. Higher
education remains, as it was then, central to the projects of modernisation,
transformation and renewal in the country, just as it too is subject to those same
forces. In that propitious year of 1994, Beck wrote that, “the more societies are
of their existence and to change them in that way”.1 What he was pointing to is
healthy and productive society. Not only is higher education important in and of
itself, but it is a barometer of societal content or discontent, as academics and
and act. It is apposite at this juncture, therefore, to take stock of higher education
and its various roles and purposes, and to apply the wisdom of hindsight, such
that we may look forward more clearly to a re-imagined future.
The contributors to this volume share a commitment and a passion for higher
different vantage points, and brought their collective wisdom to bear on the
intractable problems that beset the sector, as well as pointed out the milestones
reached in the long journey towards a more equitable sector that “draws on the full
range of human capacities for knowing, teaching and learning”, and “that forges
stronger links between knowing the world and living creatively in it, in solitude
and community”.2 Their insights and detailed analyses of data, documents and
events serve to enrich our understanding of higher education, and provide a solid
basis from which the CHE can draw in formulating future policy-impelling advice.
It is also hoped that this volume will generate further discussion and research
education since 1994.
Professor Themba Mosia
Chair of Council
Foreword
1
modern social order, Polity Press, Oxford.
2 P. Palmer & A Zajonc (2010) The heart of higher education: A call to renewal, Jossey-Bass, San
Francisco.
Higher education in South Africa in the post-apartheid era has never
been more volatile than it is currently, some two decades into
democracy, yet it is, contradictorily, perhaps the part of the entire
education sector that has advanced most in terms of achieving national
goals of quality, equity and transformation. There is much that higher education
can claim to have achieved: integration as a system from its fragmented past;
an established quality assurance and advisory body; a single dedicated national
department; a fundamentally altered institutional landscape; greater access and
a radical change in the demography of its students, with an 80% growth in the
number of African students; higher research output and international recognition
through large research projects, more attention paid to teaching and learning, to
curriculum and to student support; the implementation of a governing framework
than twenty years ago; and having nationally coordinated projects and grants to
Despite the many advances and achievements of higher education outlined
in this review, however, the student protests of 2015 and early 2016 have given
expression to underlying faultlines in quite a dramatic way. The pressures of
worsening underfunding in the context of enrolment growth, and increasing
to under-funding, the limits of academic staff capacity as a further crack in the
foundations that threatens to widen and have a detrimental impact on the quality
of provision. Immediate solutions to the particular crisis that higher education
understanding of the directions, trends and trajectories of the system in the past.
The successes and limitations of policy in steering the system, the responses of
the system to global trends to which it is vulnerable, and the agency of institutions
in shaping the system, are all aspects which lend themselves to careful unpacking
from various perspectives, in order that the past may inform the future.
The Council on Higher Education, as part of the mandate bestowed on it by the
Higher Education Act 101 of 1997, as amended, to “publish information regarding
developments in higher education, including reports on the state of higher
education, on a regular basis” (5.1.d), has thus undertaken a comprehensive
review of higher education in South Africa in the last two decades, resulting in
this publication. This has followed past CHE-led reviews of higher education.
A word from the CEO
making and policy implementation aimed at transforming South African higher
education. The 2004 review describes and analyses contemporary conditions
within South African higher education and the changes that have occurred during
the past decade, with particular reference to what we inherited in 1994.” It was
a comprehensive compilation and analysis, through commissioned research, of
the policy development undertaken in that period. The second, in 2007, a Review
of higher education in South Africa: Selected themes, was an edited collection of
commissioned research papers that analysed six major issues in the process of
transformation and restructuring of the higher education system: public funding,
governance, information and communication technologies, institutional culture,
access, and change. The state of higher education report of 2009 proceeded
differently, and attempted to assess, on the basis of empirical data in the main, to
comprehensive in its coverage, to include empirical data where necessary, and to
provide analysis of and insight into the key areas of higher education against the
backdrop of the intentions of the post-apartheid state, the trends that affected
covers many issues, inevitably there are aspects that could have received more
attention, and reference is made in the text to areas in which further research is
needed.
A reference group of higher education experts that had been established to help
conceptualise the project1 suggested a task team approach which would include
different academic perspectives, so that the resultant group reports were based
on extensive discussion and debate. The format of this review is thus most like an
academic journal in that the chapters are separate papers produced by different
groups of both academic experts and emerging researchers.2 Some events or
issues are hence discussed more than once, but from differing perspectives. There
is, thus, no overarching CHE view or conclusion on issues in this document: the
from the contributions in this volume.
reports were presented at a national colloquium, and thereafter revised in the
light of the discussion and comments received. The revised papers were then
blind peer-reviewed, and edited on the basis of reviewers’ comments. This volume
1 Saleem Badat, Ahmed Bawa, Trevor Coombe, Brenda Gourley, Molapo Qhobela, Barney Pityana
and Rolf Stumpf are thanked for their role in guiding this project.
2 The CHE put out a general call for papers ahead of the review and some of the emerging
is thus the product of the efforts of many people. The guidance of the reference
group, the work of the over 50 researchers and writers involved in the task teams
who gave so freely of their time and expertise, and the many peer reviewers who
goes to the CHE staff members, led by Dr Denyse Webbstock and assisted by Dr
Genevieve Simpson, who edited the publication, provided research assistance,
and arranged all logistics. Their various contributions have enriched the process.
We trust that this publication provides the reader with a broad overview of
the main trends and developments in different aspects of higher education since
1994, and will stimulate further debate and research, and inform future policy
developments to continue the projects of transformation and quality enhancement
of our higher education system.
Narend Baijnath
CEO
Acronyms 1
Acronyms
ANC African National Congress
APPETD Association of Private Providers of Education, Training and Development
ARHAP African Religious Health Assets Programme
ASAHDI Association of Vice-Chancellors of Historically Disadvantaged Institutions
ASGISA Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative – South Africa
ASSAf Academy of Science of South Africa
CAO
CEPD Centre for Education and Policy Development
CeSTII Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators
CHE Council on Higher Education
CHEC Cape Higher Education Consortium
CHESP Community Higher Education Service Partnership
CHET Centre for Higher Education Transformation
CPUT Cape Peninsula University of Technology
CSD Centre for Science Development
CSIR
CTP Committee of Technikon Principals
DACST Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology
DBE Department of Basic Education
DEA Department of Environmental Affairs
DHET Department of Higher Education and Training
DoE Department of Education
DST Department of Science and Technology
DTI Department of Trade and Industry
DUT Durban University of Technology
DVC Deputy Vice-Chancellor
ETQA Education and Training Quality Assurer
FET Further Education and Training
FRD Foundation for Research Development
2 Higher education reviewed
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GEAR Growth, Employment and Redistribution
GER Gross Enrolment Ratio
GERD Gross Expenditure on Research and Development
GUNi Global University Network for Innovation
HDI Historically Disadvantaged Institution
HEIAAF Higher Education, Institutional Autonomy and Academic Freedom
HELTASA Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of Southern Africa
HEMIS Higher Education Management Information System
HEQC Higher Education Quality Committee
HEQCIS Higher Education Quality Committee Information System
HEQF
HEQSF
HESA Higher Education South Africa (now Universities South Africa)
HSRC Human Sciences Research Council
ICSU International Council for Science
ICT Information and Communications Technology
IF Institutional Forum
IMF International Monetary Fund
JET Joint Education Trust
JIPSA Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition
LIASA Library and Information Association of South Africa
LMS Learning Management System
MBA Master of Business Administration
MEDUNSA Medical University of South Africa
MOOC Massive Open Online Course
NACI National Advisory Council on Innovation
NBT National Benchmark Test
NCHE National Commission on Higher Education
NDP National Development Plan
NEPI National Education Policy Initiative
Acronyms 3
NIHSS National Institute for the Humanities and the Social Sciences
NMMU Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
NPC National Planning Commission
NPHE National Plan for Higher Education
NQF
NRF National Research Foundation
NSC
NSFAS National Student Financial Aid Scheme
NSI National System of Innovation
NWU North-West University
OBE Outcomes-Based Education
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OPR Open Educational Resources
PIRLS Progress in International Reading Literacy Study
PQM
QCTO Quality Council for Trades and Occupations
QEP Quality Enhancement Project
R&D Research and Development
RSA Republic of South Africa
RU Rhodes University
SAHECEF South African Higher Education Community Engagement Forum
SANREN South African National Research Network
SANTED South Africa Norway Tertiary Education Development Programme
SAPSE South African Post-Secondary Education
SAQA
SARChi South African Research Chairs Initiative
SARIMA Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association
SASCO South African Students’ Congress
SAYAS South African Young Academy of Science
SETA Sector Education and Training Authority
SIP Strategic Infrastructure Project
4 Higher education reviewed
SOTL Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
SRC Students’ Representative Council
SU Stellenbosch University
TDG Teaching Development Grant
TEFSA Tertiary Education Fund for South Africa
TENET Tertiary Education and Research Network of South Africa
THRIP Technology and Human Resources for Industry Programme
TIMSS Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study
TOC Transformation Oversight Committee
TUT Tshwane University of Technology
TVET Technical and Vocational Education and Training
UCCF-SA University Council Chairs’ Forum South Africa
UDUSA Union of Democratic University Staff Associations
UFH University of Fort Hare
UFS University of the Free State
UJ University of Johannesburg
UKZN University of KwaZulu-Natal
UNESCO
UNISA University of South Africa
UNIVEN University of Venda
UoT University of Technology
UP University of Pretoria
UV University of Venda
UWC University of the Western Cape
UZ University of Zululand
WIL Work Integrated Learning
WITS University of the Witwatersrand
WSU Walter Sisulu University
There is much written about the ‘crisis in higher education’
internationally in research and popular media, suggesting that in some
way, higher education is standing on a precipice – whether to disappear
into the abyss of irrelevance or to take off soaring to new heights in
an ICT revolution is not necessarily clear. What is clear is that universities, as
a particular institution of higher education, have endured since the middle
ages, yet, chameleon-like, they have adapted in form and function to changing
realities and social forces. As major social institutions, universities both embody
their times, and produce the people who collectively act as catalysts for social
change. They are subject to many forces – social, political and economic, whether
international or local – to which they are slowly responsive, and simultaneously
they lead the way to imagining and enacting new futures. The question of what
higher education is for is an especially loaded one, with the answer dependent on
time and place, ideological and individual perspective.
The higher education system in South Africa is shaped and understood according
to many different narratives – the story of higher education globally, and the
fundamental changes it has undergone, its own particular history and legacy told
from many perspectives, and the deliberate steering of the system through the
application of policy drivers to reach particular goals. Intricately interwoven with
the society in which it is embedded, the higher education sector in South Africa
today is as much a creature of its past as it is a creature of sustained effort, through
policy, legislation and institutional restructuring, to redirect and transform it. Just
as important to the narrative of South African higher education, however, are the
responses of the system and the institutions to forces and challenges in the realms
of economics, social and political change, and changes in the substantive heart of
higher education, that is, the knowledge that it preserves, produces, cherishes,
disseminates and that is fundamental to its very identity.
In the CHE’s review of higher education twenty years into the post-apartheid
era, the emphasis is on critically analysing the system in its current form from a
variety of perspectives and with different lenses, focusing on particular aspects
of the system, the better to understand the whole, to assess its strengths and
weaknesses and to provide guidance to inform the hard choices that need to be
made towards realising its imagined future.
The higher education sector in South Africa in 2015 is in many ways profoundly
different from its fragmented, insular, elite and uneven apartheid inheritance and
the sector in less desirable ways, and the stresses exerted by a challenging socio-
Overview
Writer: Denyse Webbstock
1
6 Higher education reviewed
economic context are having a far-reaching effect on the quality of the system as a
whole. A major restructuring of the institutional landscape has seen the creation
of new institutions through mergers, and the disappearance of old ones such that
there are now 26 public universities and over a hundred private higher education
fragmented 36 public institutions of different types that had been governed by
a range of regimes pre-1994, and the over 300 private institutions that in many
universities, the universities of technology and the new comprehensive universities
– with their inherited strengths and disadvantages, have sought actively and often
acknowledged dimension, to the processes of system change and transformation.
Much has been achieved in the twenty-year period under review. The higher
framework designed to create clarity with respect to degree and diploma
purposes and to bring coherence to the pathways between them. As much as the
position in relation to a vastly underdeveloped vocational education and training
sector, as well as schooling, which has been characterised by extensive changes at
continuing levels of inequality for students and differences in quality of education
within the sector, with some institutions focused on climbing the international
rankings while others have been placed under administration as government
intervenes to rescue them from particular governance and management crises.
The cohesion and integration have also left unresolved the question of potential
institutional differentiation, with continuing contestation about the nature and
identity of higher education and its fundamental purpose – or whether there are
multiple purposes to be achieved in different ways.
In terms of size, the differences from 1994 are marked. There are now almost
a million students in the public sector, which represents an exponential growth
from the half million in 1994, as well as some 90 000 in private higher education.1
Similarly, student demographics at institutions of higher learning have changed
black students. This must count as one the most obvious achievements in the
post-apartheid era, particularly as most higher education institutions now have a
majority of black students in their student complements. Yet participation rates
African students in 2013 – while overall the national participation rate, currently
around 19%, has changed only marginally from the reported 17% of 1996, albeit
1 CHE (2015) VitalStats: Public higher education 2013, p. 3.
Overview 7
in the context of population growth from 40.5 million to almost 52 million over the
period.2 Student success rates likewise remain sharply skewed by race and prior
education; higher education in South Africa was, and still is, as acknowledged in
the 2013 White Paper, a low participation system with high attrition. On the other
6.2% of the population over twenty years old in 1996 to 12.1% in 2011, can be
attributed to the growth of higher education.3
There has been slow and modest improvement in the representation of black
academics at faculty and senior leadership levels of universities, but inequalities
persist, with 17 753 black academic staff members in 2013 compared with 26 847
whites.4 Despite an increase in the number of African postgraduate enrolments
from 14 242 to 27 030, the pipeline of black postgraduates, from whom the ranks
5
Many reasons have been posited for this, but the wealth of other opportunities
available in a society that is lacking in high-level skills is a major factor.
While the growth in student enrolment has been considerable, the growth in
the academic staff complement has not kept pace, such that the student to staff
ratio, always less than desirable, has worsened over the two decades.6 Indeed,
the South African institutions that feature on any of the international rankings
systems of universities may compare reasonably on other criteria, but with
respect to the staff to student ratio, they are not even in the same league.7
The recognition of the important role played by higher education is generally
given concrete expression through the levels of funding accorded it. Unlike
a number of other countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have responded to
UNESCO’s Millennium Goals by concentrating funding on the primary school
sector, higher education in South Africa has been regarded as key to social and
economic development. Nonetheless, the recent review of the funding formula
found that although South Africa spends a considerable amount on education,
its expenditure on higher education is much lower than desirable or needed.
With the budget for universities at 0.75% of GDP (2011), this compares well with
2 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education, p. 16; Statistics South Africa, Census 1996 and
2011 from http://www.statssa.gov.za. The use of UNESCO’s indicator of participation, the Gross
Enrolment Rate or GER, i.e. the total headcount enrolled in some form of higher education over
the national population of 20-24 year-olds of the population, has become widespread. CHE
(2015) VitalStats p. iii.
3 Statistics South Africa, Census 1996 and 2011 from http://www.statssa.gov.za. The numbers
increased from 1 294 720 in 1996, to 3 750 112 in 2011.
4 CHE (2015) VitalStats, p. 47. The Statistics SA population categories are used in VitalStats – thus
African is distinguished from Indian and Coloured groups. Black in this instance refers to the
number of African staff or students.
5 Ibid., pp. 20-21.
6 In 1994 the FTE student to staff ratio was 24; in 2014, it was 27. Based on HEMIS data.
7 This is discussed further in the Research chapter. As an example, on the QS rankings for
BRICS countries, UCT is ranked no. 2 in terms of citations per paper, but (like all South African
universities listed) lower than 101 on staff to student ratio, which counts 20% of the total score
(http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/brics-rankings).
8 Higher education reviewed
Africa as a whole (0.78%), but not with the OECD (1.21%) or the rest of the world
(0.84%). The review estimated the proportion of the entire education budget that
was 20%, the OECD 23.4% and the rest of the world 19.8%. The average growth
rates show that in real terms, government funding per enrolled student (full-time
equivalent) fell by 1.1% annually between 2000 and 2010, while student tuition
fees per FTE increased by 2.5% per year, which is not a trend that is likely to be
sustainable.8 In recognition of the need of a growing proportion of students for
student loan scheme (NSFAS) has grown exponentially, from R1.3 billion in 1996
to approximately R9 billion in 2014; however, the average amount per student
remains well below the real cost of study.9 Costly and disruptive student protests,
higher education landscape and are likely to increase in frequency and intensity.
has remained high since 2009 and government departments are starting to feel
South African economy and the International Monetary Fund predicted a 1.7%
growth rate for 2014 as opposed to the 2.7% that was indicated in the 2014
national Budget Review. The indications are that growth will continue to slow.
of trade boom that supported South Africa through the global economic crisis is
coming to an end, with new challenges being faced. Rising global interest rates are
pushing up the cost of servicing government debt, weaker commodity prices are
contributing to lower tax buoyancy and the depreciation of the Rand is increasing
cost pressures. Along with rising unemployment, underperforming exports,
austerity.10
While the South African higher education system has experienced considerable
goals of higher education to be fully met, and the prospects of a sustainable
increase in funding are negligible.11 As a result of the imperative to increase
access, student numbers have grown, but the academic staff complement has
not grown concomitantly. Institutional managements and staff have to deliver on
sometimes competing objectives. The higher education system in South Africa is
undoubtedly under pressure, with a number of institutions struggling to keep the
higher education project alive.
8 DHET (2013) Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of Funding.
9 The average grant (although this differs per institution) was approximately R30 000 in 2012 and
R34 000 in 2013, while the average full cost of study was over R60 000. Derived from CHE (2015)
VitalStats, p. 94 and NSFAS (2015) Annual report 2014, p. 53.
10
process and the implications for the higher education sector’ (presentation).
11 The projected average increase in funding for the post-school sector for the next three is 7.7%.
for 2012-2013, including NSFAS funding, was in the region of R24 billion.
Overview 9
Despite the pressure, however, there are pockets of excellence in all parts of
the sector. In some parts this is evidenced in increasing research output at both
institutions with an established research culture and those relatively new to
it. Some institutions have, with perspicacious and visionary leadership and
commitment from staff and students, forged respectable academic identities from
apartheid-engineered roots, or successfully navigated the exigencies of mergers
to become more responsive and vibrant and attuned to the realities of the needs
of a developing South Africa. Considerable experience and expertise has been
developed among a growing proportion of academic staff and education specialists
over the last twenty to thirty years in dealing with the teaching and learning
challenges of a diversifying student body. While there is room for improvement,
a greater recognition of the importance of the teaching and learning function is
developing in reward systems and promotion criteria for academic staff. There
has been a general trend to make curriculum information and assessment criteria
and demands more transparent to students and to design more appropriate and
relevant curricula. Foundation programmes to assist in dealing with academic
under-preparedness have been funded since 2004, and government initiatives
to improve teaching and learning across the system through the Teaching
Development Grant are beginning to take hold.12
The system as a whole has managed to navigate two decades of fundamental
transition, unparalleled growth, extensive restructuring, funding constraints,
greater reporting and compliance demands from an increasingly complex
regulatory system, leadership challenges, governance concerns, student protests
and more. It has demonstrated its robustness under extreme pressure and is
arguably the strongest sector of the South African education system as a whole.
2. Broad context
In the larger context, higher education internationally has undergone
as a concept is a relatively recent phenomenon, suggesting the deliberate
conceptualisation of higher education institutions and their different purposes in
relation to each other in some crafted system, rather than as discrete universities
following their own trajectories. The identity and purpose of higher education
focusing on theology and philosophy, to the Humboldtian research university
that was integral to the modernisation of Europe and that formed the basis of
the great American universities; then from institutions that served to reproduce
the higher administrative classes to manage colonial interests, to institutions that
democratised knowledge post the 1968 protests that had challenged the prevailing
order in many Western countries. More recently, the shifts have been from the
institutions of the 1990s that served to educate greater and greater numbers
of young people in both conceptual knowledge and skills in the furtherance of
12 T. Lewin & M. Mawoyo (2014) ‘Student access and success: Issues and interventions in South
African universities’ (report).
10 Higher education reviewed
economic development and competition, to a current reality of a diversity of
higher education in different institutional types, and to play in national and global
leagues of universities at the same time.
In discussing the South African higher education system in 2015, it is necessary
to situate it within recent global trends, as well as to elucidate the stories of its
bearing on the South African situation is the trend in the late twentieth and early
21st century to provide higher education to many more people than was hitherto
been based on the extent of coverage of the youth of a society, often in terms
coined by Trow back in 1974, of ‘elite’, ‘mass’ and ‘universal’ systems.13 In many
parts of the world, the development and growth of higher education systems in
terms of participation rates has been very rapid, with many of the most developed
countries now reaching 70-80% (89% for the United States in 2009) participation
rates, the BRICs averaging 37.5% and Africa lagging at around 6%. In terms of
enrolment numbers, there were almost 30 million students in China in 2009, 19
million in India, 6 million in Brazil, 9 million in Russia and over 19 million in the
United States.14 The global inequities are obvious; in the belief that an educated
populace leads to both economic success and social goods such as a strong civil
society, countries able to compete in the global marketplace have invested heavily
keep pace. The skewed consequences of this are clear: extensive shifts of academic
knowledge and students to the countries of the global north, and new areas in the
east, with a further widening of the gap between the haves and the have-nots, as
well as the homogenisation of the knowledge base in favour of certain types of
knowledge. The character of higher education too, has changed, with far more
emphasis on the utilitarian purposes of higher education: the development of
skills useful for economic advancement, rather than generic broad education
preparing an elite class for governance; more business and management courses;
a greater emphasis on science and technology and a consequent perceived loss of
esteem for the humanities.
the size and shape of systems, in curriculum (from particular canons of knowledge
to curricula that are considered relevant and useful for economic purposes),
in pedagogy (from knowledge transmission to competency-based approaches,
generic skills transfer, and outcomes-based approaches), in modes of delivery
(from pure classroom-based approaches to open learning or blended approaches),
in research (from shifts in valuing pure research to so-called Mode 2 or applied
research) and in the relationship of institutions with external communities (from
town-and-gown approaches to community engagement).15
13 M. Trow (1974) ‘Problems in transition from elite to mass higher education’, pp. 51-101.
14 P.G. Altbach, G. Androushchak, Y. Kuzminov, M. Yudkevich & L. Reisburg (eds.) (2013) The global
future of higher education and the academic profession, p. 5.
15 The term Mode 2 knowledge production was popularised in M. Gibbons, C. Limoges, H. Nowotny,
S. Schwartzman, P. Scott & M. Trow (eds.) (1994) The new production of knowledge: The dynamics
of science and research in contemporary societies.
Overview 11
The unprecedented growth in the numbers of students enrolled in higher
education is arguably a major factor in ushering in an era in which external
regulation and external quality assurance have become widespread phenomena;
as the number of institutions, institutional types, educational offerings and
knowledge areas covered have grown, so too has the need for some means of
checking and comparing to sift through the complexities and offer some level
of assurance to students, parents, employers, publics and governments that the
expanding investment in higher education is resulting in both merit and worth,
and that higher education is achieving its purpose. Benchmarking processes,
in the Bologna process), and the more recent predominance of a whole range of
institutional rankings systems have spawned a major area of activity that would
16
Given that purpose is of course contested, this has led to somewhat antithetical
forces acting upon higher education and pulling it in different ways simultaneously.
At its simplest level, governments are generally concerned with productivity and
countries, particularly where the largest portion of funding still comes from the
public purse. Yet as the numbers have grown, the ability of governments to utilise
taxpayers’ contributions to fully cover the need has been stretched to breaking
point, putting pressure on student fees, necessitating a much higher reliance on
institutions’ capacities to raise third-stream income, and increasing private sector
investment considerably. This has brought with it different interests and ideas of
purpose – in the area of research, for instance, the research agenda is in the most
that fund them. It has also led to the unprecedented growth of private higher
education provision in many parts of the world to accommodate the growing
demand for higher education. In Brazil, for instance, the private sector has grown
rapidly such that 78% of the 6 million students enrolled are in private institutions
that cater mostly for undergraduate courses, with the large majority of the 150
000 postgraduate students being concentrated in the public sector.17 The growth
includes major initiatives in online learning environments as well, with the most
recent being an online university in Rwanda that utilises Massive Open Online
Courses (MOOCs) in addition to local tuition. Where such growth has occurred, the
private sector has generally been indirectly supported by governments through
tax incentives, land grants or funding schemes that facilitate student choice of
institution rather than funding being directed to institutions themselves.
An additional implication of changing funding patterns is that, given that parents
16 The Bologna process aims to improve transparency between European higher education
exchanges between institutions.
17 In 2009, there were 2 314 higher education institutions in Brazil, 90% of which were private, and
of which 186 had university status. See T. Schwartzman (2013) ‘Higher education, the academic
profession and economic development in Brazil’ in Altbach et al. (eds.) (2013) The global future
of higher education and the academic profession, p. 35.
12 Higher education reviewed
are generally paying more in fees in many countries (the UK, USA are cases in
point), and incurring huge debts, the relationship of students to institutions has
changed.18 No longer privileged apprentices being inducted into an academy
of knowledge, students are often conceived of as clients, choosing offerings
that enhance their individual life chances – often more directly vocational or
professional ones. The growth of the private sector, mentioned above, has also
altered many higher education landscapes towards the offering of programmes
designed to serve particular markets or market niches, and which are less
social sciences research.
The tension between education as a private right or a public good is writ large
in debates on the purpose of higher education. At the same time that the private
right idea is playing a major role in determining the character and purpose of
higher education, conceptions of higher education as a public good are widely
held; indeed, the impetus to increase student numbers is often predicated on
notions of equity, fairness and social redress, with access to higher education
being regarded as the sine qua non of a healthy democracy and economic and
social development. In many contexts there have been policy drivers such as
quotas, differential funding or deliberate campaigns to increase access to higher
education from lower socio-economic groups (as in the UK), or ethnic minorities
(as in the US). In these latter conceptions, higher education is regarded as having
a value that transcends the utilitarian; it is fundamentally about transformation,
enhancement and growth – of the individuals being educated as well as the
institutions and societies in which they live and work.
Given the increase in student numbers, including ‘non-traditional students’,
communities, the last few decades have seen the introduction on a large scale
of bridging and foundational programmes, student support programmes, more
sophisticated admissions and placement processes, more career guidance and
counselling, different pedagogies, more explicit and transparent expectations and
criteria for assessment and a much wider range of modes of delivery facilitated
by the developments in information and communications technology. Higher
education has become more complex.
Along with its more complex nature, and the more extensive scale of activities
carried out in higher education, has emerged a greater emphasis on managing
intricate systems and a wider variety of people, as well as calls for more reporting
and greater public accountability. At its worst, this is sometimes described
as embodying a new ideology of managerialism, based on neo-liberal market
principles; more neutrally it describes an empirically observable phenomenon
of increasingly robust management systems based on ever-more detailed data
collection and production of evidence; at best, it advances the case for the
importance of good, well-informed management and leadership of complex
18 UK graduate debt is £27 000 on average. Total graduate debt in the USA was estimated to have
risen by 51% between 2008 and 2012, and in 2013 was nearly $1 trillion (R. Simon & R.L. Ensign
Wall Street Journal).
Overview 13
organisations through a sea of competing interests in the advancement of the
knowledge project. There is little doubt, however, that an observable trend
world-wide has been a change in the relationship between those who carry out
teaching and research, and those who manage institutions. It is more often the
case than not that the leadership at all levels of the academy is no longer based
basis, but a system of appointed executives on short-term performance contracts,
with mandates to drive a system to reach particular targets. Again, what higher
education is for can have deeply different interpretations, even within an
institution.
A related observable trend globally, is an academic profession under great
stress. The demands on academics and the variety of functions required of
them have set up new tensions and competing priorities. Pressures to perform
in terms of measurable research output coexist with larger numbers of more
diverse students to teach in ways that demand increasingly specialist skills,
more complex and transparent assessment procedures, more attention to the
development of responsive and appropriate curricula, and more administration
and compliance with reporting and accountability demands. As noted above,
this is sometimes accompanied by less authority in academic decision-making
and a more subservient role in the leadership and management of institutions.
A counter-trend, however, is that of academics increasingly being able to pursue
their individual research careers on the basis of funding external to an institution
and effectively commanding their price and moving between institutions eager to
the divide between institution and profession through their consulting activities.
multiplicity of trends. As economies have become more inter-dependent, and
information and communications technologies have developed and opened up
new possibilities for access to knowledge and sharing data and research; as the
use of English as a communication tool has become ubiquitous on the internet
Disciplinary communities are now more properly global than national; institutions
‘champions’ leagues’; internationalisation involving the movement of large
numbers of staff and students to different contexts is one of the responses to the
globalisation of higher education. Top research universities set out to recruit the
most promising students from across the globe and the dissemination of research
19 And yet
higher education systems are also called on to organise themselves in the most
optimal ways to pursue national goals, whether these are motivated by narrow
political interests, competitive strategies or social justice agendas. The tension
between aligning institutional missions with national goals and the harnessing of
19 More than 80% of students from China and India who study abroad do not return home after
obtaining their degree, while 30% of highly educated Ghanaians and Sierra Leoneans live abroad
(See Altbach et al. (2010) Trends in global higher education, pp. 26-35).
14 Higher education reviewed
the energies of an increasingly mobile, changing and outward-looking academic
population that seeks its validation in international communities of practice,
lends an element of further stress to higher education systems.
2.2. Knowledge
Beliefs about what higher education is for tend to shape higher education
major trend globally that affects all systems, is the fundamental shift in the way
two main narratives here (and many sub-interpretations); in the dominant
one, knowledge is seen to be no longer residing in particular institutions and
embodiment of truth has become contested; knowledge has instead become widely
understood as constructed and partial and hence more egalitarian. The change in
the status of knowledge in this narrative has a direct implication in changing the
role of the university as an autonomous institution that furthers the pursuit of what
is understood to be truth to, on the one hand, a much more functional institution
concerned with increasing its performance, or, on the other, an institution that
is embedded in its communities and becoming more engaged with real-world
problems and concerns in both its practices and its scholarship. The democratisation
of knowledge has been enhanced through the rapid development in information
and communications technology, different modes of delivery and different sites
of production. In this narrative different knowledge types gain parity of esteem;
theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge, for example, no matter where and
how they are acquired become equally important, and this has implications not
only for pedagogy but for the size and shape of higher education systems and the
diversity of institutional types that constitute them.
it has become one product among many in a market-dominated consumer
it becomes necessary for the realisation of predominantly instrumentalist ends.
An implication of this view is that maximum output, minimum input models of
knowledge production become increasingly applicable at the expense of long-
the organisation of data for immediate problem-solving, with the ultimate goal
out in the way in which institutions are organised and in how they are managed
and funded. The trend in organising internal university structures appears to
be toward compartmentalising divisions or faculties in such a way that they can
be run on business lines, with an emphasis on income-generation and future
sustainability, which is assured through market forces. The consequence of this
has been a threatened existence for areas of study that lack immediate practical
application and employability, such as the humanities and the pure sciences.
A corollary of this view is that the skills indispensable to the furtherance and
maintenance of the economic and social systems become core to the academic
Overview 15
project. On the one hand, it is necessary to develop skills designed to tackle world
competition, which implies a growth in the management sciences and in the
society’s own need for internal cohesion, since the role of the university is no
longer to educate elites capable of leading nations towards their emancipation,
but to develop doctors, teachers, engineers and other professionals to meet
pragmatic ends. Most often, this is experienced as increasing vocationalism and a
trend towards more utilitarian emphases in government policies.
In the South African context, debates about knowledge have also shaped
questions relating to curriculum in profound ways, with local relevance and
global recognition often being seen as the poles of a debate about what should
be taught. This has deep resonance with ideas of what a university is for, and this
debate is by no means settled in South African universities. There have been many
projects focusing on African scholarship, or what it means to be a university in
South Africa and what knowledge is appropriate for this context, yet there are also
strident calls for a transformation of the curriculum that berate Eurocentricism,
some of which appear to endorse a fairly narrow view of what is appropriate in
a local context. Others, however, in challenging what has become orthodox, are
catalytic in re-imagining what possibilities exist for developing curricula that
are simultaneously relevant to current South African students and which lead to
extending the boundaries of current knowledge in a way that transcends the local.
Deep divisions about values, and also about language, still characterise the debate.
Simultaneously, discipline boundaries, where disciplines have traditionally been
the organising precepts of knowledge domains, are becoming more porous,
with interdisciplinary studies becoming more commonplace – particularly in
professional areas where knowledge from across many disciplines is called for
has major implications for how higher education is organised, for curriculum, for
research and for teaching and learning.
2.3. ICT and higher education
The rapid growth in information and communications technology that has
changed the way research is conducted, and how teaching and learning is
undertaken, is a third major feature of the global higher education landscape and
is arguably poised to change its very nature. A number of recent reports posit that
the combination of the forces of technology and globalisation are set to transform
higher education as a set of traditional 20th century institutions in which the
of institution that seek to exploit these changed circumstances to become globally
competitive entities focused on particular niche areas.20 While online learning
is not new, the advent of MOOCs has seen an improved quality online learning
20 M. Barber, K. Donnelly & S. Rizvi (2013) ‘An avalanche is coming: Higher education and the
revolution ahead’ (report).
16 Higher education reviewed
experience providing a global audience free access to prestigious institutions,
with the recognition of such credits by other institutions becoming more
widespread.21 The impact of such developments is still uncertain, particularly
as completion rates in MOOCs appear to be very low, but it could signal what
Barber et al. refer to as the “unbundling” of the traditional bricks-and-mortar
university to networks of dispersed learning centres utilising standardised
curricula for basic courses (Economics 101; Calculus 101) while facilitating the
development of content in niche areas to ensure the relevance of curricula to
local contexts, needs and languages. The potential implications for curriculum,
classroom’ in which professors become facilitators rather than lecturers and
lectures are accessed online in students’ own time), for assessment (which can
be modelled on gaming conventions – earning badges, or passing levels), for
degree structures (challenging the norm of a three or four-year full-time degree
in favour of a combination of work and study) and for institutional types, are far-
reaching. Barber et al. speculate about the emergence of a diversity of institutional
types, including a small number of elite universities focused on research, mass
universities providing good education for a rapidly growing global middle class
mostly through blended approaches, niche universities focusing on particular
areas such as law, local universities that provide for the development of skills for
local and regional economic development, and the lifelong learning institution
offering short courses to supplement workplace experiential learning.22 Whatever
the merits of this speculation, a clear trend towards an increasing diversity of
institutional types is observable.
The New Media Consortium’s 2014 Horizon Report lists six short to medium-
learning, all of which have policy implications at institutional level.23 Among
these are the ubiquity of social media and their increasing use in education
for enabling collaboration between educators and students and for creating
virtual professional communities of practice across institutions; online learning
environments providing opportunities for group problem-solving and peer-to-
peer collaboration and for making personalised learning scalable; the emergence
of data-informed learning analytics for monitoring student learning at a
personalised level and identifying students at risk of failing in order to improve
student success; and shifting students from consumers to creators through the
use of dedicated spaces equipped with video equipment, 3D printers and other
technology that allows students to bring their assignments to production and
to create entrepreneurial start-ups.24 Despite the new opportunities, there are,
21 As examples, Coursera is linked to Stanford University, EdX to MIT and Harvard, and Udacity,
started by an ex-Stanford professor, uses 4500 exam centres around the world to administer
assessment.
22 Barber et al. (2013) ‘An avalanche is coming: Higher education and the revolution ahead’
(report).
23 L. Johnson, S. Adams, S. Becker, V. Estrada, A. Freeman (2014) NMC Horizon Report: 2014 higher
education edition.
24 See, for examples of professional communities of practice, SCIENTIX; e-Twinning; and WIDE
World from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Overview 17
however, many challenges to the full realisation of the potential afforded by
digital technology even in the most developed countries, including the lack of
digital literacy among academic staff, the relative lack of rewards for innovation
in teaching and learning and the need to develop effective and pedagogically
sophisticated models of online courses. There is also a growing digital divide in
terms of access to technology; particularly in a context in which the global drive to
increase participation rates in higher education increases the number of students
who may not have the background to be successful without additional support.
Whatever the possibilities and limits of digital developments, the notion of a
knowledge economy, which sees knowledge production as the most important
determinant of a society’s development, has become commonplace. The positive
relationship between levels of education and economic and social development
has become a new orthodoxy. A contribution to the development of South Africa’s
National Development Plan (2011) puts this as follows:
Universities play three main functions in modern society. Firstly, they are responsible
for the education and training of professionals and high level human resources for the
wide range of employment needs of the public and private sectors of the economy.
applications for existing knowledge. In a country such as South Africa this knowledge
task is about innovation and application, local and global, and about knowledge
that equips people for a society in constant social change. Thirdly, higher education
provides opportunities for social mobility and simultaneously strengthens equity,
social justice and democracy. In the globalising knowledge society, higher education
becomes increasingly important. 25
Far from being in a crisis of relevance as suggested at the beginning of this
chapter, in this view higher education is considered absolutely integral to
development in a modern economy. For South Africa, as a developing and
modernising economy, higher education is one of the major vehicles to spur on
development, yet it is well-recognised that, twenty years ago, the system was not
fundamental question that must be asked in a review process is whether, twenty
these functions effectively.
3. The South African context
3.1. Themes and issues
What is understood as the process of modernisation, and what that means, has
evolved in the South African context over the twenty-year period in question.
In the early years of policy development in higher education, the emphasis
nationally in all spheres was on achieving social justice through redress – a
massive reconstruction and development programme was envisaged to right the
25 N. Badsha & N. Cloete (2011) ‘Higher Education: Contribution for the NPC’s National
Development Plan’ (unpublished paper).
18 Higher education reviewed
skewed ways in which all aspects of South African society had developed as a
result of social engineering according to race on a grand scale. The disjuncture
between higher education in its fragmented form and the needs of a developing
society was the main issue that needed to be addressed to achieve the goals
of the Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP): growth in the economy
through a shift from mining to manufacturing, which would require high-level
skills development; reconstruction through addressing the challenges of poverty
such as the provision of housing, electricity, sanitation and health services to the
poor; and the building of a robust civil society to increase participation in the
26 It was relatively comfortable at the time for universities
to align themselves with the national project of building what was understood
as a developmental state. In this paradigm, skills development was not viewed
in a technicist or utilitarian way, but as part of a project of transformation
and enrichment of a society and its people. However, another strand of more
hard-headed economic thinking soon emerged that, faced with the realities of
developing an economic policy to deal with unemployment, emphasised the need
line with the international trend of neoliberalism and structural adjustment to
develop the economy on more market-oriented lines. The shift from RDP to GEAR
policy was to develop, from the early consensus and alignment of higher education
with the new ideals of reconstruction and development in a relationship with
government that was to be characterised by mutual trust, to a more complex
environment in which higher education has come to be seen as a vehicle for the
advancement of a knowledge economy, and in which the relationship of higher
education and government was to undergo some repositioning.27 The strands of
this story are interwoven in the discussions that follow, but are teased out more
comprehensively in Section 6.
Given that there are multiple roles for South African higher education, there
are at least three major themes explored in this chapter, and indeed in the
last twenty years having had to be fundamentally reimagined and reorganised
from its fractured, inequitable and isolated apartheid legacy in order to meet the
theme underlying this review is thus that of the modernising state: it includes
the narrative of policy intentionality – the policies, processes and mechanisms
employed to steer a deeply divided sector into a new era characterised by
integration, a more rational institutional landscape and the achievement of
national goals such as greater equity of access and success for students from all
population groups of South Africa in order to further the economic and social
development of the country.
26 A.C. Bawa (2012) ‘South African higher education: At the center of a cauldron of national
imaginations’ in Social Research, 79(3), p. 673.
27 The Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy’s aim was to stimulate faster
economic growth which was required to provide resources to meet social investment needs
Overview 19
The second is the social justice and democratic imperative – the need for
the fundamental transformation of the system and the institutions within it
to create a more equitable platform in which all races and classes have equal
opportunities to realise their potential as part of the democratisation project and
in which past inequities were redressed. As much as changes and achievements
in higher education in South Africa have been brought about through deliberate
policy efforts on the part of the national departments concerned with education,
individual institutions as agents, other national departments focused on science
and technology or health or agriculture, particular individual leaders, national
bodies, the Council on Higher Education (CHE), staff and student unions and their
activities have each had some level of impact on the development trajectory of the
system. A common preoccupation and focus of activity of all of these has been the
achievement of a social justice agenda, and thus the second theme of this chapter
is transformation, including the shifting nuances and differences of meaning of
the concept as a particularly South African one, and how it has manifested in a
variety of goals and activities in different parts of the system.
A third theme underlying this chapter is the global context and
internationalisation and the extent to which higher education has successfully
been fashioned or been proactively responsive to position itself securely in the
globalising knowledge society. From relative isolation for most parts of the system
twenty years ago, the modernisation agenda has also entailed a reinsertion
massive world-wide shifts in higher education. These include, as introduced
above, changes in organisational culture, pedagogy, research and funding brought
arguably led to a phenomenon of increasing managerialism; the extensive use of
external quality assurance, international benchmarking processes and rankings
tables; the ICT revolution; as well as an increase in staff and student mobility.
3.2. Continuities and changes from the CHE’s 2004 review
These themes are not new, yet the current manifestations of these suggest both
continuities and changes from their initial framing. This review covers two decades
of post-apartheid South Africa. However, the CHE undertook a comprehensive
others, and this section of the chapter recalls the themes, issues and conclusions
of the 2004 review, partly to map the continuities but also to indicate how and
where the debates have shifted.28 In 2004, the decade captured in the CHE review
was characterised by intensive policy development which had set up the goals for a
the frameworks for new processes, such as national planning and external quality
assurance, that were to begin in earnest. By 2004, the debates that shaped, and
that continue to shape, the discourse around higher education – for example,
28 CHE (2004) ; CHE (2007) Review
of higher education in South Africa: selected themes; CHE (2009) ‘The state of higher education
report’ in Higher Education Monitor, 8.
20 Higher education reviewed
the equity versus development debate; the transformation agenda, a distinctly
South African conceptualisation that continues to shape thinking about higher
education; and the so-called differentiation debate, were well-established.29 As in
the quote that informed the National Development Plan above, the 2004 review
asserts the important role of higher education in enhancing national economic
competitiveness within a global knowledge-driven economy, although, unlike in
many other countries, it situates that role in the context of transformative goals as
put forward in the White Paper of 1997. That review foregrounds the social and
public value of higher education, placing on it the responsibility for “providing
equitable opportunities for learning and (self-) development; to be responsive to
societal needs, producing relevant knowledge and socially committed graduates
to contribute positively to the development of the country and to be publicly
roles”.30 It is predicated on the assumption of a strong link between knowledge
production and economic and social development, and hence a focus on the
need for South Africa, post-apartheid, to ‘catch up’ in developing high-level skills
to increase its international or global competitiveness. There is also a sense
that the digital divide, in what Castells termed the ‘network society’, would be
considerably widened were the purpose of higher education, i.e. to further South
31 At the same time, there
was an understanding of higher education as a catalyst for the advancement
of a more equitable, engaged and democratic society through fostering critical
intellectual debate, developing public intellectuals and a new intelligentsia, and
contributing to a ‘vibrant and engaged civil society’ – evident in the theme of
social responsibility.
In short, the major themes encompass many of the concerns that were evident
in other higher education contexts at the time – seeing higher education in the
context of the knowledge economy, the focus on high level skills development,
the need to demonstrate quality and greater accountability for the way in which
public monies were being used, a concern to further economic growth – as well
as the need for redress and transformation relating to the peculiarities of South
Africa’s apartheid past.
rubric were the issues of equity, social justice, the need to renew civil society
and the need for engagement with emerging social policies. An extrapolation of
this was the attention paid to increasing student access. Underlying the equity-
development tension lay not only ideological and political contestation, but the
hard realities of limited resources, and a gap between the high expectations that
priorities and demands – not only in higher education – and limited government
and institutional capacity.
All of these concerns endure in the current context. The difference is that the
29 See Section 5.2.
30 CHE (2004) p. 15.
31 M. Castells (2009) The rise of the network society: The information age: Economy, society, and
culture, Volume 1.
Overview 21
policy intentions and drivers that were announced or foregrounded in that review
have been implemented to greater or lesser extents in the last decade, with
varying levels of success. If the 2004 review was characterised by discussions of
policy development and intentionality relating to such concerns, this one focuses
on the analysis and assessment of the implementation of those policies in three
as a whole, its transformation and pursuit of demographic goals, and how it has
been planned and funded. The second domain considers structural and systemic
matters – the reorganisation of the higher education system and the institutional
landscape – including its situation in the new territory of post-school provision. A
third domain is that of organisational matters – how management and governance
at system and institutional level have been affected both by policy implementation
and other factors and how matters of accountability through regulation and
quality assurance have had an impact on constituencies within organisations, such
i.e. the main activities of higher education – teaching and learning, research and
community engagement to consider how these have changed, not only through
policy implementation, but how they have been affected by broader factors such
as the rapid development of information and communications technologies, and
what their future directions might be.
the post-apartheid era, the CHE observed that:
Given the complexities and constraints inherent in the South African higher education
policy process (and probably in any policy process), it is not possible currently to
predict with certainty the implications, future effects and long-term impact of policy
current South African higher education system, the effects of policies are likely to be
co-produced by the state, the higher education sector, individual HEIs, and other social
32
At the end of a second decade, some of those implications, effects and impacts are
somewhat clearer, and more readily unpacked, while the long-term implications
remain uncertain. This review focuses thus on what has been achieved in the
forward in order to outline the constraints and opportunities likely to affect that
uncertain future.
4. Achieving purposes at a system level
4.1 Policy intentions
4.1.1 Modernisation
This section examines implementation of the policy and legislative drivers
of the higher education system as a whole in the post-apartheid era, an era in
which deliberate efforts were made to develop a more appropriate system
32 CHE (2004) , p. 37.
22 Higher education reviewed
for a modernising state. These foundations had been laid in the midst of an
epochal political transition, a critical period where the reintegration of the
country into the global economy, and the rebuilding of academic linkages that had
become attenuated under the impact of the academic boycott and the isolation
of the apartheid regime were shifting the economic and political as well as the
higher education policy discourses. In the post-apartheid era, higher education
faced a problem of trust, especially amongst the disenfranchised majority, and a
higher education to contribute to the transformation of society became at the same
time a call for the sector to transform itself. At the same time, the post-apartheid
imperatives of access, equity and redress stood starkly alongside the imperatives of
economic as well as social inclusion, and the call for a new growth path to address
the challenges of widespread poverty and unemployment. This tension was cast in
the higher education debates and policy documents of the time as a tension between
‘equity and development’ – the form of that development, and the ‘development
path’ was left rather vague – and much discussion centred on the question, whether
it was possible to achieve both. Indeed, the question was whether the path to
development might not lie through a more inclusive and equitable higher education
sector, from which the (black) managers, technicians, scientists and professionals
which a growing economy would require would emerge.
4.1.2 Transformation
The radical alteration of the size and shape of the higher education system and
the introduction of the policy drivers to steer the system towards particular goals
discussed above, were motivated by the need to achieve a state of affairs that was
qualitatively different from that which preceded it. Breaking with the inequalities
of the apartheid past, a transformed higher education system would play a critical
role in an emerging, non-racial, progressive democracy, in producing critical,
independent citizens as well as skilled and socially-committed graduates who
would be capable of contributing to social and economic development. In short,
the vision and goals of the founding post-apartheid policy statements related
not simply to the achievement of an equitable demographic composition of the
student body in terms of access and success, the achievement of equity in the
staff body and improvement in research outputs and the production of high-
level skills for the economy, but to a higher education system that would play a
and an informed, critical, and socially aware citizenry.
While an imprecise concept, transformation was understood to be the broad
organising precept for taking the system forward. From the very early policy
debates on, it was recognised that transformation would imply the need to make
hard choices between sometimes competing ends – the achievement of equity in
a system that had been inherently inequitable by design, while at the same time
bringing about the socio-economic development of a newly democratic society. A
similar tension that underlay the goal of transformation was that between equity
way individual institutions responded to perceived, or real, external stimuli. At
Overview 23
the same time, the terrain on which the struggle over transformation in higher
education would take place, and on which an equity-development tension would
be played out, was wider than that of higher education institutions and the new
Ministry of Education alone. It was the terrain of a larger, and still more complex,
transition from apartheid to democracy.
One of the recommendations of the National Commission on Higher Education
(NCHE) of 1996 for taking the system forward to achieve greater equity was to ‘massify’
the system; in other words, to grow the numbers radically to achieve a much higher
participation rate of the age cohort, thereby increasing the proportion of previously
disadvantaged students as well as delivering on the high-level skills and knowledge
situation in which school preparation was unequal and in which the staff to student
ratio would deteriorate could result in an overall reduction in quality and a further
skewing of the intake away from the science, engineering and technology (SET) area
was not explicitly stated, given concerns from some of the historically disadvantaged
institutions that inherited hierarchies would remain unchanged. It would not be
feasible to grow a system that included only research universities – other types of
institution serving different higher education purposes would be needed.
The actual policy choice made, as in the White Paper of 1997 and the Higher
Education Plan of 2001, was for ‘planned growth’ towards achieving both the equity
the transformation objectives through the policy drivers discussed above, with
incorporations of several colleges, the higher education system comprised universities
(albeit some to be focused on technology) only, and remained an ‘elite’ one, in terms
largely disestablished, such that while the higher education sector continued to grow,
it was unable to provide for all the school-leavers seeking some form of post-school
narrow band of universities, rather than across an entire post-school landscape.
A decade later, and the issue of increasing participation rates in post-school
education, largely through expanding the college sector exponentially, is again
radically different, target of 30% by 2030 for participation in higher education to
be achieved through increased enrolments; while the White Paper for Post-School
937 000 students in 2012 to 1 600 000). The vocational and training enrolments
in the post-school sector were to expand from the 345 000 of 2010 to 2.5 million
was to increase to 1 million learners in new community colleges. The targets for
growth in the whole post-school sector are ambitious; the White Paper, however,
education part of the post-school sector, while the enrolment plans of individual
universities together currently indicate a proposed growth of 2-3% per annum,
it is evident that rapid and extensive growth in the existing universities, given
24 Higher education reviewed
demonstrated in the Chapter 8 of this review. In addition, the work undertaken
for the CHE Task Team’s Proposal for Undergraduate Curriculum Reform indicated
that growing the number of students, for example from an intake of 42 000 to
58 000 in order to achieve even 15 000 more graduates than the 21 000 that
a very costly option. Indeed, it was calculated that the amount of unproductive
subsidy i.e. subsidy not resulting in graduates, would rise by 50%.33 The rebuild
of the vocational education and training college sector will also rely heavily on the
universities to provide the teaching capacity needed. Part of the solution mooted
in the NDP and the 2013 White Paper is, as the NCHE had suggested almost twenty
years ago, to increase enrolments through different modes such as a growth in
distance education offerings. A new distance education policy has thus been
deemed necessary, partly to remove the prohibition on the offering of distance
education by contact institutions that was imposed in the wake of unregulated
growth in the early 90s. The motivation for increasing the participation rate is both
to bring about transformation through increasing access, and a developmental
one in that the need for high and mid-level skills in the economy is acute.
As much as transformation has been a broad concept, it has also engendered the
monitoring of numbers and trends in a narrow interpretation that foregrounds
demographics. Race has been the major preoccupation, but gender, age and disability
are also categories for redress. In a pervasive discourse, transformation has become
equated with equity, and equity with race. Twenty years into democracy, the student
composition of the universities is radically different from its apartheid inheritance,
albeit in a relatively small system with low participation rates, yet the issue of race
is becoming even more emotive and volatile. Ways of measuring transformation/
equity are quite divergent: on one hand, some institutions are reassessing their
admissions policies, arguing that with the development of a substantial black
middle class, many of whose children attend private schools, race is no longer an
accurate proxy for disadvantage, and that other indicators of disadvantage, such
as quintile of school, would be more equitable.34 On the other hand, attempts
have been made to measure equity on an index that equates equity with race as a
singular indicator of transformation, and while there has been vociferous critique
of the index, (its methodology, assumptions etc.) it has gained some traction in
national fora and reignited the ‘transformation debate’, to some extent returning
to the understanding evident in the initial application of the Employment Equity
designated population groups.35
33 CHE (2013)
curriculum structure, p. 134.
34 J. Etheridge (2014) ‘UCT admissions: Race will still be considered’ in Mail and Guardian, 29 May.
35 K.S. Govinder & M.W. Makgoba (2013) ‘An equity index for South Africa’ in 109(5/6), p. 109;
K.S. Govinder, N.P. Zondo & M.W. Makgoba (2013) ‘A new look at demographic transformation
for universities in South Africa’ in South African Journal of Science, 109(11/12); T. Dunne (2014)
‘Mathematical errors, smoke and mirrors in pursuit of an illusion: Comments on Govinder
et al. (2013)’ in South African Journal of Science, 110(1/2); T. A. Moultrie & R. E. Dorrington
(2014) ‘Flaws in the approach and application of the Equity Index: Comments on Govinder et al.
(2013)’ in South African Journal of Science, 110(1/2); and V. Borden (2014) ‘Anything but simple:
Inappropriate use of Euclidean distance in Govinder et al. (2013)’ in South African Journal of
Science, 110(5/6).
Overview 25
While transformation in South African higher education discourse has more
often than not been associated with demographic changes in student and staff
complements, a further dimension to the ‘transformation debate’ that takes it
beyond numbers is institutional culture. The aspect of student integration across
race groups and integrated institutional cultures is still an issue, particularly in a few
historically advantaged institutions. Despite conscious efforts having been made to
for transformation charters for all institutions to “defeat racism and patriarchy”
at South African universities which is believed to be “rife”.36 These incidents have
illustrated that change in terms of numbers without a transformation of institutional
culture and practices is not conducive to harmony and cannot be considered to have
created an equitable climate for higher education.37
The Ministerial Committee Report on Transformation and Social Cohesion of
on the agenda, and led to the development of a recent draft national policy on
social cohesion in the post-school sector.38 In 2013, Higher Education South Africa
(HESA) initiated a project facilitating the development of institutional Integrated
Transformation Plans in which institutions put forward their understandings
of the challenges of transformation and how they planned to address them.
A considerably more complex and nuanced understanding of transformation
emerged from this process which incorporates change in institutional culture,
inclusiveness, diversity and redress and many other dimensions. Indeed, some
institutions have transformation charters in which the notion of transformation
of an institution. Nevertheless, it is clear that effecting profound change in the
male, is a shared challenge that has no easy solutions.
4.1.3 Integration
Perhaps the most obvious policy consideration in pursuing the goal of
to overcome past fragmentation (different departments responsible for higher
education, different national bodies for different sectors, different types of
institution managed differently, and a split between education and training and
between science and technology).
In a wider context, this is sometimes conceived of as a major impetus of recent
times towards ‘de-differentiation’, i.e. the democratisation of knowledge that seeks
to achieve equal status between different kinds of institution and equivalence
between different kinds of learning as evidenced in a number of countries in
36 B. Phakathi (2014) ‘Nzimande punts social inclusion policy after spate of racial incidents’ in
Business Day, 22 August; DHET (2014) ‘Draft Social Inclusion Policy Framework for Public Post-
School Education & Training Institutions’.
37 For example, the 2008 Reitz incident at the University of the Free State and the investigation into
initiation practices at North-West University.
38 DoE (2008) Report of the Ministerial Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the
Elimination of Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions.
26 Higher education reviewed
seamless articulation and the abolition of binary divides between institutional
types.39 In the South African context, this was expressed in White Paper 3 of
1997 as the intention to “transform higher education through the development
of a programme-based higher education system, planned, funded and governed
as a single coordinated system”.40 The various early policy processes had led to
the major focus for the future of higher education – that is, redress and quality,
41 The White Paper had outlined
three major policy intentions and steering mechanisms:
1. Planned expansion of the higher education system to increase
participation (which gave rise to the need for external quality assurance
2. to achieve greater responsiveness through planning (a national plan and
three-year rolling plans for institutions) and
3. goal-directed, performance-related funding to steer the system towards
transformation.
This was to be achieved through a system of cooperative governance, with the
state playing a steering and coordinating role through the funding and planning
levers, autonomous institutions managing their resources but being publicly
accountable, and an intermediary body (the CHE) having both policy advisory
and quality assurance functions.
4.2. Funding
by the development of a new funding framework that included institutional
restructuring grants, earmarked funding, block grants, research output grants
and institutional factor grants. The previous SAPSE funding formula had been
perceived to be inimical to the achievement of the policy goals in its bluntness as
uses to which public funding could be put in pursuance of the public good ends
of higher education.42 Indeed, the SAPSE formula was a mathematically-based
system of resource allocation, predicated on a relatively homogenous system
(i.e. the previously advantaged institutions for which it had been developed)
in which market forces rather than political predilections would play a role in
achieving a fair distribution among them. The post-apartheid reality of a diversity
of institutions that had been governed by different funding regimes, from the
39 M. Young (2010) ‘Alternative educational futures for a knowledge society’ in European
Educational Research Journal, 9(1). By de-differentiation, he is referring to the idea that in a
networked society historically distinct institutions and activities are becoming more alike.
40 DoE (1997) White Paper 3: A programme for the transformation of higher education.
41 Examples include the National Education Policy Initiative (NEPI) 1993; Union of Democratic
University Staff Associations (UDUSA) policy work in the 1990s; the Centre for Education and
Policy Development (CEPD); and the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE) 1996.
42 DHET (2013) Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of Funding.
Overview 27
different ‘bantustans’ or different national departments that had engineered huge
for such a system to be equitable. The 2003 funding framework, which was fully
implemented only from 2007 onwards, was based on the principle of shared
costs between government and students. It was conceived of as a goal-oriented
mechanism for the distribution of government grants to individual institutions
in accordance with national planning priorities, the quantum of funds available
and the approved enrolment plans of individual institutions.43 Essentially, it was
a mechanism to steer the system towards achieving the modernising goals of the
system on a more equitable basis between institutions; that is, using one set of
rules across all institutions. Some allowance was, however, built into the formula
to take account of the need for redress funding for those institutions that had
been disadvantaged in the apartheid era, although the quantum of actual redress
funding awarded remains an issue of contention; at the same time, it rewarded
those activities thought desirable to attain national goals, such as research
output. In terms of the grant’s major component, the teaching input portion, it
funded enrolments based on the number of places available (through negotiation
with the Department of Higher Education and Training) in particular cells of a
and planning in terms of in which areas it would be more advantageous for
process, in which all programmes offered by an institution needed to be approved
by the Department on the basis of their importance to the country’s needs and in
terms of the institution’s capacity to offer them, and on the basis of whether they
met the requisite minimum standards in terms of quality determined through an
accreditation function undertaken by the Higher Education Quality Committee
(HEQC) of the Council on Higher Education.
Not only was there a funding/planning driver at the level of programme
offerings designed to steer the system towards producing graduates in the more
resource-intensive disciplines necessary to build a modernising economy, but
there was also an attempt to apply a greater rationality to determining the overall
size and shape of the system through the introduction of institutional three-year
rolling plans, and more recently, of a much more intensive process of enrolment
planning on the basis of negotiations between the DHET and institutions in which
attempts are made to match growth to available resources.
The funding driver has been met with mixed success; indeed, a comprehensive
to achieve its intended goals, particularly in the midst of the continued existence
and exacerbation of wide disparities between institutions and their output
and performance was called for and undertaken in 2012-2013. From some
perspectives, the critique was that the use of a funding system in which a
decreasing proportion is formula-based in favour of earmarked funding renders
43 DoE (2004) New Funding Framework: How government grants are allocated to public higher
education institutions.
28 Higher education reviewed
had been disadvantaged in the past such that one set of rules is inherently
inequitable.44 Amid wide expectations that the entire funding system would be
overhauled, the review in effect recommended a continuation of the use of the
improvement.
For universities, the pressure for access combined with a tight funding
environment has, as in other parts of the world, led to upward pressure on fees,
and the need to increase third-stream income. Although it differs quite widely
across the system, the average ratio of subsidy:fees:third-stream income for
universities in South Africa is roughly 40:30:30.45 It is evident that the funding
output in journal and publication units by South African universities since 2005;
it has, however, been less successful in stimulating a growth in the numbers of
doctoral graduates, where supervision capacity is a key constraint.46 This may
be a result of individual academics and institutions focusing limited amounts of
energy and capacity where the rewards are greatest, and it supports the widely-
carry out all demands on them equally well – research, teaching, postgraduate
supervision, community engagement, administration and contributing to the
raising of third-stream income on which a number of universities are becoming
reliant. For a few institutions, third-stream income constitutes almost half their
income, which requires a considerable time investment. With subsidy income
fee income that is the only really elastic element in the overall funding scenario,
At an individual student level, access to higher education by students from low
socio-economic backgrounds has been facilitated by the government national
loans and bursaries to students who qualify in terms of a means test. A number
in the past decade, 659 000 students had been assisted with over R12 billion in
loans and bursaries.47
it to achieve its full potential. In the context of a situation in which there are an
estimated 2.8 million (or over 40%) 20-24 year olds who are not in employment,
education or training, relative to just under a million places in higher education
44 Lewin & M. Mawoyo (2014) ‘Student access and success: Issues and interventions in South
African universities’ (report).
45 CHE (2014) VitalStats: Public higher education 2012, p. 95.
46 DHET (2013) Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of Funding, p. 297.
47 DHET (2010) Report of the Ministerial Committee on the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, p. xiii.
Overview 29
scheme are daunting; despite rapid increases in the allocation of funding to
the scheme, demand far outstrips supply. The review found that the quantum
qualifying applicants in the current situation, without taking into account the
extensive growth in participation envisaged in the vocational college sector.48
The NSFAS review also noted that 2010 data indicated that 48% of NSFAS-
funded students had dropped out or otherwise not completed their studies.
Among the reasons advanced are that the funds in some institutions are diluted
among greater numbers of students to ensure wider access, resulting in funded
students being required to make up a shortfall, which they are mostly not in a
position to do. There are concerns too that the means test system is open to abuse,
while many poor school matriculants who qualify academically but fall just above
the minimum income levels (the so-called ‘missing middle’) remain excluded from
accessing funding and hence from higher education studies altogether. It is also
the case that some institutions have disproportionate numbers of NSFAS-funded
students, and carry the burden of increasing debt caused by underfunding. In
addition, the scheme exhibits a poor rate of recovery – the review estimated this
to be at 26% of funds dispersed – which is exacerbated by the high number of
students who do not complete their studies and who do not earn enough to become
liable for repayment.49
allocation of funding, the NSFAS scheme is piloting a process of centralised online
directly to students. The pilot is yet in early days; and owing to some problems
having been experienced, it is likely to be extended before full implementation
takes place. In the meanwhile, student protests continue unabated.
In this context, the government’s espoused policy of pursuing ‘fee-free education
for the poor’ has led to widespread misunderstanding of what is intended, and
added fuel to the many student protests related to demands for government
‘to open its coffers’ to increase NSFAS funding.50 The student protests are often
volatile and some have led to violence and damage to property.51 Indeed, this and
the harder edge to charges of racism and calls for institutional transformation
have contributed to potential instability in the system twenty years after the
throughput rates and pressure to increase participation has created arguably the
48 Ibid. pp. i – xx.
49 Ibid.
50 A special study group was requested by the DHET in 2012 to explore the feasibility of fee-free
higher education for the poor; DHET (2012) Report of the Working Group on Fee Free University
Education for the Poor in South Africa
that sustainable additional funding would be needed to make this feasible.
51 A Vice-Chancellor is quoted as saying, for instance, that “There is this notion of free education being
thrown around and therefore students will demand, and this demand will be on universities, not
the Department or Parliament” in B. Phakati (2014) ‘State’s student funding scheme unable to meet
demand’ in Business Day, 11 September.
30 Higher education reviewed
4.3 Quality assurance
The last decade saw the implementation of a comprehensive system of external
quality assurance. The principle of quality as a key element in the relationship
between the state and higher education, in the context of institutional autonomy,
was highlighted, and the need for a coordinated external quality assurance
system for a newly-integrated sector was realised in the establishment through
the Higher Education Act of 1997 of the Council on Higher Education and its
permanent committee, the Higher Education Quality Committee, at one remove
from government, to carry out programme accreditation, institutional audits and
quality promotion. Quality assurance as the third driver to steer a system, along
with planning and funding, was intended to be the guarantor of rationality in the
application of the drivers, protecting against arbitrariness or the apportioning of
scarce resources to programmes of poor quality, and assisting to increase levels
of public trust in the higher education system as a whole. In the early policy
debates (NCHE etc.), an independent Council as a non-political distributor of
funding related to performance and quality, much like funding councils in some
other systems, had been mooted; in the event, the White Paper of 1997 and the
Higher Education Act ensured that the funding responsibility stayed with the
national department, while the CHE that it established became responsible for
quality assurance but without the direct link to funding allocation, as well as for
providing advice on higher education matters to the Minister of Education (or
Higher Education and Training as from 2009).
There are, however, two main players in the narrative of external quality
assurance, with somewhat differing underlying philosophies and ideas regarding
the primary purpose of higher education, and a range of others that had an impact
on Higher Education, through its Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC),
conducted a series of external quality audits of all public institutions, and some
of the larger private ones, in a cycle that began in 2004 and which is currently
nearing its conclusion. The keywords characterising external quality assurance
accountability purposes, alignment of quality assurance with strategic planning
and resource allocation, quality and equity to be realised concurrently, deliberate
quality management, a particular emphasis on the quality of teaching and learning
and the institutionalisation of a quality culture.
The approach to audits was an avowedly developmental one; the purpose
was to stimulate the development of comprehensive institutional processes
and policies to assess the quality of three core functions of higher education,
those being teaching and learning, research and community engagement. The
methodology stressed the need for institutional self-evaluation, as well as peer
review, in an effort to develop capacity in the system to improve and demonstrate
major principle guiding the audits was that institutional purposes could also be
South Africa was a major consideration. Perhaps the overarching concern of the
Overview 31
audit process was the transformation agenda; the yoking together of both quality
and equity in a bid to improve the social justice ends of higher education. While
the origins of external quality assurance processes in other parts of the world
had lain in the neo-liberal agendas of competitive governments in the 1990s,
and their need to measure and demonstrate the quality of their higher education
institutions, the CHE’s approach was instead to use tools with conservative origins
for progressive ends.52
The audit reports on each of the institutions, while paying attention to their
achievements, also provided recommendations for improvement and required
progress reports and monitoring of their implementation. This aspect of
external quality assurance was not directly linked to funding, as noted above,
being conducted by a different agency from the national department. In some
interpretations, this was important for the success of the enterprise, as mutual
trust between institutions and the HEQC was considered a determining factor
in allowing for a greater engagement with institutional concerns than had they
consequences. In other interpretations, the lack of a direct connection to
funding weakened the impact that the three steering mechanisms – funding,
planning and quality assurance – might have had in responding more quickly
and comprehensively to institutions that found themselves in governance or
management crises that impacted on the quality of their core functions. The impact
on institutions of external quality assurance was nonetheless considerable, with
many developing much more robust internal quality assurance systems than they
had previously enjoyed. The audits also focused attention on improving the quality
of teaching and learning which was placed at the centre of the higher education
enterprise, with an emphasis on the need for curricula to be contextually relevant
and related to institutional missions. They also provided comprehensive accounts
on the extent to which individual institutions were responding to the national
transformation goals. The analyses of teaching and learning problems across the
sector have led to a new phase of external quality activity in the HEQC’s Quality
Enhancement Project (QEP) which is designed to bring about improvements in
the actual quality of teaching and learning activities at institutional level.
Other aspects of ongoing external quality assurance carried out by the HEQC
were focused on the programme level, rather than the institutional. National
and more recently social work programmes – and the accreditation of new
programmes have been concerned to ensure that minimum standards across
the system are met. The combined quality assurance efforts have arguably
contributed to the external pressures on institutions, fuelling the trend towards
greater regulation and accountability, but they have also assisted on focusing
attention on the analysis and potential resolution of quality concerns in the
system. In all the activities of the HEQC, a broad view of transformation pertained;
the various processes underscored a broader purpose for higher education than
the utilitarian, with transformation applying as much to the nature and conduct
52 L. Lange (2006) ‘Symbolic policy and “performativity”: South African higher education between
the devil and the deep blue sea’ in Kagisano, 4, p. 40.
32 Higher education reviewed
of institutions, the design and delivery of their curricula as to the changing
demographics and inclusion of women and people with disabilities.
A second major player in the external quality assurance sphere was the South
different ideas base. Emanating initially from concerns in the Labour Department
about the poor skills base for human resource development in South Africa, the
on which all education and training offerings would be registered. A common
currency of credits and unit standards was established in the late 1990s in an
attempt to create access and articulation opportunities in a seamless way across
the learning had taken place. A complicated architecture of standards generating
and quality assuring bodies in different economic sectors was erected. The trend
towards ‘de-differentiation’ noted above was uppermost in a system based on
applied competence and generic skills acquisition and that viewed the main
purpose of higher education being to provide the high level skills necessary for
economic growth. The growth of external monitoring was also evident in the
establishment of the Sectoral Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) which
were accredited by SAQA as Education and Training Quality Assurers (ETQAs)
comprising a range of mostly external stakeholders, with responsibility for
those whose quality was assured by the HEQC. Along with a growing number of
professional councils, both statutory and otherwise, many of which understood
their role as the registration of professionals to include programme accreditation
– there was, what the 2004 CHE Review terms, “a burgeoning complexity in the
realm of quality assurance jurisdiction”.53
Indeed, the period until 2004 was characterised by the growth in external
regulation through SAQA policy and regulations, against which higher education had
chafed – particularly against a unit standards methodology. Contestation from higher
education was instrumental in leading to a protracted review of the NQF and the
external quality assurance bodies culminating in 2001, which focused on the creation
of three so-called bands of the learning system (general education, FET and higher
The NQF Act of 2008 saw a major reorganisation of the external quality and regulatory
environment, with the intended streamlining of the SETA environment and the
ETQAs, and the establishment of three Quality Councils, one for each area – general
and further education, trades and occupations and higher education.
The last decade has seen a repositioning of the roles of the various agencies,
with, for higher education, the major focus of activity being the development,
(HEQSF) within the NQF and the beginning of a process of aligning existing
programmes with it, requiring major curriculum development by some
institutions in order to ensure the integration of higher education offerings on
a single framework. In the preoccupation with creating a single system with
one set of rules, the reorganisation of higher education offerings onto a single
53 CHE (2004) .
Overview 33
of 2007 had perhaps inadvertently fuelled the ‘mission drift’ in universities of
technology that had earlier been considered undesirable – as discussed in 5.2
below. While the Framework was successful in bringing some coherence to the
system through creating a set of parameters for all higher education offerings
to adhere to no matter where they were offered, the original version tended to
particularly into the postgraduate level. While the Framework gave some weight
only a 360-credit diploma amidst a plethora of offerings of various sorts that
had all purported to be diplomas, it also arguably privileged pure academic
all levels, bringing it more in line with the international trends towards a greater
mainly in terms of credits and levels to the foregrounding of the purpose of a
a view that all credits at a particular NQF level were equal and exchangeable,
regardless of the curriculum in which they had been designed, which perhaps
created unrealistic expectations of access to a higher education system that,
the education aspirations of the youth cannot all be met by the higher education
system, and that the expansion of the further education and training system
major imperative. One of the current major concerns is that the so-called ‘inverted
pyramid’ of South Africa’s education system, with the most students in higher
twenty-year period under discussion.54
As the bringing together of disparate types of offerings in higher education is
being undertaken and contributing to a new cohesiveness, so are large questions
about the boundaries of higher education being raised. With the creation of
a separate Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in 2009 into
which aspects of the education system that had formerly been under the auspices
of the Department of Labour (the SETAs etc.) and other national Departments
(Agricultural colleges) were brought, the canvas has expanded beyond universities
to include vocational training and the provision of all types of post-school
offerings. The changed landscape has brought to the fore the issue of the nature
54 NCHE (1996) A Framework for Transformation. In 2013, there were 983 698 enrolments in public
higher education institutions; 639 618 in Further Education and Training colleges, and 249 507
in Adult Education Centres (DHET (2015) Statistics on post-school education and training in South
Africa 2013, p. 3).
34 Higher education reviewed
of the relationship between the HEQSF and the other frameworks, and the extent
to which it is possible for students to move between workplace-based vocational
has been to attempt to integrate education and training in the kinds and nature
universities of technology (although this has sometimes been precluded by the
incompatibility of different knowledge types);55 the question now, as put forward
for example in the 2013 White Paper, is how to integrate the three frameworks and
at the same time ensure a differentiated set of offerings straddling the whole post-
school landscape. In terms of technological and vocational training, the impetus is
for comprehensives and universities of technology in particular to prioritise the
establishment of closer relationships with the FET sector and industry, whereas
in the past decade, developing the critical attributes of traditional universities
had arguably been uppermost in their activities.
4.4. Planning
of higher education was the need to integrate a fragmented system, and to give
expression to changing purposes through different institutional forms and
offerings was to be achieved through planning at the programme level through
the introduction of state steering of the offerings of higher education institutions
the additional purposes of which were to give effect to decisions about the
restructuring of the system, to curb the growth of distance education programmes
at contact institutions, to halt the proliferation of satellite campuses and to
reduce regional duplication of offerings. The theme of integration applied also
to the private sector, which was considered to be under-regulated, and thus it
too became subject to new legislative and external quality assurance regimes, as
described in Chapter 2 of this review.
The intended rational steering of the system through planning has become more
complex given the wide-scale restructuring through mergers and incorporations,
themselves and their missions – which has implications for their programme
mix and their research output – with other institutions simply trying to manage
in the aftermath of great upheaval and thus not necessarily being responsive to
the change stimuli as intended, and yet others continuing in terms of already
established identities and offerings. In many senses, the post-merger period has
been one of consolidation and an attempt to re-establish stability for the most
part, but with a number of institutions coming under great stress such that
reappraisals of particular mergers have had to be undertaken.
55 See, for example, SANTED (2010) ‘Differentiation, knowledge and curriculum’ (conference report).
Overview 35
4.5. Other drivers – towards an integrated system of innovation
The higher education system has not only been steered through the national
Department of Higher Education and Training (and its predecessor), but by
drivers emanating from other parts of the system that are more directly concerned
with the goals of modernisation, primarily through the channelling of energies in
science and technology development. The 2004 review described the inherited
science and technology system as uncoordinated, non-transparent, operating
in silos, focused largely on state security issues, racially skewed, with an under-
production of science, engineering and technology graduates; the question thus
was how to develop an integrated, coordinated and responsive science and
technology system answering to the demands of a modern economy. Almost all
research production in higher education institutions had been concentrated in
humanities rather than natural sciences. The policy emphasis through the then
Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (DACST) was on developing
a nationally coordinated strategy to promote synergy between the different
sectoral, infrastructural and institutional elements of the system, to promote
innovation and to develop a research framework in line with national priorities
through a National System of Innovation (NSI) and a national research plan. These
were underpinned by the three ‘pillars’ of innovation, an increase in investment
in the science base and the changing of its demography, and the creation of a fully-
integrated science and technology system.
Higher education policy was, a decade ago, somewhat separate from the overall
science and technology developments, but was also subject to the introduction of
targeted funding. There was the introduction of competitive-bid funding through
the National Research Foundation (NRF) and thus a channelling of funding to
high-priority research areas; a new focus on industry collaboration and public-
private partnerships through THRIP funding and an Innovation Fund to fund the
development of products in strategic areas determined by the National Advisory
Council on Innovation (NACI).56
In this relation, the 2004 Review raised three challenges in relation to a system
of innovation:
1. The tension between science and technology policy processes which
emphasise instrumentalist notions of research and the higher education
research policy process – managed by different government departments.
2. The impact of targeted funding drivers on basic research at higher
education institutions in favour of the strategic and applied ends of the
research spectrum.
3. The apparent lack of success by 2004 in increasing research output
and the goal of developing young, black and women researchers, and
the continuation of existing patterns of which institutions produce the
majority of the research output.
56 The Technology and Human Resources for Industry Programme (THRIP) is a research and
development programme of the DTI and NRF and supports an average of 235 projects per year.
36 Higher education reviewed
In the last decade, there has been some success in increasing research output,
as discussed in the Research chapter of this review, and much of the success must
be ascribed to national policies that have elevated the value of research at both
a national and an institutional level. It is also clear that, despite the drive to de-
differentiate which saw all institutions required to undertake research as part of
their missions, the production of research is still concentrated in a few institutions,
mostly those that were not merged with others in the overall restructuring of the
institutional landscape. Some high-level successes, such as the awarding in 2012
of the SKA telescope project jointly to South Africa and Australia, have raised
favourably with institutions in like countries on the various ranking systems.
The production of science, engineering and technology graduates has, however,
increased only marginally as a proportion of the whole, and not in line with the
original policy intentions. The impact of a schooling system in which science and
mathematics appear to be weak, has been the subject of many a popular article
on the higher education system and its perceived poor production of graduates
ready to advance the knowledge economy.
There have been unintended consequences: among them, the impact on academic
staff, particularly in institutions originally set up as primarily teaching institutions,
whose aspirations and activities are now shaped by different requirements and
there has been a polarising of staff between teachers and researchers within some
institutions, as discussed in Chapters 4, 5 and 7 of this review, with differential
rewards systems; at the very least, there has been a wider range of expectations
of all staff members. There has arguably been an inadvertent devaluing of the
humanities (some have argued there is little empirical evidence to support this
statement as the humanities have been included in external funding systems such
as the NRF), leading to the controversial establishment of a national institute
of the humanities mandated to stimulate the humanities from outside the
institutions.57
which proponents for advancing the purpose of higher education and knowledge
production as a key stimulus to the development of a modern economy argue for
the concentration of resources in research-active institutions, while others argue
for the development of research in all institutions as a matter of equity, whatever
In terms of the questions regarding the modernisation agenda of an intended
discussed in Chapter 5, previous reviews have found that the achievement of a
national system of innovation was still compromised by being differently driven
from different parts of government. The 2013 White Paper for Post-School
Education and Training acknowledges that more needs to be done to align the
visions and steering mechanisms of the DST, DHET and funding agencies such
as the NRF. Beyond research and innovation, however, there is a larger national
57 J. Mouton (2011) ‘The humanities and social sciences in South Africa: Crisis or cause for concern’
in South African Journal of Science, 102(11/12), p. 961.
Overview 37
development context that views higher education very much in the instrumentalist
terms noted in 2004; indeed, higher education in this view is conceived of as the
instrument necessary to deliver high-level skills and human resources useful in
the advancement of the so-called developmental state. The National Development
Plan of 2011, while acknowledging other roles for higher education, is most
development through focusing on reaching particular targets. Having remarked
that the system is a low participation one with high rates of attrition, that the
curriculum is not always responsive to context, and that the knowledge production
is not well-linked into a system of innovation, it concludes that “massive
investments in higher education have not produced better outcomes in academic
performance or graduation rates”. It thus focuses on the need to reinvigorate
universities through increasing participation rates to 30% by 2030, particularly
in mathematics, science and engineering disciplines, producing more scientists to
improve the research and innovation system – graduation rates to rise by 25%, to
levels of staff (37% permanent academic staff holding PhDs in 2011 compared
with 48% in Brazilian public universities); and to drive the knowledge production
necessary for a modern economy.58 While recognising the need for redress and
support for struggling higher education institutions, the NDP is clearly in favour
of focusing resources and energies on the areas of the system that will deliver
advocates purposeful differentiation. Detectable in the NDP is a frustration with
a higher education system that, while displaying some pockets of excellence, it
discourse has become harder; the targets set are ambitious. It must be said thus,
that despite some gains, the three challenges in the 2004 review listed above with
respect to modernisation through a system of innovation are as pertinent as ever.
5. The higher education system - size and shape
5.1 Mergers
While Section 4 above explored the policy drivers that were employed to
achieve the national goals for the system of modernisation, transformation and
integration, another means of achieving such ends was the restructuring of the
system to overcome the worst manifestations of apartheid engineering, and
single, but diverse and coordinated system was accompanied by the politics of
restructuring. The restructuring of the landscape and the reduction in the number
of institutions from 36 to 23 through mergers was an extensive undertaking and
58 Schwartzman, S. (2013) ‘Higher education, the academic profession, and economic development
in Brazil’ in Altbach et al. The global future of higher education and the academic profession, p.
40. In addition, ASSAf’s PhD Study (2010) notes that despite positive growth in the production
rate, South Africa continues to produce a very small number of doctorates per million of the total
population (26 doctorates per million in 2007). This compares very unfavourably with other
countries such as Portugal (569 per million), Australia (264 per million), Korea (187 per million,
and Turkey (48 per million).
38 Higher education reviewed
was accompanied by intensive political debate and negotiation, as well as logistical
upheaval on a grand scale. The incorporations of colleges, and the consolidation
of institutions in particular regions through mergers mostly took place in the
2002-2005 period, following the development of the National Plan for Higher
Education in 2001, and the formal announcement of new institutions and their
the merger project in the various chapters, its implications for institutions and its
consequences, although it is still too soon to evaluate it fully.
There were arguably three main rationales behind the mergers that took place:
restructuring of the system as imagined in the National Commission of Higher
Education in 1996 was largely to overcome the legacies of an apartheid-engineered
landscape as quickly as possible. Inspired by a vision of transformed institutions
for a new equitable and vibrant democracy formed from the merger of historically
advantaged institutions with historically disadvantaged ones, particularly where
they had been set up separately in close proximity, the policy and political terrain
Three years’ of negotiation and bargaining led in 2003 to the eventual framework
for the size and shape of the system, and while energies in the decade since have
been concentrated on the actual implementation, in evaluating the impact and
effect of the mergers, the intentions and origins are worth revisiting in hindsight.
A major priority for the new post-apartheid administration was how to
give expression to the principles of the new Constitution of equal access to
education and to redress the consequences of a higher education system that
had been premised and built on segregationist philosophies and discriminatory
practices. The early policy processes had all recognised the need for a substantial
reorganisation of a fragmented and unequal higher education system.59 The CHE’s
commissioned report Towards a new higher education landscape, released in
2000, had made a case for higher education as a public good, and had argued that
in order to address past inequalities in the context of the changing demographic
composition of universities, social redress required the creation of a diverse
and differentiated higher education system and a reduction in the number of
institutions through mergers to ensure the system’s sustainability. The intention
was to create well-managed institutions of different types, with expanded
transformation agenda was uppermost.
Differentiation implied different purposes or missions for institutions with
some institutions focusing on high-end research and others on teaching. In the
event, however, the CHE’s proposals for a differentiated system were rejected by
a sector that argued that, rather than this resulting in new institutions with a
diversity of missions for all South Africans, past inequalities on racial grounds
would in fact be perpetuated, with historically black institutions and technikons
being relegated to a second-class status – in the then Minister’s words, the CHE’s
proposals for a differentiation of institutions according to function were “lost
59 National Education Policy Initiative (NEPI), and the National Commission on Higher Education
(NCHE).
Overview 39
in the fog of racial essentialism”.60 Ultimately, however, a compromise position
was reached in which there were to be three loosely-categorised institutional
types: universities; universities of technology and comprehensive universities;
the difference residing in the so-called mix of purely academic and vocationally-
oriented programmes that they would offer. Which institutions were to be merged
was the next hurdle; a National Working Group devised a set of proposals in 2001,
some of which were contested and altered in a political negotiation process in the
two years following. The new institutions thus, were all formed on the basis of
the principle of transformation, but the actual size and shape of the system was as
much a product of rational data-based planning as the advancing and protecting
of individual institutional interests.
across the system. Given that a number of institutions were experiencing both
was in short supply, it must have seemed sensible to merge institutions in
such a way that economies of scale, more coherent management capacity, and
the rationalising of duplication of programmes in particular regions would be
achieved.
While the third rationale behind the mergers as expressed from the 1997 White
Paper on was the need to create a system with a diversity of institutions serving
different purposes, how they actually unfolded, however, was contradictorily
mentioned earlier. Much of the political energy and some of the policy drivers
had worked somewhat against differentiation, such that integration and diversity
pulled in different directions. In the National Plan of 2001, a concern had been
voiced that “the programme distinction between technikons and universities
has been eroded in line with the White Paper’s suggestion of a ‘loosening of
boundaries’ between institutional types… which has resulted in a slow, but
sure, move towards uniformity…”.61 Yet in a political concession (as described
by the Minister at the time) as part of the merger negotiations, technikons
in 2003 were granted the right to become universities of technology, with the
62 There
were concerns voiced in the sector that they, and the comprehensive universities,
might lack a clear academic project tied to their particular institutional type and
be vulnerable to academic drift away from offering the diplomas that were much-
needed for economic advancement. Mission drift, however, was intended to be
managed and steered through the funding and planning drivers at a programme
level, as outlined in Section 4 above.
In assessing the impact of the mergers as a whole, the major considerations
must be related to the intention to bring about more rapid transformation
than might otherwise have been the case through reorganising the apartheid-
new institutional types that would be suited for different purposes in line with the
60 A. Hadland (2011) Kader Asmal: Politics in my blood, p. 276.
61 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education.
62 Hadland (2011) Kader Asmal: Politics in my blood.
40 Higher education reviewed
imperatives of a modernising state, or a developmental state as was the discourse
at the time. In terms of the transformation imperative, while some mergers have
arguably led to the emergence of institutions that embody the transformation
ideal, there remains a division between historically advantaged and historically
disadvantaged institutions with respect to both physical resources and cultural
capital.63 inter alia, differences in the school results
academic staff and the ability of institutions to manage their resources in the
interests of quality teaching and learning.64 Indeed, the 2013 White Paper takes
as its point of departure that there are continue to exist huge disparities between
institutions as a result of both historical legacies and institutional capacity to use
resources effectively despite the policy drivers to create institutions of different
types through the merger process.65
Twelve institutions currently continue in much the same form as in the pre-
merger period, having undergone only some or no smaller incorporations. Two
former universities, though not undergoing a merger process, were to become
comprehensives, but it is unclear to what extent they have been able to overcome
internal resistance to shift their missions and identities. Eleven new institutions
resulted from more extensive merger processes; four comprehensives were
formed through the merger of a former technikon and a previous university; four
new universities resulted from the merger of previous universities, and three
new universities of technology resulted from the merger of former technikons.
years after the initiation of the process, it was concluded that, on the basis of the
evidence from external quality audit reports and Ministerial Committee reports
had been formed to monitor the progress of implementation, there have been
three broad outcomes for merged institutions. Some have managed to integrate
their academic functions to a large extent and have successfully created a new
organisational culture for themselves.66 These are generally institutions that
embraced the merger project fully, spending much energy on the practicalities of
merging such as aligning conditions of service and managing pipeline students
in a very short space of time, as well as undertaking fundamental internal
directions. Arguably, these were the institutions in which at least one of the
merger partners had better resources and more capacity to undertake such far-
63 V. Bozalek & C. Boughey (2012) ‘(Mis)framing higher education in South Africa’ in Social Policy
and Administration, 46(6), p. 689.
64 C. Boughey & S. McKenna (2011) ‘A meta-analysis of teaching and learning at four comprehensive
universities’ (unpublished paper).
65 DHET (2013)
and integrated post-school system.
66 M. Hall (2015) ‘Institutional culture of mergers and alliances in South Africa’ in A. Curaj, L.
Georghiou, L.J.C. Harper & E. Egron-Polak (eds.) Mergers and alliances in higher education:
International practice and emerging opportunities.
Overview 41
A number of other institutions have found the merger process much more
large geographic distances, the existence of multiple traditions, organisational
structures and group and individual allegiances that have led to factional
differences, are some of the factors that have made the path to the creation of
an integrated academic project and a sustainable and settled new institutional
culture and identity more challenging for this group.
For at least two institutions, the merger project can be said to have failed to
create the vibrant new institutions intended; one de-merger process is already
underway. In the post-merger period, four merged institutions have found
themselves under administration as a result of governance or management
crises; whether this can be attributed to the merger process itself is not clear,
however, given that there have also been external interventions in four non-
merged institutions since 2005, for similar reasons.67
At a system level, three things are clear. The higher education landscape is
fundamentally altered, yet the pattern of historical inequalities across the system
persists. Some higher education institutions remain mono-cultural in terms of
race and particularly class, with poorer students continuing to attend institutions
still thought of as historically disadvantaged. It is at these institutions that student
debt and backlogs in infrastructural funding are most severe, which leads to the
view that an undifferentiated funding formula fails to take such contextual realities
68 Other institutions that were not merged are taking
longer to change their demographics than some of their merged counterparts. It
has been calculated that currently only a quarter of total headcount enrolments
are at institutions that can be considered to be successfully merged, suggesting
transformation goals envisaged by the NCHE in 2001.69
A second pervasive characteristic of the higher education system is that,
despite overall growth, and the fundamental restructuring of the landscape, the
throughput rates and graduation rates across the system have not improved
70 The CHE’s 2013 task team
on undergraduate curriculum structure concluded that, “the output of higher
education is not meeting the country’s needs … the system has low internal
provide a sound basis for growth), and … the scale of the failure and dropout
occurring within a small and selected student body points to substantial systemic
67 Administration means that the Minister of Higher Education and Training appoints an
administrator to take over the governance powers of the council or the executive management
(including the Vice-Chancellor), or both.
68 M. Letseka & S. Maile (2008) ‘High university drop-out rates: A threat to South Africa’s future’
(policy brief).
69 Hall (2015) ‘Institutional culture of mergers and alliances in South Africa’ in Curaj et al. (eds.)
Mergers and alliances in higher education.
70 I. Scott, N. Yeld, & J. Hendry (2007) ‘A case for improving teaching and learning in South African
higher education’ in Higher Education Monitor, 6.
42 Higher education reviewed
problems that require systemic responses”.71 While that report was concentrating
on curriculum structure, its conclusions imply that the restructuring of the
institutional landscape as a systemic intervention has had little overall effect on
poor throughput rates indicate a system in which public resources are not being
based on 2010 data, the ‘unproductive use of subsidy’, i.e. subsidy that did not
result in student graduations, was in the order of R1 116 000.00 – more than a
quarter of the total. It also calculated that if a 28% growth in graduates was to be
achieved through increasing student intake, that amount would rise by 50%.72
Part of the argument of that report is that there exists an articulation gap
between school and university, and that persistent poor throughput rates,
which may have many other contributory causes such as lack of funding, can in
the main be ascribed to the academic underpreparedness of students entering
higher education. The responses from universities to the proposal put forward
for a change in the curriculum structure to allow extra funded curriculum space
to ameliorate the worst effects of this underpreparedness, indicate a widespread
perception and frustration that the secondary school system is failing to prepare
its learners adequately for study at higher education level.73 There is a general
recognition that many extensive curriculum changes at secondary level have
exacerbated the problem of a system already weak in preparing its learners in the
basics of academic literacy and numeracy, despite ongoing incremental increases
in the pass rate.74 This is illustrated in the report on Skills through and for SIPs
(Strategic Infrastructure Projects) wherein experts in a variety of occupational
areas found that the lack of communication skills and basic numeracy in school-
leavers was hindering the development of professionals and technicians needed
to support the strategic development projects of the country.75 The CHE task team
calculated the extent of the concern, noting that on the basis of current rates
27%, only about 40 000 students of an intake of 150 000 could be considered
to be adequately prepared. To ensure a cohort with a reasonable chance of the
majority passing in regulation time, the school system would need to produce
another 100 000 or so well-prepared high achievers per annum. This, clearly, is a
71 CHE (2013) Proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in South Africa.
72 Ibid. p. 137.
73 CHE (2014) ‘Report on responses from institutions on the proposal for undergraduate
curriculum reform’ (unpublished).
74
of passes allowing access to a Bachelor’s degree increased by 60% and overall passes by 32%.
The increasing pass rate is increasing the pressure on higher and further education for access,
while the lack of preparedness is not being ameliorated.
75 The DHET ‘Skills for and through SIPs’ report (2014) notes “there are only some 37 000
matriculants who achieve 60+ (%) for mathematics and of those only 5 000 to 6 000 currently
are African. This severely limits the numbers who can enter many professions required for the
delivery of the SIPs and is a challenge in terms of transformation of the professions.” It also notes
programmes that require mathematics and that the literacy and numeracy skills of those who do
qualify for entry to higher education leave much to be desired.
Overview 43
very tall order for a school system in which many assessment surveys undertaken
learning.76 It also is indicative of a systemic problem with the education system
overall which impacts not only on throughput rates in higher education, but on
the development of the human capacity to realise the development goals of the
country as a whole.77
5.2. Differentiation
A third issue is that of an inconclusive and somewhat messy debate about
differentiation, and the lack of a clear direction on which to move forward. As
mentioned above, one of the rationales for the mergers was the need to create a
diversity of institutions to serve a multiplicity of purposes in a modern developing
economy. Underlying the differentiation debate are contested understandings
of what differentiation means and what it is for, with implications for the hard
questions of how scarce resources should be allocated. Internationally the
expansion of higher education systems has entailed an increasing diversity
of institutions serving different purposes – a horizontal differentiation of
institutions of equal value, but serving different functions.78 This idea overlaid
onto a South African institutional landscape, however, engenders a more complex
matrix in the face of existing vertical differentiation on the axis of historical
advantage or disadvantage, between those institutions with a research function
(and that are generally also historically advantaged), and those established for
different purposes – the development of technological skills for example – and
both horizontal and vertical differentiation within institutional type categories.
The poles of the debate focus on historical advantage/research versus redress,
type versus teaching-orientation or technological skills development. Given
this complexity, it is understandable that fundamental contestation exists
around whether, and how, differentiation should take place. There have been
research and research-related indicators, and later according to a broader set of
performance indicators, demonstrating that while the top cluster has remained
much the same as pre-merger, there are new players moving into the top
differentiated landscape through differentiated funding.79 The work by CHET uses
a range of measures to argue that institutional type, and movement between sub-
categories and even main categories of such types, should be on the grounds of
evidence-based criteria and not simply on the ‘analysis of institutional missions
76 As an example, the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2014-2015 places
South Africa 144 out of 144 countries on the indicator concerning the quality of science and
mathematics education at school level. Higher education as a whole is placed 86th of 144.
77 CHE (2013) Proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in South Africa.
78
education’ in Journal of Higher Education (56), p. 352.
79 CHET (2010) ‘Institutional clusters in higher education in South Africa’ (presentation).
44 Higher education reviewed
and strategic plans, and negotiations between government and institutional
representatives’.
There have been sector-wide forums and discussions in which there appears to
be a greater movement towards the acceptance of the idea of differentiation, but
as yet no clear plan on how to achieve it. The 2013 White Paper, while suggesting
that differentiation is desirable, both endorses the current categorisation of
institutions into universities, universities of technology and comprehensives, and
argues for a continuum of institution types based on the negotiation of missions
with the DHET, without expressly clarifying what the priorities – for example,
of institutional types in terms of the proportion of ‘vocational-type’ programmes
they offer, has had implications for the identity and teaching and learning practices
of the new types of institution that came into being in the post-merger phase.
The six universities of technology have, in the past decade, been confronted by
forces pulling in different directions. In terms of creating an identity for themselves,
some are moulding themselves in the patterns of traditional universities in
their nomenclature, their activities and in the exhortation to enter the research
complement. Their educational offerings too are changing, in that it appears
that more new degrees are being offered at the expense of diplomas, which has
national implications as diplomas are much needed for the development of mid-
level skills.80 Conversely, however, they are also attempting to create a different
and unique identity through their focus on technology with implications for
than once was the case. Despite the drive to integrate education and training, the
vocational mandate of the erstwhile technikons has in some cases been relatively
weakened, exacerbated by two decades’ experimentation with training becoming
the preserve of Sector Education and Training Authorities. This is evidenced in the
the appointment of staff, in the move away from work integrated learning in many
programmes in the face of tougher external quality assurance demands and the
lesser role of the Advisory Boards comprising academic and industry partners
that had helped to shape their curricula, particularly when programmes were
‘convened’ and developed nationally.81
The new institutional type, the comprehensive university, was generally
described as that which would offer both degrees and diplomas, but the concept
and identity of such a type of institution was more or less left to evolve over time.
A complicating factor in forging a common identity for this type of institution is
the roots of their formation: some were formed through the merger of a university
and a technikon, while others, unmerged, were to change their programme
offerings to become ‘comprehensive’. Despite being somewhat differentiated in
80 A. Kraak (2004) ‘Human resources development and the skills crisis in South Africa: The need for
a multi-pronged strategy’ in Journal of Education & Work, 20(4), p. 123.
81 S. Shay, M. Oosthuizen, P. Paxton & R. van der Merwe (2011) ‘Towards a principled basis for
curriculum differentiation’ in E. Bitzer & N. Botha (2011) Curriculum inquiry in South African
education.
Overview 45
terms of the mix of programme types, the three institutional types i.e. traditional
universities, universities of technology and comprehensives were not based on
clearly differentiated purposes, focus areas, curriculum types or pedagogies,
university and part-technikon.
being taught and learnt, how curriculum is organised and what attitudes, values
knowledge structures into curricula, particularly as they are associated with more
than just their vocational or formative nature and include issues of pedagogical
approach, academic identity, extent and type of research and links to industry.
Indeed, detailed work on curriculum development in two comprehensives in the
last decade concluded that teaching and learning practices, knowledge structures
and curriculum logics differed according to the purpose of a programme and
were not easily translatable across knowledge domains.82 This implies different
in the same discipline, making the achievement of an integrated identity for a
boundaries between institutional and knowledge types promoted a move towards
homogeneity rather than differentiation.83
Altbach et al. note that, “the need for differentiated systems with diverse
Yet, the pressure for academic institutions to copy one another – the tendency
toward isomorphism – and to rise in the academic hierarchy is very strong.
global competition.” They go on to say, “The essential problem of isomorphism
involves unbridled competition among academic institutions pursuing the same
goals. This trend may undermine efforts to develop a system of institutions that
with different goals and responsibilities, patterns of funding, admissions policies,
and other characteristics.”84 They suggest further, that to counteract this trend,
governments need to steer systems appropriately to keep academic systems
The differentiation debate is one that needs a resolution in order to ensure
system to grow beyond an ‘elitist’ one becomes a reality, without all institutions
tending towards the ‘isomorphism’ that is seen as an impediment to the realisation
85
82 Ibid.
83 J. Muller & N. Cloete (2004) Playing fast and loose with knowledge boundaries.
84 P.G. Altbach, L. Reisberg & L.E. Rumbley (2009) ‘Trends in global higher education: Tracking an
academic revolution’ (report).
85 Ibid.
46 Higher education reviewed
6. Organisational and relationship matters –
institutions
6.1. Governance and management
If the purpose and new goals of higher education in a new dispensation were
and the steering mechanisms of government to stimulate movement towards
the achievement of desired changes, its characteristics and nature were also
individual institutions made in their own development trajectories. On the one
hand, the national context of deliberate efforts to bring about social and economic
transformation shaped behaviour and determined relationships between the
sector and government in certain ways; on the other, the greater openness of
South Africa post-apartheid to the outside world saw South African higher
education responding in various ways to the imperatives of globalisation and the
possible trend to greater managerialism that many have argued accompanied it.
shift had been noted from the original intended cooperative governance model
between higher education and the state recommended by the NCHE of 1996, to
stronger state steering in later years through national planning, funding and in
the amendments to the Higher Education Act (1997) that introduced mechanisms
which allowed the Minister to intervene in troubled institutions and to appoint
an Administrator to take over the function of a university Council. The NCHE had
envisaged the transformation of higher education within the context of a new,
democratic project, the economic challenges facing the country as it sought to
reintegrate itself into the global economy, and the realities of a deeply unequal and
uneven education system. The Commission had argued that the transformation of
higher education needed to be located within an understanding of the political
transition in South Africa and a need for ‘a new approach’ to the role of the
state and to the relationship between the state and civil society in which, it was
towards ‘negotiated co-operation arrangements’. It argued that, “the government
needs to create appropriate incentives for institutional initiatives and activity,
that is, appropriate organisational environments that will be conducive to and
result in institutional transformation and diversity.”86 In hindsight, there has
been some debate about what was actually intended by ‘cooperative governance’
– whether it was really feasible to expect institutions and government jointly
to manage a system where it became clear that that system itself needed such
extensive restructuring that vested institutional interests would need to be
compromised.87 Nonetheless, it is clear that in the post-apartheid euphoria of the
early policy development phase, government and institutions saw themselves
working together to reach the same goals, in a relationship based on mutual trust.
86 NCHE (1996) A Framework for Transformation.
87 A. du Toit (2014) Revisiting co-operative governance in higher education.
Overview 47
need for transformation, its support for equity and redress, and its acceptance of
the principles of institutional autonomy and cooperative governance, a shift to a
harder reality is discernible. In at least three important respects – the alignment
with government’s economic framework, and of a view of higher education
economy; the location of planning and allocative functions, not in an ‘arms-
length’ Council (as had been proposed in the NCHE) but within the Department of
equity and redress in favour of controlled growth – it also arguably marked a
change in the governance relationship with institutions.
In the early years of the new democracy i.e. until 2001, despite large-scale
agreement on the values and ends of transformation, policy implementation was
relatively slow, such that institutions, second-guessing the steering parameters,
developed in their own terms. As an example, some institutions responded to the
transformation imperative by opening up satellite campuses at some distance
from their main one to accommodate black students without fundamental change
to the institution itself; others began large telematic or distance enterprises or
established partnerships with private institutions in an unregulated environment
for similar reasons. In a system in which the change from RDP to GEAR saw the
logic of the market entering higher education, students voted with their feet
systems in six institutions, and the use of the administrator mechanism in three
The Higher Education Plan of 2001, and the various steering mechanisms –
quality, planning, funding that became fully operational after 2004 – were an
answer to redirecting the system towards the achievement of national goals in a
more coherent way. Coupled with the extensive restructuring of the institutional
landscape in the 2004-2005 period in which decisions were made regarding
particular mergers that were inimical to some participants, a much harder system
period became the dominant values in the ongoing struggle with realising social
justice goals, although, at the same time, one of the steering mechanisms, i.e.
external quality assurance, foregrounded the social justice agenda in the way it
carried out its institutional audits, as discussed in Section 4 above.
The period from 2001 to 2008 is characterised in Chapter 3 of this review as one
of state steering on the whole, albeit nuanced in the ways in which the steering
mechanisms were utilised by different Ministries. Institutions were responding to
external drivers in a variety of ways, and with rebuilding identities and repositioning
themselves in the post-merger landscape. In 2009, a number of contingencies
cohered to mark something of a change. In the post-Polokwane political landscape,
a new urgency and consideration with delivery, and an emphasis on performance,
along with the creation of a separate Department for Higher Education and
Training not only responsible for the universities, but the entire post-school terrain,
48 Higher education reviewed
signalled a different relationship between higher education and the state. With a
renewed emphasis on the need to revitalise the colleges and vocational sector given
the growing number of youth not in employment, education or training and a policy
focus on articulation into higher education, higher education came to be seen to some
extent as the recalcitrant part of a post-school sector, defending historical privilege
and baulking against an agenda that prioritised skills development and vocational
training. At the same time, in a new and perhaps more reductionist understanding
of transformation from the broad concept that had inhered in the early years, higher
education was seen to be too slow in bringing about demographic change, and too
slow in improving its performance indicators. Given a sector that also continued
to be marked by institutional governance and management crises, the way was
clear to lean towards greater government intervention and less of a relationship
of co-determination than had originally been envisaged. The Amendments to the
Higher Education Act of 2012, which potentially allowed a Minister to intervene
in institutional governance matters on much broader grounds than before, the
establishment of the controversial Transformation Oversight Committee to monitor
institutions in this respect, of new institutions such as the NHISS alongside existing
ones that had similar functions, were interpreted by many in the sector, albeit one
struggling to cohere and to speak with one voice, to be road signs to a different,
more edgy, relationship with government.88
Simultaneously, government itself in this period has been facing many pressures
and problems that are not easily resolved. Expectations and demands on the system
unprecedented growth in access to universities in a relatively short time span;
the national system of innovation requires the production of many more doctoral
human resource development needs; research production needs to be stimulated
and supported to respond to the demands of the knowledge economy; growing
needs to be developed while transformation goals are being attended to; the crises
in governance, management and funding at many institutions continue to require
sustained attention; the issue of redress funding for disadvantaged institutions
revitalisation of the entire vocational education sector needs spearheading; the
training environment needs to be both rationalised in terms of offerings and
massively expanded in terms of student numbers; the quality of student life and
housing needs improvement; student protests and institutional culture issues that
occupy newspaper headlines need to be attended to – and this is to be achieved
while fostering the independence of a healthy higher education sector focused on
quality in teaching, increasing knowledge production and increasing relevance to a
developing African country requires extensive skill in negotiation and prioritisation
and careful leadership towards a clear vision of the future for the system.
88 HESA’s comment on the Amendments at the time noted that “the provisions in the current Act
accountability to be pursued,” implying that the Amendments were unnecessary and were too
“wide-ranging and vague”, and thus allow for potentially inconsistent application.
Overview 49
6.2 Governance structures and institutional crises
In terms of governance and management at institutional level, the emphasis
in the early years of the period under review was on the creation of relevant
structures (Council, Senate, Institutional Forum) to support the governance
bodies were laid down in the Higher Education Act of 1997; the years since have
differences in the way institutions have coped in the face of increasing external
demands for accountability leading to more overt management through
evidence-based decision-making, as well as the greater mobilising of different
constituencies in support of particular interests in their governance structures.
In institutions without strong traditions in self-governance and for whom
Councils were new phenomena, and for those in which strong internal and
external constituents have vested interests in the governing of an institution,
the challenges at governance level have been such that a number of institutions
have been rendered almost dysfunctional at different times over the twenty-
year period in question. The government’s response has been to intervene more
often, and to appoint administrators for longer periods. There were 14 instances
of external intervention between 1998 and 2012 (with some still in progress),
sometimes more than once at the same institution. The governance crises have
sometimes been marked by schisms between executive management and Council;
sometimes by corrupt relationships between members of Council and other
constituencies such as student or staff unions; almost always by a failure by one
or more constituents to understand the governance role as one that should place
the interests of the institution before others. The Governance and Management
chapter of this review refers to the increasing ‘stakeholderisation’ of higher
education, that is the tendency of groups with vested interests to pursue those
activity relating to tenders in some institutions, or other fraudulent activities such
as misrepresenting CVs, nepotism and inappropriate uses of power, including
sexual harassment and so-called sex-for-marks practices. These challenges
to eradicate. The audit reports of the CHE contain qualitative data on some of
these, as do the reports of government-appointed assessors and administrators
of institutions in crisis. The Governance and Management chapter of this review
argues that among the government responses to these crises has been the
intention to impose more reporting requirements on all institutions on the one
hand, and to intervene directly to manage particular crises, while the structural
of increased reporting requirements remains to be seen – arguably in institutions
that are already functioning well they will do little more than add to the already
intensive administrative load; and in less-well functioning institutions, a lack of
internal capacity will lead to the increasing outsourcing of carrying out reporting
50 Higher education reviewed
requirements with little effect on ameliorating the fundamental problems. A
concern with the direct intervention route is the sustainability of the reforms
brought about, given that administrators are appointed only for relatively short
periods of time: this is evidenced in the number of institutions that have required
more than one intervention.
The role of the Senate too, has, in a number of institutions, changed in character.
In some instances, as evidenced in a number of CHE audit reports, the robust
academic debate on issues, argued on matters of academic principle, has given
way to acquiescence with management decisions, or to stakeholder-based
negotiation around competing group interests. Part of the explanation may lie in
what has been perceived to be increasing managerialism at institutional level, or
in the sheer volume of policy-driven requirements placed on institutions in the
implementation period that have monopolised attention, or on changing leadership
styles, particularly where leaders have not gained extensive experience of academic
processes and cultures, or where they have felt challenged by a resistant academic
culture. The Institutional Forums (IFs) established by legislation in the post-
apartheid universities have largely not functioned in the way intended. One of the
more plausible explanations is that, with the representation of stakeholder groups
in the main decision-making bodies of a university, i.e. Senate and Council, the
role of an IF as a forum in which different interests can be played out, but without
in some assessor reports, however, different interests represented in the IF have
become mirrored in Council structures and factionalism has taken root.
political governance, particularly in those institutions in which there are
governance challenges. While there are many instances of good democratic student
governance, current empirical work being undertaken by the CHE has indicated
that there are also instances in which external politics play an inordinate role, and
of external pressures acting upon student activities and protests. The rationales
for student participation in university governance in the scholarly literature
include political-realist ones (in which students are seen as collective political
actors or stakeholders who must be accommodated in formal structures for
a communitarian case (students are integral members of a community), and a
democratic case (the university is a microscosm of the external society and thus
student governance is part of the democratic socialisation of students).89 In the
South African case, as part of the emergence of a new democracy, the Higher
Education Act of 1997 required student representation in university governance
to be provided for in each institution’s statute. In many instances, students are
represented in all committees – Faculty committees, Senate, Council – except the
them. They also have direct roles in processes such as the allocation of residence
places – on the political-realist assumption (sometimes challenged in practice)
that if student representatives are part of such processes, this will minimise
89 T. M. Luescher-Mamashela (2013) ‘Student representation in university decision making: Good
Studies in Higher Education, 38(10), pp. 1442–1444.
Overview 51
potential student protests. In many instances, student representative councils’
constitutions allow for the contestation of seats on the basis of political party
delinked from political organisations. In the latter scenario, it has been observed
that a ‘de-politicisation’ of the SRC “provided for the re-conceptualisation of the
student representative who negotiates on behalf of his/her constituency to one
where individual student leaders performed services in exchange for material
rewards dispensed by the university administration.”90 It has been argued that
there was a movement from the emancipatory fervour of student politics of
the early 90s to the superseding of the social justice agenda and democracy as
the primary principles underpinning student demands in the post-apartheid
university to a preoccupation with consumerist issues and a value for money
approach which mirrored the managerialist approach to university governance
that had been ushered in around the turn of the millennium.
Provisional insights arising from the CHE’s empirical work indicate that in
some instances, there are potential linkages between the student representation
processes, including the awarding of tenders. In many cases, as in Councils,
‘stakeholderisation’ is evident, with representatives advancing the interests
of their particular groups in competitive mode, rather than the interests of the
student body as a whole. In general, evidence suggests that in many instances,
a lack of trust characterises relationships of SRCs and managements; among the
explanations are a history of student leaders reneging on agreements made with
representatives from the previous year’s SRC (especially where fee increases are
concerned), a culture of embarking on protests without due process having been
support services being seen as attempts by management to control students rather
than to assist them. As with Councils, it appears that role confusion is evident, and
that student representatives are sometimes caught between competing interests.
In addition, the legitimacy of SRC representatives is often widely questioned in a
student culture in which, on the one hand, there is widespread political apathy
and non-involvement in election procedures, and on the other, smaller groups of
increasingly radicalised students, whether these represent forces for change or
for resistance to change. Student governance is an area in which much further
research is needed in order to monitor and understand the changing dynamics and
to determine possible futures in which students can play a full and constructive
role in improving the quality of their academic experience.
6.2.1 Student experience
One of the implications of increasing numbers and diversity of students
in higher education internationally has been the need to increase student
development activities and to offer more specialised student services. The trend
towards diversifying academic advising and counselling, admissions services,
student organisations, health services that was observable globally in the 20th
90 Ibid.
52 Higher education reviewed
century but mushrooming since the late 1990s is observable in South Africa too,
albeit in less extensive and developed formats than in western universities.91
The professionalisation of student affairs has been advanced by three factors:
increasingly more reliable available data (on student cohorts etc.) that can
focus on the integration of students with institutional cultures, both at the level
of peer-group interaction and staff-student relationships, and thirdly, greater
inter-organisational cooperation through the formation of a national federation
of student affairs associations.92
phase of the CHE’s Quality Enhancement Project emphasise the importance
of providing an enabling environment for students to have the possibility of
succeeding, and the project thus seeks to improve course and programme
enrolment and placement procedures and to focus attention on the importance
of academic advising, student support and appropriate ways of improving the
learning environment.
7. The review chapters
The questions that run through this review as whole include whether the
various policy mechanisms have achieved the desired outcomes of modernisation,
planning, funding and quality levers given effect to the cooperative governance
these mechanisms fuelled the effects of a wider global trend towards increasing
to these questions are implicit in different chapters of this review, and they are
not all the same, depending on the focus and the interests of the task teams that
engaged with them. Inevitably there is repetition of discussion of some key events
and processes, such as mergers, albeit viewed with different lenses. The same
phenomena will have had an impact on more than one domain, whether this is
each discussion is framed with a somewhat different lens. What is interesting is
the similarity of conclusions from very different discussions and vantage points.
of the state steering of public and private higher education provision. It starts with
an overview of the history of the policy process, noting that the system has been
enrolment as a major pressure, and discusses the ways in which this might be
achieved, i.e. through introducing new institutions, through increasing the
graduate rate or through increasing offerings through distance education. In all
91 T. Moja, B. Schreiber & T.M. Luescher-Mamashela (2014) ‘Contextualising student affairs in
Africa: The past, present and future’ in Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, 1(1), pp. 2-3.
92 Ibid.
Overview 53
goal, particularly in a situation in which the funding of higher education has not
kept pace with the demands on it. The chapter ends with a discussion on the use
of regulation to achieve policy goals, and cautions against using regulation in an
undifferentiated way across a very diverse system in order to avoid unintentional
greater use of “negotiated self-regulation” to take the system forward.
The task team that worked on Chapter 3 focused on the governance of the
higher education system. While it draws some general conclusions about
leadership and management at institutional level, the analysis pertains mostly
to system-level concerns. The chapter provides a theoretical analysis of the two
decades reviewed and puts forward two periodisations; one in terms of changes
at the system level of governance, and another at the level of the governance of
institutions. It incorporates matters of student governance to some extent, which
is explored in more depth in another CHE project. Using a sample of the HEQC’s
institutional audit reports and reports of assessors appointed by the Minister
to various institutions, as well as understandings of the global forces affecting
management and governance to which South Africa was not immune, it makes
the case that the most recent period has been characterised by increasing state
managerialism. Ironically, the period was also characterised by a weakening of
state capacity to utilise the greater knowledge developed about the system, as well
as by the weakening of democratic advisory structures in the shaping of policy.
It puts forward a post-managerial knowledge-based governance, leadership and
management model for South African higher education in the third decade of
democracy.
Chapter 4 traces developments and changes in teaching and learning in
higher education, and thus delves more deeply into one of the core functions of
success with wider access as one the most enduring and intractable challenges
in higher education in South Africa. The chapter analyses the effects of various
policy changes such as mergers and the emergence of different institutional
types on teaching and learning. It also looks at how teaching and learning has
quality assurance and national teaching and learning development initiatives.
The various initiatives and approaches to improving teaching and learning over
the years, from foundation and extended programmes to staff development
and learning, the use of technology in teaching and learning, and issues relating
to language in higher education. The chapter concludes that with the current
system and capacity, massive student growth is untenable. A strong argument is
put forward for the rethinking, based on a strong foundation of scholarship, of
current curriculum structures and teaching and learning approaches to achieve
greater student success.
It looks at contextual factors and reviews the funding drivers and the performance
of the system. It too analyses the effects of mergers and differentiation on its
54 Higher education reviewed
area of concern, i.e. the research environment and research production. It traces
changes in the way in which research is conducted internationally amid the rise
of open access to data, and the greater sharing of resources. It looks in detail at
the rise and effects of rankings systems on higher education in South Africa. While
the national policy drivers and incentives appeared to have played a major role
production in the coming decades, and which could help to develop South Africa
as a competitive global knowledge producer.
Community engagement as a core function of higher education was the subject
of the discussions of the sixth task team. The chapter that has emerged from
their work sees community engagement activity undergoing different phases of
development in the period under review, from developing conceptual frameworks
to a realisation and recognition of the need to institutionalise it and integrate
it with different forms of scholarship. The task team delineates what has been
achieved in community engagement activity, but bemoans the lack of national
policy and funding to stimulate it. The dilemma of community engagement
activity is one that is common to much that is worthy of pursuit: separate it out
for emphasis and funding, and it risks becoming an add-on activity carried out
by individuals on a voluntary basis rather than a core one; integrate it with other
forms of scholarship and it risks losing its identity. The chapter argues for a concept
of engaged scholarship which lies at the intersection of teaching and learning,
research and service, and which harnesses better the intellectual resources at the
country’s disposal to enable the generation of solutions to problems in the socio-
economic and political context in a way that advances the public good.
the current reality. It makes a strong case that the demands on and of academic
while it is a constituency that has been profoundly affected by trends such as
dependent on the value ascribed to it, and that much needs to be done to avoid
a potential looming crisis in academia which could have a detrimental effect on
teaching and learning, research and community engagement, and ultimately
for future generations of students. Core to the argument of this chapter is that
points to the need for more extensive qualitative research to be undertaken in
South Africa with a view to understanding the current realities of the academic
profession and what would increase its appeal.
The last chapter focuses on funding. This chapter is fundamental to all the others
in that it contextualises the current realities, as well as the recommendations
careful not to replicate work that had already been undertaken in other fora and
Overview 55
commissions, but having drawn on such work to sketch the current situation, the
chapter models three possible future scenarios, based on demographic trends
and policy targets, to ascertain what is, and what is not, possible to achieve. Its
conclusions are sobering. At base, the implications are that growth targets cannot
be achieved within the current funding envelope, and that to achieve even modest
growth, a much improved funding environment would be required. The chapter
concludes with some suggestions as to what strategies might be employed to
achieve this and looks at the key conditions for implementing planned but modest
growth in higher education over the next decade. The outlook according to this
analysis is severely constrained, and it will require imaginative and far-reaching
strategies to ensure that policy goals are achieved.
8. Conclusion
policy choices to be made in the next decade. The work of the task teams of
diverse experts in higher education that has informed the analyses, conclusions
and recommendations in the chapters of this review is yet to be distilled into
policy advice of the CHE. The task teams have had their own sets of concerns and
particular lenses that they have brought to bear on their particular domains of
focus. Nevertheless, some common themes have emerged that inform the tough
policy choices ahead.
The most obvious of these are the dilemmas and trade-offs involved in achieving
growth at the same time as improving students’ chances of success. The original
equity versus quality debate still lives in recast form. Each of the chapters in their
own way has considered the possible unintended consequences of the drive to
to be brought about simultaneously within the system as a whole. The enduring
problem of poor throughput rates will require a variety of systemic interventions
to alleviate, and these will need to be implemented at the same time that growth
is being brought about. There are clear tensions here between increasing access
Many of the chapters have pointed to the major pressure points in the system
that will require urgent and thoughtful attention: the funding of the system,
including student funding, is the most prominent of these. The declining subsidy
in real terms in a context of growth has had, and will continue to have, knock-on
effects on key aspects that determine the health of the higher education system.
Declining funding has led to pressures on institutions to pursue third-stream
income, which arguably takes academic staff attention away from the teaching
and learning, research and community engagement functions. Student fees have
risen over the period and continue to rise in order for institutions to maintain the
resources, which has had a deleterious effect on student access and retention.
Some of the chapters have argued that while students have been affected by
56 Higher education reviewed
keenly, such that the profession itself will need far-reaching intervention to
increase its appeal, both to bring about more rapid demographic change, and to
avoid a looming capacity crisis.
This chapter began with a rhetorical question about higher education in
crisis globally. The work of the task teams in this review has traced the many
achievements in South African higher education over the past two decades, and
noted that it is much improved from its apartheid-engineered roots. The pressures
on the system as outlined above are, however, serious, and threaten to destabilise
a relatively stable system if not collectively managed carefully, and with attention
to how discrete policy or programme choices affect the achievement of others and
the health and future of the system as a whole.93
93 In the early stages of the review, advice was received from Colin Bundy, Ahmed Essop, Jon File
and Mala Singh, and a written contribution from Glen Fisher.
Overview 57
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Formal regulation, deriving from legislation, is a manifestation of the
intended relationship between a state and its social institutions. In
by the state, together with the resources that it has chosen to allocate
in pursuit of those priorities to deliver on the promises made to its society. Such
regulation is also dynamic, in the sense that it is meant to respond to the changing
principle question, particularly in thinking about higher education institutions,
about the need for and value of regulation, but this would be outside the scope of
our present review. Rather, the more useful question, and one that is frequently
in post-apartheid South Africa, relates to the nature, extent and effectiveness
of state steering of higher education. Stated differently, the broad theme of this
chapter is to consider both the development and effectiveness of legislation and
policy as instruments for regulating the higher education sector.
In reviewing the nature and effects of the restructuring and realignment of
aimed at steering the activities of public and private higher education provision.
The framework for the principles that would guide a future higher education
sector was largely established by the report of the National Commission on Higher
Education (NCHE).1 In both the nature and tone of the proposals presented by
this Commission, there was a strong recognition and acknowledgement of the
sector – some sections needing support, others defence, some pruning and still
others needing serious internal restructuring. All of this was to be done while
without disruption and at the best level of quality possible at the time.
Over the past twenty years, there has been extensive development of policy,
legislation and regulations aimed at steering the higher education sector, largely
in the direction intended by principles of the NCHE, including Education White
Paper 3 and the Higher Education Act, both of 1997, which were followed by the
National Plan for Higher Education (NPHE) in 2001.2 These documents established
the legal and policy framework for the future direction of higher education and the
development of related policies that guided implementation. The Higher Education
Regulation
Writers and editors: Yunus Ballim with Ian Scott, Genevieve Simpson & Denyse Webbstock
Task team leader: Felicity Coughlan
Members/contributors: Trish Gibbon, Brenda Leibowitz, Luke Mlilo & Martin Oosthuizen
CHE research assistant: Michael Gordon
2
1 NCHE (1996) A framework for transformation.
2 DoE (1997) Higher Education Act 101 (as amended); DoE (1997) White Paper 3: A programme for
the transformation of higher education; DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education.
64 Higher education reviewed
Act of 1997 has been amended a number of times and the period 2000 to 2014
saw formal adoption of legislated frameworks including the Language Policy, the
Sub-Framework (HEQSF).3
of the roles, functions and inter-relationships of the three quality councils, the
Council on Higher Education (CHE), the Council for the Quality Assurance of General
and Further Education and Training (Umalusi), and the Quality Council for Trades
and Occupations (QCTO), for the different sections of the education sector.
While policy development was rapid, policy implementation has been more
of each of these legislative and regulatory instruments produced desired but also
unintended consequences. Some of the unintended consequences were driven by
the effects of the planning, policy and regulatory instruments themselves, while
others were a consequence of voluntary responses by higher education institutions
either to mitigate what were perceived as possible negative consequences, or
the sudden growth in distance learning programmes at contact institutions in
the initial years of the period under review, often through partnerships between
public and private providers, was in many cases a response to the emphasis that
the NCHE and Education White Paper 3 had placed on distance learning as a
strategy for increasing access to higher education. So too was the unregulated
growth in partnership arrangements between local public institutions and
universities abroad for offering joint or shared degree programmes as a strategy
for enhancing competitiveness. In part, much of the state’s amendments or
adjustments to policies and regulations have been motivated by the need to
attend to such unintended consequences.
sometimes aligned, working hard to correct non-equilibrium conditions while at
the same time trying to ensure that students received an education of the requisite
quality. Such corrections were not always possible or successful and the latter decade
saw a number of institutions being placed under curatorship or ‘administration’ for a
range of failures.4 While these were mostly described as failures of governance, they
certainly raised questions about the effectiveness of ‘steering’ instruments in the
hands of the then Department of Education (DoE) and from 2009, the Department of
Higher Education and Training (DHET).
This chapter considers the effects of regulatory developments over the past
twenty years in enabling progress towards the achievement of a more effective
and responsive higher education sector. Equally, the chapter raises questions
about the extent to which such developments hampered institutions by limiting
3 DHET (2008) ; CHE (2012) Higher Education
.
4 CHE (2013) ‘The Independent Assessor Reports (1978 – 2012): An Overview and Analysis’
(unpublished paper); Parliamentary Monitoring Group (2013) ‘Universities under
administration: Update by Department of Higher Education and Training’ (report).
Regulation 65
their capacity for agile and innovative responses to higher education needs in
South Africa. The chapter concludes with a forward-looking section which
expresses views and recommendations on areas of regulation in higher education
that require a particular focus of attention over the next decade.
2. The inheritance of 1994 and the initial
challenges of higher education post-
apartheid
inequality of the apartheid education system before 1994 and that commentary
is not reproduced here.5 Nevertheless, it is worth bearing in mind that the
South African education system had a racially- and ethnically-based system of
governance, with nineteen operating departments, under fourteen different
cabinets, implementing their own regulations in terms of at least twelve Education
Acts.6 Not only was the system complex with overlapping mandates, but it was
predicated on inequality. Similarly, in higher education, different institutions were
The introduction of the 1984 constitution in the RSA, with its distinction between
‘general’ and ‘own affairs’, entrenched the apartheid divisions in education in
South Africa. A direct consequence was that higher education institutions had to
be designated as being for the exclusive use of one of the four race groups: African,
coloured, Indian and white. By the beginning of 1985, a total of 19 higher education
institutions had been designated as being ‘for the exclusive use of whites’, two as
being ‘for the exclusive use of coloureds’, two ‘for the exclusive use of Indians’, and
six as being ‘for the exclusive use of Africans’. The six institutions for Africans did not
include the seven institutions in the TBVC countries [Bantustans], even though it was
expected that the latter would be used almost entirely by the African citizens of the
four ‘independent republics’. 7
Necessarily, and particularly because of the glaring internal contradictions that
emerged at each step, such an approach to regulation and organisation of higher
education produced a complex network of policy, legislation and makeshift
practice that was both wasteful and highly authoritarian.
In early 1994, South African higher education was characterised by deep,
racially-based physical and intellectual divisions; a wide range of quality
of teaching, learning and research with very distinct extremes; individual
5 For more information on universities under apartheid see I. Bunting (1994) A legacy of inequality
apartheid’ in N. Cloete, R. Fehnel, P. Maassen, T. Moja, H. Perold & T. Gibbon (eds.) Transformation
in higher education: Global pressures and local realities in South Africa; D. Massey (2010) Under
protest: The rise of student resistance at the University of Fort Hare; R. Omar, & B. Figaji (2000)
‘Governance arrangements in South African higher education’ in E.F. Beckham (ed.) Diversity,
6 ANC (1994) ‘A policy framework for education and training’.
7 Bunting (2002) ‘The higher education landscape under apartheid’ in Cloete et al. (eds.)
Transformation in higher education, p.36.
66 Higher education reviewed
institutional cultures and postures that varied from active and often violent
opposition to apartheid, across to compliant or active support for apartheid’s
approach to higher education and social development; and a small number of
universities (or sections of universities) with strong and ambitious international
engagements while the rest were more insular and inward-looking.8
Entering an already globalised world, and with the recognition of the importance
of higher education for competing in this space, a post-1994 South Africa was
obliged to deal with the restructuring and transformation of this sector early in
the life of the new democratic state.
Aligning the higher education system with the social development intentions of
and superstructure of the sector to achieve single, coordinated and equitable
higher education as envisaged in the White Paper of 1997. While opinions varied
on how this reform was to be achieved, in the event a relatively conservative
approach to the extent and speed of reform was taken. With hindsight, the
National Plan pointed out that while the “vision of the White Paper continues to
remain compelling … [and] [i]ts underlying assumptions have passed muster and
continue to receive widespread support … [t]he goal, however, remains unachieved
… largely due to the fact that the Ministry adopted an incremental approach”.9 The
document goes on to explain that the reasons for an incremental approach were
the lack of systemic capacity, a lack of information in terms of institutional and
system trends and “the need to develop a consultative and interactive planning
process… to underpin the principle of co-operation and partnership”.10 There
was acknowledgement that, as this reform was taking place, policy-makers were
to avoid the danger of simply rearranging the framework and creating a system
that became as over-regulated and rigid as the previous apartheid approach had
been.11 Importantly, it was recognised that, in reforming the sector, the regulatory
framework should encourage institutions to pursue innovative approaches within
a rapidly changing global higher education environment.
3. Important developments in the regulatory
framework for higher education over the
past 20 years
Key areas of development in the regulatory environment of post-1994 higher
education dealt with in this chapter are:
• Developing the higher education sector as a coordinated system
• Enrolment planning
• Regulating private higher education provision
8 Bunting (1994) A legacy of inequality; NCHE (1996) A framework for transformation.
9 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education, section 1.2.
10 Ibid., section 2.1.
11 DoE (1997) White Paper 3, section 2.9.
Regulation 67
• Equity, redress and transformation
• Institutional differentiation
• Regulating the quality of higher education provision
• Regulation in a shifting post-school landscape
The funding of public higher education institutions intersects with all of these
areas. As set out in the White Paper of 1997, the main ‘steering mechanisms’ at
the disposal of the minister responsible for higher education were to be funding,
planning, and quality assurance. This section will discuss the principal regulating
initiatives in the areas mentioned above. While some reference will be made to
the impact of funding, this aspect is covered in greater depth in Chapters 1 and 8.
3.1 The context of policy implementation in higher education
The general social and political context within which higher education
and effectiveness of policy implementation in the sector. For example, policies
aimed at achieving racial equity in the student population had to encounter and
deal with the reality of the poor level of academic preparedness of school-leavers
for existing university education. The White Paper foresaw this challenge and
emphasised that “increased access must not lead to a ‘revolving door’ syndrome
for students with high failure and drop-out rates”.12 The National Plan went a step
further to state that the Ministry was “reluctant to introduce equity quotas as
of the school system and the low numbers of students matriculating with the
13 While
higher education has increased, the larger problem of throughput has continued
into the second decade of democracy as evident in the various cohort studies
published by the CHE in VitalStats.14 The CHE Task Team’s report, A proposal for
structure, interrogates the issue of underpreparedness and the articulation gap
between school and higher education in some detail.15
The levels of student preparedness varied, and continue to vary, by social factors
such as race, class, language and geography according to the arrangements of
privilege that had been set by apartheid. Participation rates continue to be skewed
along racial lines as seen in Figure 1 below. The continued racial disparities are
also evident in the cohort throughput rates in Figure 2. These realities highlight
tensions between different components of policy implementation. For example,
satisfying the need for improved learning quality and graduation rates could be
12 Ibid., section 2.29.
13 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education, section 3.2.
14 CHE (2012) VitalStats: Public higher education 2010; CHE (2013) VitalStats: Public higher
education 2011; CHE (2014) VitalStats: Public higher education 2012.
15 CHE (2013)
curriculum structure.
68 Higher education reviewed
addressed by admitting better-prepared students from the schooling system, but
this could result in the exclusion of largely poor, rural and black students – the
16 The participation rate or gross enrolment ratio (GER) is total headcount enrolment over the
national population of 20-24-year olds, calculated as a percentage. The term used by the
Department of Higher Education and Training is participation rate. The National Plan for Higher
Education (2001) explains that: “The participation rate is calculated using the UNESCO standard,
as the percentage of 20–24-year olds of the general population enrolled in higher education”.
17 Potential graduates remain in the system after year n+3, meaning that the number of dropouts
may be lower than indicated.
16
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
02000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
African 10% 11% 11 % 12% 12% 12% 12% 12% 13% 13% 14% 14% 16%
Coloured 8% 9% 10% 11% 12% 12% 13% 12% 14% 14% 15% 14% 14%
Indian 42% 42% 45% 48% 48% 48% 48% 43% 45% 45% 46% 47% 47%
White 46% 51% 54% 56% 56% 57% 57% 54% 56% 58% 57% 57% 55%
Overall 14% 14% 15% 16% 16% 16% 16% 16% 17% 17% 18% 17% 19%
Source: HEMIS 2000 - 2012 and Stats SA population data 2000 - 2012, extracted annually
2006 and 2007 respectively (excluding UNISA) – accumulative percentages17
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0Year
nYear
n+1 Year
n+2 Year
n+3 Year
nYear
n+1 Year
n+2 Year
n+3 Year
nYear
n+1 Year
n+2 Year
n+3 Year
nYear
n+1 Year
n+2 Year
n+3
African Coloured Indian White
2005 Graduated 16% 30% 38% 41% 22% 39% 45% 48% 24% 42% 49% 51% 44% 59% 64% 65%
2005 Dropped out 50% 54% 55% 59% 44% 48% 48% 52% 45% 46% 47% 49% 31% 33% 33% 35%
2006 Graduated 20% 38% 47% 50% 20% 35% 42% 44% 26% 47% 56% 58% 43% 59% 64% 65%
2006 Dropped out 39% 43% 46% 50% 50% 52% 53% 56% 37% 39% 40% 42% 31% 33% 34% 35%
2007 Graduated 19% 37% 46% 50% 23% 41% 49% 52% 26% 44% 54% 58% 42% 58% 63% 65%
2007 Dropped out 38% 43% 45% 50% 41% 45% 46% 48% 37% 39% 40% 43% 32% 33% 34% 36%
Source: Based on a cohort analysis done by Dr Charles Sheppard for the CHE
Regulation 69
The geographical location of individual universities also overlapped with
unequal income distribution patterns across the country. Many universities
in largely rural areas that drew students from the immediate surrounds had
on budgets. This was compounded by the apartheid legacy as many of these rural
institutions were also historically disadvantaged. This then led to the circular
problem of constrained budgets not allowing for the developments necessary
for improved quality of teaching, learning and research, thus compromising
universities’ ability to attract the most academically prepared students in their
regions.18
implementation was the political environment in which these developments
took place. In 1994, the distribution of the quality of academic and intellectual
engagement across higher education institutions was clearly divided along racial
historically black universities was designed to limit the levels of these universities’
academic engagement to the purely utilitarian needs of black intellectual capacity,
as apartheid planners imagined it should be. As Bunting put it, “They were
instrumental institutions in the sense of having been set up to train black people
who would be useful to the apartheid state, and political in the sense that their
existence played a role in the maintenance of the overall apartheid socio-political
agenda”.19 Given this, any post-1994 policy that was seen to be disproportionately
punitive to the historically black universities, or that appeared to reinforce the
conceptual association between black universities and low-level engagement,
would be politically unpopular and detractors found it easy to appeal to general
political support or sentiment to resist such policy intentions. The tensions
surrounding the issue of institutional redress and the need for individual redress
were acknowledged and addressed in the National Plan:
The White Paper makes a clear distinction between social (i.e. individual) redress
and institutional redress. As the Council on Higher Education argues, although the
two are connected, ‘the former is not reducible to the latter’. This does not imply
that institutional redress is no longer relevant. On the contrary, the continued role
of the historically black institutions as integral components of a transformed higher
education system requires that institutional redress be addressed. However, it
suggests that the focus of institutional redress must shift from current notions of
historically black and historically white institutions. 20
Across the sector, there was no shortage of political supporters or pressure
groups, both within institutions and from interested components of their
18
J. Daniel, A. Habib & R. Southall (eds.) State of the nation: South Africa 2003-2004, p. 305; DHET
(2013) Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities, p. 174.
19 Bunting (2002) ‘The higher education landscape under apartheid’ in Cloete et al. (eds.)
Transformation in higher education, p. 43.
20 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education, section 1.4.
70 Higher education reviewed
communities that were concerned with the immediate interests of particular
institutions. External interests, organised along political, ethnic, language or
structures such as the university council or the student representative council,
as well as through operational structures such as the university residence
management. This aspect of the distortion of governance processes at
universities led to various amendments to the Higher Education Act, which were
were those passed in 2011 which, inter alia, required that all council members
“must participate in the deliberations of the council in the best interests of the
public higher education institution concerned”, “must … declare any business,
interest” and that a council member “may not place himself or herself under any
21 Tensions of various
kinds, including the willingness of all institutions to address the major national
challenges of equity, have been a dominant feature in developing regulation
within higher education policy in the last twenty years, as is evidenced in the
topics discussed below.
3.2 Developing the higher education sector as a coordinated
system
Given the state of higher education at the end of apartheid in 1994, it is not
surprising that most of the regulatory attention over the past twenty years has
been in restructuring and developing higher education as a system. The main
to unify the entire system, bring rationality and coherence to the range and levels
to the social, institutional and developmental principles expressed in the new
constitution of the country. A particular challenge within this extensive canvas
was the dismantling of the web of apartheid legislation in favour of an appropriate
legislative infrastructure for a new dispensation while ensuring the continuity of
the higher education project. This section discusses some of the more important
features of regulation of higher education, recognised as an essential system in
the development of South Africa as a young and emerging democracy.
There were two important moments in 1996 which set the tone and path for the
as a national competence, while the rest of the education system was to be a joint
national and provincial responsibility.22 In particular, the Constitution included
research”.23 The Constitution also protected the right to offer and receive private
21 DoE (1997) Higher Education Act 101 (as amended), section 27(7).
22 South African Government (1996) South African Constitution, Schedule 4, Part A.
23 Ibid., section 16 (1) d.
Regulation 71
institutions registered with the state and that they did not offer education of
inferior quality to that offered by state institutions.24 The second important
moment was the 1996 publication of the report by the National Commission
on Higher Education, which gave expression to the broad principles for social
transformation established by the Constitution, in the particular context of higher
education.
The CHE document,
democracy presents a comprehensive review of the NCHE report and its intentions
for the higher education sector.25 The NCHE report argued for an integrated and
transformed higher education system with unprecedented growth in access and
participation, particularly by young South Africans in their immediate post-Grade
twelve years. This was a seminal document in a continuing discourse on the need
both the White Paper and the National Plan, although it was there emphasised
that what was needed was the rather more limited notion of ‘planned expansion’
to meet the skills needs of the country.26 The White Paper highlighted the need
for planning to ensure that “the expansion of the system is responsibly managed
and balanced in terms of the demand for access, the need for redress and
and sustainability”.27 It went further to add that, “[W]hile it is possible to achieve
rapid enrolment growth without extra expenditure, the penalties for doing so are
harsh. Experience … shows that expansion without new investment results in
overcrowded facilities, low morale of academic staff, poor quality programmes, a
fall in research output and quality, and … devalued products of higher education”.28
The idea of increased participation in higher education was – and continues to be
– attractive because it has the potential to address simultaneously the need to
increase participation by women, black students and students with disabilities;
and provide the high-level intellectual capacity necessary for economic and social
development.
of students, the NCHE report paid little attention to changes to the academic staff
institutions. Given the enormity of the task of transforming the sector, the initial
focus was on student-related issues because of the higher rates of change that
the recognised resilience of institutional cultures would make these more
pronouncement on these aspects of transformation allowed an interpretation to
emerge that these were to be left unchanged or at least deferred, thus creating
24 Ibid., section 29 (2).
25 CHE (2004) .
26 DoE (1997) White Paper 3, section 2.23; DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education, section
2.1.1.
27 DoE (1997) White Paper 3, section 2.6.
28 Ibid., section 4.4.
72 Higher education reviewed
space for alternative and perhaps more opportunistic strategies for resisting
change where it was considered undesirable.
The emphasis on legislative change thus had the effect that the fabric of
institutions i.e. the human and social issues and resources, seemed to be less
immediate priorities. The later policies were, however, not silent on these issues.
The White Paper highlighted the fact that staff demographics were not changing
while student demographics were, and required human resource development
plans as part of three-year institutional plans.29 The National Plan recognised that
higher education institutions have not yet developed employment equity plans”.30
The White Paper also commented on the “evidence of institutionalised forms of
racism and sexism” and the need for institutions to develop mechanisms to change
institutional cultures.31 The National Plan also lamented the fact that policy had,
up until that point, “largely ignored … the need to change institutional cultures”.32
Bringing about radical changes in the legislative context of the system in order
to unify it, however, also required a next phase of changing the institutional
landscape to give effect to removing historical divides.
The 1997 White Paper recognised the need to assess the optimal number and
type of institutions needed to meet the goals of a transformed higher education
system and in January 2000 the Minister requested that the CHE undertake initial
investigation into the most appropriate institutional landscape.33 In response, the
CHE established the Size and Shape Task Team, and in June 2000 the task team
report was published under the title, Towards a new higher education landscape:
Meeting the equity, quality and social development imperatives of South Africa in
the 21st century. 34 In this report the task team recommended, among other things,
distance education institution, and a reduction in the number of institutions
through combining institutions without any being closed down completely.
In the National Plan, the Ministry gave its in-principle support to the CHE’s
proposal for a reduction in the number of institutions through mergers. It also
supported other forms of reorganisation, but it did not agree with the view that
these should be essentially self-driven, but stated rather that the “Minister will
have to exercise the full regulatory powers at his disposal in terms of the Higher
Education Act”.35 The National Plan called for further investigation by a National
Working Group into what would constitute an appropriate institutional landscape
for South African higher education.36
29 Ibid., sections 2.94 and 2.96.
30 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education, section 3.3.
31 DoE (1997) White Paper 3, sections 3.41 and 3.42.
32 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education, section 3.3.
33 DoE (1997) White Paper 3, section 2.45.
34 CHE (2000) Towards a new higher education landscape: Meeting the equity, quality and social
development imperatives of South Africa in the 21st century.
35 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education, section 6.4.
36 Ibid.
Regulation 73
a number of institutions were to be merged to reduce the number of universities
landscape was to replace the informal race-based categorisation of institutions
(historically white and historically black institutions) as well as the formal binary
divide between universities and technikons. A new institutional categorisation
arose from this process. The category of traditional university was retained while
former technikons became universities of technology (UoT) or were merged with
traditional universities in a new institutional form, the comprehensive university,
which offered both degrees and diplomas. Yet others were to change missions to
become comprehensive universities.
was the dramatic decline in student enrolments in higher education. This decline
impacted directly on the already vulnerable historically black institutions, struggling
students unable to pay for higher education”.37 If the absolute decline in high-school
graduates was a reality for all institutions, it was a disaster for black universities in
that, increasingly, middle-class and above-average black students were drawn to the
former white institutions. The net effect of this shift was to place already weak and
fragile black universities in a precarious position in terms of funding and, as it turns
out, future survival. The second factor was the dramatic increase in institutional
instability during the mid- to late-1990s. Black institutions were embroiled in a
and senates, and a general failure of the leadership of universities and technikons to
and education quality nosedived even further. Under a post-apartheid government
this was not only a political embarrassment but a development crisis.38
Not surprisingly, there was much disagreement with both the principle and the
strategy of the merger initiative. For instance, the Association of Vice-Chancellors
of Historically Disadvantaged Institutions (ASAHDI) saw the mergers as an attack
on historically black universities and on poor and rural students.39 Nevertheless,
formal implementation of the merging of institutions started in 2004, with a special
allocation of R3 billion in 2003 to carry the initial costs of mergers.40
The experience and effectiveness of the merger process have certainly been varied.
In some instances, such as the University of Johannesburg (UJ), the University of
KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU),
the mergers are regarded as having been generally successful as operational
arrangements of the merged institutions have largely been settled and the
universities appear to be on track for further positive development.41 In contrast,
37
Daniel et al. Habib & Southall (eds.) State of the nation: South Africa 2003-2004, p. 305.
38 Ibid., p.305.
39 Ibid.
40 Parliamentary Monitoring Group (2003) ‘Meeting report information: Restructuring of higher
education; DHET (2004) .
41 E. Gillard, S. Saunders, J. Terblanche & M. Sukel (2012) ‘A review of four case studies in
restructuring the South African higher education system’ (unpublished paper).
74 Higher education reviewed
the merger leading to the formation of the University of Limpopo (UL) has been
42 Moreover, complex issues continue
to trouble other merged institutions where, for a range of reasons and despite one
or more cycles of governance and management administration imposed by the
Minister, problems persist to the serious detriment of their staff and students. Even
where mergers have been a success, it seems that staff members generally see the
merger as not having attained the goals as set out by the Department of Higher
Education and Training and increased workload is a concern. Despite this, other
43
merging institutional cultures and academic practices. While the merger process
was intended as a coming together of equals, in some cases it was perceived as
an incorporation of one institution into another that was larger or stronger in its
academic ‘prestige’. Contestations arose around issues such as output expectations
in teaching, learning and research, programme offering or academic orientation of
the merged institution, approaches to management and governance, and language
issues, and fundamental matters such as collegiality and academic freedom. It is
also worth noting that at some of the merged institutions where the operational
alignment has largely been settled, much work has yet to be done to achieve a
merger of cultures so that all the components of the institution can reasonably be
said to operate within a shared identity.44
political and social pressures. While, in the interests of institutional autonomy,
this aspect was left to the merged institution to address, it may well have been
mature to respond to such pressures appropriately. In institutions where the
struggling with the institutional and operational imperatives of the merger itself
while at the same time dealing with disruptive activity from students, staff or
sections of its external community.45
There were considerable costs associated with the implementation of the
mergers. Hall (2015) notes that:
42 G. Khumalo (2013) ‘New university incorporating Medunsa campus on track’ in sanews.gov.za.
43
mergers in South Africa: Implications for strategic management’ in Acta Commercii, 13(1).
44 Gillard et al. (2012) ‘A review of four case studies in restructuring the South African higher
education system’ (unpublished paper).
45 M. Hall, A. Symes & T.M. Luescher (2004) The governance of merger in South African higher
education.
Regulation 75
the extent of the capacity for change. National budget provision was seen as too
little and too late. Independent estimates had put the sectoral costs of the merger
exercise at between ZAR4.8bn and ZAR5.7bn ($600 m to $710 m at the prevailing
rate of exchange). In December 2002, the government was reported to have set aside
ZAR3.1bn ($380 m), and the national budget for 2003 allocated only ZAR800m ($100
m) for each of the following 3 years ...46
In the event, case studies of particular mergers have concluded that the budget
allocated was not adequate and that the costs were considerably higher than
anticipated.47
This inability to settle all of the institutional mergers has led to some rethinking
on the part of government. In addition to the Limpopo demerger, it has been
may be unworkable and should be reconsidered.48 On the other hand, it can be
argued that the larger part of the institutional size and shape intentions of the
NCHE report in 1996 have been achieved and that most of the higher education
institutions concerned have found new operational and academic equilibrium
levels. Another phase of change in the landscape of the sector started with the
Minister announcing in 2012 the establishment of two new universities – one
in the Northern Cape and one in Mpumalanga. Both universities enrolled their
49 Whether the
for higher education, and whether they will be in a position to meet expectations
on them, remains to be seen.
3.3.1 Colleges within the higher education sector
such as teacher education, agriculture, nursing and police colleges – have been in
existence for decades but have not had a settled place as a distinct sector within the
national higher education landscape, with some colleges having been responsible
to, and funded by, state and provincial bodies outside of the Education ministries.
It was an expectation of the 1997 Higher Education Act that individual colleges
occupations or professions) would either be incorporated into existing higher
education institutions or be established as autonomous institutions in their own
right. When it came to implementation of this policy, it was decided to deal with
and the then-Colleges of Education were all incorporated into existing higher
46 M. Hall (2015) ‘Institutional culture of mergers and alliances in South Africa’ in Curaj et al. (eds.)
Mergers and alliances in higher education, p. 151.
47 Gillard et al. (2012) ‘A review of four case studies in restructuring the South African Higher
Education System’ (unpublished paper).
48 M. Dibetle (2008) ‘Untangling the merger mess’ in Mail and Guardian, 16 September 2008;
Arnolds et al. (2013) ‘Assessing the outcomes of the higher education mergers in South Africa:
Implications for strategic management’ in Acta Commercii, 13(1).
49 SAPA reporter (2013) ‘Zuma names two new universities’ in Mail and Guardian, 25 July.
76 Higher education reviewed
education institutions in 2001.50 The next groups were to be the nursing and
agricultural colleges. However, although recommendation reports had been
submitted in 2000, the plans were not implemented, and the re-alignment of the
full range of colleges as envisaged in the Higher Education Act was not realised.
The position of the colleges operating in the higher education band was not
2004. While the colleges of education had by this time been incorporated into
such as nursing and related health care, agriculture, policing and defence were
not drawn into the new national higher education structure, and many of them
continue to fall under national or provincial ministries other than the DHET.51
There has recently been considerable debate about the wisdom of incorporating
or universities of technology. Some have called for the re-establishment of
independent colleges of education in response to concerns over the number and
quality of teachers graduating from the university sector.52
There is some debate about the location and status of nursing colleges and
which national Department carries responsibility for them, with focused attention
on their institutional capacity development. However this issue may be resolved,
the new arrangement should recognise the CHE as the Quality Council for all
and others in the higher education sector will depend considerably on integration
of the colleges and avoiding multiple lines of accountability.
The 2002 to 2005 institutional restructuring project was more focused on the
structure of the higher education system, consisting of universities and technikons,
than on the broader post-secondary system. As a result, the restructuring
project did not address the relationship between colleges and universities and
level that were offered outside of universities. There was wisdom in deferring
the complexities and sensitivities associated with the college sector to a separate
and later initiative. However, when the Department of Education was split into
the Department of Higher Education and Training and the Department of Basic
50
in Daniel et al. (eds.) State of the nation; DBE & DHET (2011) Integrated Strategic Planning
Framework for Teacher Education and Development in South Africa, 2011–2025.
51 It is noteworthy that the 2013 White Paper states that the ‘government decision to shift
responsibility for the agricultural colleges from the Department of Agriculture to the DHET will
be effected in the near future’ (DHET (2013) White Paper for Post-school Education and Training:
, p. xiii).
52 See, for example, CHE (2013) ‘Advice to the Minister of Higher Education and Training on
the status and location of public colleges’ from www.che.ac.za; S. Mkhwanazi (2008) ‘Pandor
IOL, 25 April.
Regulation 77
then obliged to turn their attention to the problems of the ‘post-schooling’
NQF levels 5 and above and to determine new dispensations for their offering
Act’s establishment of three Quality Councils for Education, and the Higher
higher education, as separate from Further Education or Trades and Occupations
53
3.4 Enrolment planning and control
3.4.1 The rationale for enrolment planning
early policy documents, as discussed above, called for a planned growth in the
the time the National Plan was formulated, a new problem, a decline in enrolments
The logic of the funding arrangements for public higher education favoured
increased enrolments, even if such an increase did not result in a proportional
means to provide access, with the possibility of success, to the most marginalised
in society, even if the schooling system struggled to prepare students for the
rigours of higher education studies.54 High failure and drop-out rates indicate that
enrolments, even when registering students who were likely to drop out at the
55
A second factor was that traditionally contact institutions were attracted by the
National Plan, distance education headcount enrolments in contact institutions
grew by 492% between 1993 and 1999, i.e. from 14 000 to 69 000 students.56
53 DoE (1997) Higher Education Act 101 (as amended); DHET (2008)
; DHET (2013) White Paper for Post-School Education and Training.
54 I. Scott, N. Yeld & J. Hendry (2007) ‘A case for improving teaching and learning in South African
higher education’ in Higher Education Monitor, 6.
55 The teaching input subsidy, earned from enrolments, makes up approximately 70% of the
teaching component of block grant subsidy earned by an institution. Furthermore, a student
n, generates input subsidy in year n+2. In contrast, if the
institution’s costs are increased by expending time and resources on ensuring that the student
graduates in minimum time, the output subsidy is generated only in year n+5. The teaching
logic of registering a student and then spending only the minimum on teaching and learning
development. The value of the fees (earned in year n) and the input subsidy (earned in year
n+2) is greater than the marginal cost of one more student in the class. Hence, there is no real
generally small by comparison with the subsidy income.
56 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education, section 2.1.2.
78 Higher education reviewed
The Department of Education responded by placing a moratorium on new
distance learning programmes in February 2000 at contact institutions and on
public-private partnerships.57 The moratorium was lifted with the publication
of the National Plan for Higher Education, but under the condition that, “the
Ministry will not fund new student places in current and new distance education
programmes in contact institutions from 2002 unless the programmes have
been approved as part of the institution’s three-year rolling plans” which also
reinforced the status of UNISA as the dedicated distance education provider.58
The initial growth in distance education had partly been stimulated by the
fact that the NCHE report and Education White Paper 3 noted a blurring in the
distinction between contact and distance education institutions and encouraged
educational methods and technologies that were most appropriate to their
educational purposes and their student needs.59 It may also have been stimulated
by the inaccurate perception that distance modes of programme delivery were
term. In addition, a number of traditional contact public institutions responded
to the emerging policy environment by entering into partnership agreements
with private providers to offer distance education programmes.60 The National
appear to have embarked on large-scale distance programmes primarily for
that, “these programmes do not appear to relate to the social or educational
goals of the country”.61
An additional factor was the opportunity for growth at existing universities
through the establishment of satellite campuses, with attendant quality problems
related to under-resourcing, and the continued separation of races according
to geography. The problems associated with this development led to severe
regulatory restrictions being placed on the growth of satellite campuses.
There was concern about uncontrolled enrolments making unpredictable
demands on subsidy allocations in what appeared to be an expectation of an open-
ended share of the national budget allocation.62 The concern was exacerbated
by unacceptably low throughput rates which indicated that such growth was
57 CHE (2000) Towards a new higher education landscape. Meeting the equity, quality and social
development imperatives of South Africa in the 21st century, pp. 41-2, 59.
58 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education, section 4.4.1.
59 NCHE (1996) A Framework for Transformation; DoE (1997) White Paper 3; DoE (2001) National
Plan for Higher Education, section 4.6.1.
60 Bunting (2002) ‘The higher education landscape under apartheid’ in Cloete et al. (eds.)
Transformation in higher education; R. Fehnel (2002) ‘Private higher education’ in Cloete et
al. (eds.) Transformation in higher education; DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education,
section 4.6.1.
61 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education, section 4.4; CHE (2000) Towards a new higher
education landscape, p. 41.
62 G. Wangenge-Ouma (2012) ‘Tuition fees and the challenge of making higher education a popular
commodity in South Africa’ in Higher Education 64, pp. 831 - 844.
Regulation 79
was to restrict enrolments through capping teaching input units.63 Since this was
recognised to be a rather blunt and short-term measure, the second response was
the development of a more coherent and rational approach to enrolment planning.
The Minister’s intended approach to managing enrolment planning was
expressed in a report entitled Student Enrolment Planning in Public Higher
Education, which was followed by the Ministerial Statement on Student Enrolment
Planning.64 These documents saw the DoE’s role in planning for higher education
to “include the sustainable management of student enrolments, the development
of three-year institutional rolling plans, and the approval of programme and
65 The motivation for introducing
enrolment planning was stated as follows:
The emphasis on planning is informed by the fact that if the higher education system is
to respond to the national development agenda in terms of access, redress and human
resource development needs, the size and shape of the system cannot be left to the
vagaries of the market, in particular, uncoordinated institutional decisions on student
enrolments and programme offerings… The size and shape of the higher education
system must be determined in the context of the available resources…
… the higher education system has grown more rapidly than the available resources. The
resultant short-fall in funding has put severe pressure on institutional infrastructure
and personnel, thus compromising the ability of higher education institutions to
discharge their teaching and research mandate. This cannot continue if the higher
education system is to contribute to the national development agenda through its role
in the generation, transmission and application of knowledge in general and human
resource development in particular.66
3.4.2 A ‘negotiated self-regulation’ approach to enrolment and
infrastructure planning
The DoE embarked on an innovative approach to the process of enrolment
planning, which was formally implemented from 2006 onwards. This approach
required each institution to propose a three-year enrolment plan to the DoE, based
on parameters such as projected total enrolments, progression and graduation
information was submitted in templates prepared by the DoE according to the
performance parameters to be monitored.
The appropriate executive leadership of each institution then entered into
discussion or negotiation with the DoE on the appropriateness and suitability of
the proposed enrolment plan in relation to the institution’s mission and to the
DoE’s planning intentions at the national level. Based on these discussions, the
63 In April 2004 the Minister announced enrolment caps at 2002 enrolment levels plus 5% for
contact students and 2002 plus 3% for distance students (DoE (2005) Student Enrolment
Planning in Public Higher Education).
64 DoE (2005) Student Enrolment Planning in Public Higher Education; DoE (2005) Ministerial
Statement on Student Enrolment Planning.
65 DoE (2005) Ministerial Statement on Student Enrolment Planning.
66 DoE (2005) Student Enrolment Planning in Public Higher Education, p.3.
80 Higher education reviewed
DoE (or the DHET, from the second planning cycle, 2009-2011) issued a proposed
was unhappy with the revisions to the enrolment plan, there was an opportunity
the basis on which the institution was to be funded, and monitored for enrolments,
student demography, transformation and student success rates. An important
effect of the adoption of this ‘negotiated self-regulation’ approach to enrolment
planning is that it gave the higher education sector (the Ministry included) an
opportunity to make a case for greater investment by government to expand
infrastructure at existing institutions. The provision of adequate infrastructure
was critical to responsible growth. Government responded by allocating three
year and continuing until 2014/15. The total amount of money allocated over
the three cycles was almost R12.5 billion. This allocation was in addition to other
state funding of universities.67
The negotiated self-regulation approach was also used in the allocation of funding
and approval of institutional infrastructure development plans. The allocations
were based on an assessment of the plans submitted by an institution, following
guidelines and criteria that had been pre-set by the DoE.68 The plans were revised
national level and the limits of available funding. The revised plans were tabled for
the Council of the institution to endorse. To varying extents, all institutions received
funds from this grant, although the guidelines suggest that the Department could
deem institutions ineligible for the infrastructure grant.69
While additional capacity was created through this initiative, much of the
funding was used to address a backlog of infrastructure development needs
because the growth in enrolments between 1994 and 2006 had largely been
absorbed into existing infrastructure. In many cases, the funding was used for
modernisation and renewal of existing infrastructure, which had deteriorated
as a result of excessive use and inadequate maintenance over the years. Student
housing was also an important category for infrastructure grants and emphasis
was placed on supporting historically disadvantaged universities.70
3.4.3 Tensions attendant upon increasing enrolment
By 2012, there were concerns that enrolment in the existing institutions was
close to capacity and that investment in infrastructure expansion would bring only
marginal increases in enrolments. However, the 2013 White Paper indicates that:
[p]articipation in universities must increase from the current rate of 17.3 per cent to
25 per cent; by 2030 there should be a total enrolment of approximately 1.6 million.
This expansion will be at a slightly slower rate than that between 1994 and the
67 DHET (2011) .
68 Ibid.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid; DHET (2013) Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of
Universities.
Regulation 81
by national needs, including teacher education, health, particular areas of engineering
71
The net effect has been that pressure for access has not diminished and many
institutions have had to revise their admission requirements in order to contain
unmanageable growth of enrolments.
This situation has had three important consequences. First, the view of
government is that expansion of enrolments will have to be achieved partly
through the development of new institutions, the result of which has been the
establishment of the two new universities in the Northern Cape and Mpumalanga
as mentioned above. The 2013 White Paper indicates that, “additional universities
will eventually be required in the context of meeting our enrolment targets…
Increasing university enrolments will occur in a measured and planned fashion,
thus providing time for universities to recruit skilled personnel, develop new
programmes and build new infrastructure”.72
The second consequence has been a shift in the focus of enrolment planning
away from enrolments towards increasing the number of graduates. Pressure
through external monitoring of progression and graduation rates is now being
brought on institutions to improve teaching and learning strategies. The 2013
White Paper states that:
[w]hile some expansion is needed in the university sector, the DHET’s main focus will
be on improving quality and building appropriate diversity within the sector. The
aim is to ensure that a wide range of high-quality options is provided throughout the
system, as well as improving articulation between higher education institutions and
between universities and other post-school institutions.73
The impetus to improve teaching and learning is evident also in the CHE’s
proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform, its decision to focus on teaching
and learning in the Quality Enhancement Project and the DHET’s Teaching
Development Grants.74
The third consequence has been a renewed recognition of and emphasis on
distance learning as a strategy for increasing participation because of its perceived
increasing sophistication of information technology systems, the decreasing costs
of bandwidth and the increasing availability of the devices necessary for student
learning. The 2013 White Paper signalled this change in focus indicating that, “a
particularly important role must be played by the expansion of distance education
at both UNISA and mainly contact universities”.75 A draft policy framework on
71 DHET (2013) White Paper for Post-school Education and Training, section 4.3.
72 Ibid., section 2.4.
73 Ibid., section 4.1
74 CHE (2013) A proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in South Africa; CHE (2014)
Framework for institutional quality enhancement in the second period of quality assurance; DHET
(2013) Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities.
75 DHET (2013) White Paper for Post-school Education and Training, section 2.4.
82 Higher education reviewed
distance education provision was published in 2012.76
The renewed pressure to improve graduation rates has highlighted an important
area of neglect in the approach to enrolment planning and infrastructure
development, namely, academic staff capacity. As indicated in Chapter 7, HEMIS
data indicate that enrolments in the higher education sector grew by 65%
between 2000 and 2012, while the academic staff complement grew by 35%
over the same period. Added to this have been the many calls from bodies such
as the Department of Science and Technology and the Academy of Science for
South Africa, for increased postgraduate enrolments, particularly at doctoral
level.77 This has resulted in a demand for increased numbers of academic staff,
with an increased proportion holding doctoral degrees to allow them to supervise
postgraduate students. The task of responding to the increased need has largely
face of constrained resources. The general response has been to introduce one or
more of the following approaches:
Cases have been reported of classes with more than 1000 students facing a
single lecturer, seriously compromising opportunities for what would be
considered normal classroom engagement between students and lecturers.
• Dispensing with contact-based, small tutorials in favour of electronic or
often without the necessary academic support or pedagogical expertise.
• Increasingly relying on short-term contract staff to undertake teaching
(see Chapter 7).
A consequence has been increasing competition for high-level and research-
active academic staff, which has resulted in a circulation of such staff within the
sector rather than developing approaches to grow available capacity.
The approaches taken have been pragmatic, but they have arguably given
universities the character of corporate-style production processes, driven
commentators inside and outside the higher education sector have warned that
this ‘corporatisation’ may compromise academic freedom and the development
of high-level, critical intellectual development.78
76 DHET (2012) Draft Policy Framework for the Provision of Distance Education in South African
Universities.
77 DST (2008)
2008-2018; ASSAf (2010) The PhD study. An evidence-based study on how to meet the demands for
high-level skills in an emerging economy.
78 CHE (2006) Academic freedom, institutional autonomy and the corporatised university in
contemporary South Africa; J. Duncan (2007) ‘Rise of the disciplinary university’ in Mail and
Guardian, 22 May; M.B. Marklein (2015) ‘Corporatisation threatens academic freedom’ in
University World News, 13 March; S. Morrow, K. Bentley, A. Habib (2006) Academic freedom,
institutional autonomy and the corporatised university in contemporary South Africa.
Regulation 83
Enrolment planning has also been used by government to steer changes in
levels of engagement in different academic disciplines. There has been a strong
emphasis on developing science, engineering and technology (SET) disciplines
and enrolments. While the emphasis on SET disciplines has not diminished,
additional priorities have emerged, including a focus on teacher education,
indigenous knowledge systems and African languages.
Furthermore, concern about an apparent decline in enrolments and intellectual
engagement in disciplines in the humanities led to studies on the state of the
humanities by both the Academy of Science and the Ministry.79 These reports are
discussed in some detail in Chapter 5 of this report which focuses on research.
Driven by this concern, the Minister legislated the establishment of a National
Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.80 The establishment of such an
institute has been the subject of debate, and unease has been expressed at the idea
of so direct an intervention by government in trying to steer higher education,
through legislation and a separate structural instrument, at the level of particular
disciplines.81
3.5 Regulating private higher education provision
It is estimated that, by 1994, there were approximately 330 South African
education levels, principally up to diploma level. Tladi and Mabizela note that
the earliest example of private higher education providers in South Africa dates
back to 1829 with the formation of the South African College, later to become the
University of Cape Town in 1918.82 A different development vein manifests in
several of the current private providers tracing their history back to the 1940s
(such as Damelin which is now part of Educor and Rosebank College which is now
part of The Independent Institute of Education). The sector has thus had a long
and established presence in South Africa. However, until 1994, the private sector
showed no direct aspirations to compete with, or even directly complement,
public higher education. Indeed, prior to the 1990s, private post-school education
training.83
Growth in private higher education provision appears to have accelerated in the
1990s. The reasons for this growth are not fully understood but Tladi suggests that it
79 ASSAf (2010) Consensus study on the state of the humanities in South Africa: Status, prospects and
strategies; DHET (2011) Report Commissioned by the Minister of Higher Education and Training
for the Charter for Humanities and Social Sciences.
80 DHET (2013) The Regulations for the Establishment of a National Institute for the Humanities and
Social Sciences.
81 ASSAf (2013) ‘Comments on the Draft Regulations for the Establishment of a National Institute
for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS)’; CHE (2013) ‘CHE Comment on the Draft
Regulations for the Establishment of a National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences’.
82 L. S. Tladi (2010) e; M. Mabizela (2002) ‘The
evolution of private provision of higher education in South Africa’ in Perspectives in Education,
20(4).
83 Mabizela (2002) ‘The evolution of private provision of higher education in South Africa’ in
Perspectives in Education, 20(4).
84 Higher education reviewed
was related to an expectation of growth in demand and investment from an increasingly
liberalised economy.84 There was little regulation of the private higher education sector
growth.85 The end of apartheid saw the beginning of rapid growth in the presence
of international private higher education institutions in South Africa. While many
operated as private institutions in their home countries, some international public
institutions, such as Monash University in Australia, also established a presence in
South Africa. Many such institutions established and operated independent campuses
while others recruited students through partnerships with local private and public
institutions. The arrival of international private higher education was met with both
scepticism and concern on the part of government and the public higher education
sector and even some in the local private education institutions.86
The concerns expressed ranged from issues of quality – an expectation that
standards lower than those used in the ‘home’ countries would be applied to
South African students as well as concerns about the quality of the institutions
themselves in some instances – to concerns about how to protect students
from unscrupulous providers. There was also a seemingly contradictory
concern that these providers would compete with public universities for top-
performing high school leavers who would traditionally have gone into the
public university sector. This was thought to be of greatest concern in relation to
‘low-cost’ undergraduate programmes such as the humanities and business and
disciplines.87 In particular, the proliferation of MBA programmes in the late 1990s
raised serious quality concerns. Indeed, negative perceptions of the quality of
private higher education provision were reinforced when the Higher Education
Quality Committee’s (HEQC) review of MBA programmes in 2004 resulted in
the withdrawal of accreditation from some private institutions.88 Although this
was only one programme review and a number of private institutions received
positive assessments, it did perhaps fuel the popular perception that the entire
private education sector was of poor quality and needed regulation.
Nevertheless, the arrival of international private higher education stimulated
national debate – certainly at the level of the Ministry and the public universities
– about potential risk associated with an unregulated private sector. The 1999
amendment to the Higher Education Act of 1997, which designated the Director
General of Education (later, Higher Education) as the Registrar of Private Higher
84 Tladi (2010)
85 DoE (1997) White Paper 3.
86 Mabizela (2002) ‘The evolution of private provision of higher education in South Africa’ in
Perspectives in Education, 20(4); M. Mabizela (2006) ‘Recounting the state of private higher
education in South Africa’ in N.V. Varghese (ed.) New trends in higher education. Growth and
87 Mabizela (2002) ‘The evolution of private provision of higher education in South Africa’ in
Perspectives in Education, 20(4); Mabizela (2006) ‘Recounting the state of private higher
education in South Africa’ in N.V. Varghese (ed.) New trends in higher education. Growth and
.
88 CHE (2004) The state of the provision of the MBA in South Africa.
Regulation 85
Education, signalled the start of formal regulation of the sector. By the mid-2000s,
private higher education providers were required to be fully compliant in terms
of registration and accreditation. In the longer term, formal regulation had the
able to meet the regulatory requirements. This was bolstered by the application
of the same programme accreditation regime that was applied to public higher
education institutions by the CHE, through its HEQC.89
By 2004, there were extensive legislative, regulatory and quality assurance
mechanisms in place to regulate the private sector. Public-private partnerships
were restricted by approval and funding mechanisms, except in some key areas
such as the partnerships with private institutions that offered supplementary
tuition to students registered with UNISA. While there were (and still are) formal
agreements and recognition of these private tuition centres with UNISA, they
did not initially fall under the scrutiny of the regulators as they were considered
UNISA that laid the foundation for their later development into degree-conferring
institutions in their own right.90
involved in the initial quality assurance processes which seemed to apply more
directly to public providers. This resulted in an evolution of processes in response
to individual cases and arguably led to inconsistencies of application.
The collection of data on the private sector is less extensive and systematic than
for the public sector. While annual reporting to the DHET is not yet done online,
and the HEQC Information System (HEQCIS) that collects data on enrolments
completely populated, the development of systems for the collection of more
extensive data is in an advanced stage. Nevertheless, the lack of audited data has
hindered the development of a more comprehensive understanding of the private
sector that would facilitate the maximising of its contribution to education and
skills development.
For some time there was uncertainty about the number of institutions in
the private higher education sector. Estimates ranged from 323 private and
transnational providers operating in 2000 in South Africa, to 89 that were
accredited with SAQA at that time.91 By the end of 2007, mandatory registration
requirements for higher education provision were in place, and programme
accreditation was already a well-established process, and this allowed for better
89 DoE (1997) Higher Education Act 101 (as amended); CHE (2001) Higher Education Quality
Committee founding document; CHE (2004) Framework for programme accreditation; Mabizela
(2006) ‘Recounting the state of private higher education in South Africa’ in Varghese (ed.) New
trends in higher education.
90 Mabizela (2002) ‘The evolution of private provision of higher education in South Africa’ in
Perspectives in Education, 20(4); Mabizela (2006) ‘Recounting the state of private higher
education in South Africa’ in Varghese (ed.) New trends in higher education.
91 The CHE’s Monitor (No. 1) says that approximately 117 private providers were operating in
South Africa and between 1998 and May 2002 SAQA accredited 348 programmes of 89 providers
(CHE (2003) The State of Private Higher Education in South Africa).
86 Higher education reviewed
monitoring of the size and shape of the sector. The DHET register of 2013 listed
115 institutions and all their registered programme offerings, while that of
December 2014 listed 124 institutions (96 registered and 28 with provisional
registration). This suggests that regulation has led to some consolidation of the
sector. The number of enrolments in the sector is estimated, on the basis of data
submitted in Annual Reports, to be over 90 000.92
A further complicating factor in terms of understanding the sector is that
instance as higher education providers, although they may carry higher education
both levels were unable to meet the requirements of registering as a private
higher education provider and thus stopped operating, while others refocused
their provision on further education. It was not mandatory to register as a private
further education provider until late in 2008, and while the Sector Education and
Training Authorities (SETAs) were the key bodies with which programmes at this
level were to be registered, there were also some programmes accredited directly
by Umalusi and others by SAQA. Thus, while there was an attempt at greater
regulatory clarity within the higher education part of the private sector, regulation
in the further education space remained complex. Some institutions have tried to
deal with this complexity by seeking accreditation for their programmes through
the HEQC so as to make a more complete transition into purely higher education
provision. Stated differently, this response appears to be driven by the need for
regulatory stability rather than by considerations of institutional mission and
capacity which has the potential to create imbalances in the system.
New challenges are also emerging. As the sector has matured, the nature
and identity of a private higher education institution has become contested in
some quarters in light of the apparent prohibition on the use of terms such as
‘university’ or ‘professor’. This is felt to be constraining to growth and to quality
as it becomes harder for them to attract academics or to position themselves
clearly in relation to public institutions in the choices available to students. In the
absence of clear regulations and legislation on distance provision hitherto, weak
practices may have emerged during the growth in distance education offerings in
accreditation of distance education offerings have since been developed which
are designed to address this issue.93
It is unclear whether there is intended to be a directed and coordinated
approach to stimulating the growth of private higher education. The White Paper
of 2013 reinforces the message that private provision is a valuable part of the
higher education sector, yet there appears not to be a clear strategy to stimulate it.
Better data and understanding of the sector will assist in including it meaningfully
in national planning processes.
92 DHET (2014) Statistics on post-school education and training: 2012.
93 DHET (2012) Draft Policy Framework for the Provision of Distance Education in South African
Universities; CHE (2014) Distance higher education programmes in a digital era: Good practice
guide.
Regulation 87
For its part, the private sector itself has not responded in an integrated or
coordinated way to the national higher education challenges. There are two self-
regulating representative structures. The larger and older, the Association of
Private Providers of Education, Training and Development (APPETD), formed in
1997, serves both the further and higher education parts of the private provision
sector. The second, the Private Higher Education Institution Group (PHEIG),
comprises only a small number of higher education providers.94 Neither is able to
represent a very small private sector effectively in the larger post-school context.
In order to maximise its contribution to meeting higher education needs, better
sectoral coordination and more focused engagement with regulatory and quality
assurance authorities will be needed, as well as concerted and deliberate means
found of shaping the future of the sector.
education
After 1994, the need for participation by all sectors of society appeared as
a guiding principle in the mission and strategy statements of many higher
education institutions as well as in the regulation and policy documents emerging
from government, particularly in the White Paper of 1997. Initially, this goal
was intended to be achieved in higher education through self rather than direct
regulation. However, by the time of the National Plan it had become clear that
some regulatory impetus was needed. The National Plan envisaged that the
“planning process in conjunction with funding and an appropriate regulatory
framework will be the main levers through which the Ministry will ensure that
targets and goals of this National Plan are realised” and that the “Ministry will not,
however, allow institutional autonomy to be used as a weapon to prevent change
and transformation”.95
The National Plan advocated the transformation of the student body and saw the
role of government in this transformation process as facilitative and supportive,
to assist higher education institutions to achieve equity in student enrolment.
The proposed instruments to support and facilitate increased access were to take
the form of initiatives such as the establishment of a National Higher Education
Information and Applications Service and the National Student Financial Aid
Scheme (NSFAS).96 However, the plan also indicated that if institutions do not
develop their own race, gender and disability equity targets and put in place clear
strategies for achieving them, the Ministry “will have no hesitation in introducing
quotas in the future”. 97
The plan also made the important point that, with increased access of students
from diverse social and learning backgrounds, institutions were to ensure that
graduation rates improved.98 An incentive for improving graduation rates was
94 A small number of members offer one or two further education programmes but these are
peripheral to their principal higher education offerings.
95 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education, sections 1.5 & 1.5.1.
96 Ibid., sections 2.3 & 3.2.
97 Ibid., section 3.2.
98 Ibid., section 2.3.
88 Higher education reviewed
that graduate outputs would be a component of the new funding formula.99 It
therefore acknowledged that the responsibility for teaching and learning quality
should be placed at the level of the individual institution.
Within the system of ‘negotiated self-regulation’, the main levers to bring about
equity and access were enrolment planning, as discussed above, and funding. The
system and earmarked funding such as for foundation programmes. The third
lever, which focused on the teaching and learning process in achieving equity
of outcomes, was quality assurance. A direct expression of the transformation
imperative appeared in the CHE’s approach to quality assurance, where social
transformation of a higher education institution was directly linked to the quality
of its academic and intellectual activities. This was stated in the foreword to the
Framework for Institutional Audit as follows:
The HEQC’s approach to institutional audit is strongly shaped by the complex challenges
facing higher education institutions in an era of radical restructuring within South
African higher education. The audit system seeks to be responsive to as well as proactive
policy and legislative documents that have been published since 1994. Ensuring that
improved and sustainable quality is part of the transformation objectives of higher
education institutions is, therefore, a fundamental premise of the HEQC’s approach to
quality assurance in general and to institutional audits in particular.100
In the area of staff equity and transformation, the National Plan took a similar
view of largely leaving this to self-regulation by institutions. It acknowledged the
of black and female postgraduate students; the lack of funding for postgraduate
students; and the inability of universities to compete with the public and private
sectors in terms of salaries. However, the plan also expressed concern that many
institutions had not developed either the necessary employment equity plans as
targets.101 Nonetheless, the government’s approach over the next decade to
rather than direct regulation.102
This approach further reinforced government’s acknowledgement that
transformation of institutional culture was as important as transformation of the
demography of staff and students at the institution. The enormity of the barrier
that an exclusionary institutional culture can represent has been recognised since
the 1997 White Paper.103
While there has been contestation on strategy, rate and extent of transformation,
this negotiated self-regulation approach to transformation remained largely in
place over the past twenty years. However, the Reitz incident which occurred
99 Ibid., section 2.3.1.
100 CHE (2004) Framework for institutional audits, p.1.
101 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education, section 3.3.
102 See Chapter 7.
103 DoE (1997) White Paper 3, section 2.4.3.
Regulation 89
early in 2008 at the University of the Free State (UFS) led to a revision of the
approach to higher education transformation on the part of government.104 This
incident, which was a crude expression of racism on the part of a group of white
students at a university residence, led to the Minister appointing a committee
which produced a report on Progress Towards Transformation and Social Cohesion
and the Elimination of Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions in
March 2008 to investigate discrimination at public higher education institutions,
with a focus on racism, and to make recommendations on how to promote
social cohesion. This Commission produced a report in late 2008 which became
of discrimination based on race, class, language, gender, sexuality and national
identity across higher education institutions.105 The Committee acknowledged
the presence of generally suitable institutional policies for transformation but
often found implementation and practice wanting, particularly at the level of
institutional culture. The report places much of the responsibility for this at the
doors of the governance and senior management structures of institutions. It
contains recommendations that later led to the Minister convening the Ministerial
Oversight Committee on Transformation in the South African Public Universities
which was formally established in April 2013.106 The establishment of this
Oversight Committee, and attempts to create equity monitoring mechanisms
(see Chapter 7), seem to have marked a new and more directive approach to
transformation of higher education institutions in South Africa.107
3.7 Diversity and differentiation of the sector
and much has been written and said in support of – or opposition to – different
conceptions of a differentiated system. What follows is a section that aims to
approaches and thinking on the nature of a differentiated sector. While a
discussion document on differentiation was produced in 2012, there has been
little progress since.108
Government’s approach to the arrangement of higher education institutions
after 1994 espoused the principle of developing a single, coordinated system that
104 In February 2008 a video made by four white male students of the Reitz Residence at the
University of the Free State (UFS) became public. The video showed the students giving food,
into which one of the students had apparently urinated, to a group of black cleaning workers –
four women and one man. The video was made for a cultural event at the hostel, where it won
University’s new policy to integrate the residences. Public outrage at the video ensued.
105 DoE (2008) Report of the Ministerial Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the
Elimination of Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions.
106 DHET (2013) Ministerial Oversight Committee on Transformation in the South African Public
Universities.
107 K.S. Govinder & M.W. Makgoba (2013) ‘An Equity Index for South Africa’ in South African Journal
of Science, (109)5/6.
108 HESA (2012) Differentiation in higher education.
90 Higher education reviewed
missions.109 Differentiation has, therefore, been a topic of discussion throughout
policy development post-1994. The Higher Education Act indicated that the
“Minister must… allocate public funds to public higher education on a fair
and transparent basis… [but] may, subject to the policy determined in terms
of subsection (1), impose… different conditions in respect of different public
higher education institutions, different instructional programmes or different
allocations, if there is a reasonable basis for such differentiation.”110 The possibility
for differentiated funding for different missions was thus established in law. The
CHE’s Size and Shape task team recommended possible differentiation of the
sector which led to some debate.111 The National Plan (2001) commented that:
The Ministry agrees with the Council on Higher Education that a differentiated and
diverse higher education system is essential to meet the transformation goals of the
White Paper. It also agrees that if diversity is to be achieved, a clear regulatory and
planning framework is required. The Ministry does not, however, support the CHE’s
proposal that differentiation and diversity should be achieved through structural
differentiation between different institutional types based on a distinction between
teaching and research institutions….The Ministry believes, however, that it would not
be consistent with a programme-based approach if the mission and programme mix of
differentiation between different institutional types. The danger with structural
differentiation is that it introduces an element of rigidity, which will preclude
institutions from building on their strengths and responding to social and economic
needs, including labour market needs, in a rapidly changing regional, national
and global context. At the same time, the Ministry does not favour an open-ended
institutional framework, which leads to academic and mission drift and uniformity
based on the values, priorities and practices of the major research universities.112
Despite early policy discussions, little progress with regard to differentiation
Green and then the White Paper for Post-School Education and Training.113 While
discussing differentiation of the post-school sector as a whole, the White Paper
also indicated that “[t]here is broad agreement that South Africa needs a diverse
university sector which is purposefully differentiated in order to meet a range
of social, economic and educational requirements”.114 The document goes on to
discuss how the current diversity in the system is largely the result of historical
legacy and inequality, although some differentiation has been policy driven.
Differentiation could assist in providing a range of educational opportunities
which could increase participation and improve success rates. The document
goes on to explain some principles for differentiation; including maintaining the
109 NCHE (1996) A Framework for Transformation; DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education.
110 DoE (1997) Higher Education Act 101 (as amended), section 39.
111 CHE (2000) Towards a new higher education landscape. Meeting the equity, quality and social
development imperatives of South Africa in the 21st century.
112 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education, section 4.2.
113 DHET (2012) Green Paper for Post-school Education and Training; DHET (2013) White Paper for
Post-school Education and Training.
114 DHET (2013) White Paper for Post-school Education and Training, section 4.2.
Regulation 91
mix and level; ensuring that all institutions carry out undergraduate teaching;
and the provision of appropriate funding.
the distinctive roles of the three Quality Councils. This required the development
vocational ones. The approach in these developments has generally been accepted
by higher education institutions, mainly because it provides the regulatory basis
rationalisation allows the possibility of differentiating the post-schooling system
with the new understanding of a post-school system, of which higher education
is an integral component.
Achieving a functionally differentiated higher education system has been more
with it a new taxonomy of higher education institutional types:
• Universities – in the more traditional character of teaching and research,
• Universities of technology – offering predominantly undergraduate
focus on industrial and technological disciplines.
This was essentially a compromise after the political implications of the CHE
proposal for mission differentiation had become evident. This consideration
of mission differentiation of institutions had placed mainly historically white
institutions in the ‘research intensive’ group (as indicated above) and the
historically black institutions in the so-called ‘bedrock’ group – an arrangement
115
While public institutions were all placed in one of these categories after the
merger process, no formal policies or regulations were adopted to prescribe their
mandate and mission to ensure that their activities were contained within the
existing areas of establishment, this has been more by context and circumstance
than by formal regulation. In effect, all institutions are able to offer all levels of
that, in considering PQM restrictions for an individual institution, the DHET has
been using institutional differentiation in a structured and transparent manner.
115 CHE (2000) Towards a new higher education landscape.
92 Higher education reviewed
in the perception, real or imagined, that differentiation also carried funding and
‘prestige’ implications that could well reinforce or consolidate apartheid divisions
in higher education. As an example, the handful of existing research-intensive
universities may have presented an argument for differentiation on the basis that
the research-intensive universities are also generally the historically white
black universities on the basis that they too intend to be research-intensive
institutions, and require additional funding to achieve this and should not be
disadvantaged because of apartheid’s neglect of their intellectual engagements.
that has to be overlaid onto a still largely racially differentiated sector, with the
attendant apartheid arrangements of power relations and access to resources.
It has been argued that the early period of post-1994 restructuring of higher
education represented a ‘de-differentiation’ of the sector in the sense that the
approach was for all institutions to be treated as having equal potential for
development.116 Prior to 1994, there were essentially two regulatory systems for
higher education, one for universities and one for the then technikons. Indeed,
there were two legislated sectoral coordinating structures – the Committee of
University Principals and the Committee of Technikon Principals (CTP). Driven
by pressure for the old technikons to be treated at the same level as universities,
the act of merging these two into a single higher education sector after 1994 was
in effect a process of de-differentiation. While this has certainly had broader and
longer-term impacts on conceptions of differentiation of higher education, at
framework that was thought necessary to facilitate the proposed institutional
merger arrangements.
Institutional differentiation at the merger stage was coupled with a programme-
based differentiation as discussed above. However, the alignment of institutions
with particular types through their programme offerings has not proceeded as
universities of technology have pushed for greater participation in research and
doctoral degree programmes (as shown below), in part driven by the idea of
funding, but also by the sense that the teaching-only institution is disadvantaged
in the competition for third-stream income which is increasingly necessary to
augment the operational income of an institution. This may well have shifted the
attention of some institutions away from their intended principal mission – to
in graduation rates.
116 M.Young (2013) ‘The future of post school education: Differentiation and collaboration not a
seamless web’ (presentation).
Regulation 93
3.8 Regulating the quality of higher education provision
In pursuit of its legal mandate according to the Higher Education Act (101 of
1997) as having primary responsibility for quality assurance and development
in higher education, the CHE, through its permanent sub-committee, the Higher
Education Quality Committee (HEQC), adopted the Frameworks for Institutional
Audits and for Accreditation, as well as criteria documents for institutional
audits and for programme accreditation in 2004.117 The implementation of a
range of quality assurance processes, audit, accreditation and national reviews
public higher education institutions as well as eleven private higher education
institutions was completed in 2012.118
117 CHE (2004) Framework for programme accreditation; CHE (2004) Criteria for institutional
audits; CHE (2004) Framework for institutional audits.
118 Owing to a dispute about the process and substance, the institutional audit report on the
University of KwaZulu-Natal was not released and the audit process was closed.
1 600
1 400
1 200
1 000
800
600
400
200
02005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Doctoral graduates 30 36 38 36 48 62 62 81 94
Masters graduates 172 231 203 215 302 247 335 356 391
Research publication units 227 270 234 294 376 484 622 630 723
Weighted research output 489 609 551 617 822 886 1 143 1 229 1 396
Source: Annual Ministerial Research Output Reports and HEMIS 2005-2013, extracted annually
Figure 3: Doctoral enrolments at UoTs 2005 - 2013
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
02005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Source: HEMIS 2005 - 2013, extracted annually
333 361 373 387
437
512
585
706 740
94 Higher education reviewed
The institutional quality audits were structured to allow individual institutions
ambitions in relation to 19 criteria that were focused at the high level of quality
management and processes at the institution. As an important deviation from
international higher education quality assessment practice, the CHE included
staff and student transformation as part of the quality assessment criteria and
institutions were required to assess themselves against this aspect of institutional
development. Learning from negative experiences internationally, the CHE
approach was to avoid allocating a quality score or ranking to the institution and
to rather take a developmental as opposed to a compliance approach to quality
assurance. This was generally well appreciated by the higher education sector.
Most institutions (both public and private) found the audit process valuable,
of their peers.119 Importantly, the process relied on a relationship of trust in which
the CHE undertook not to release the detailed audit report to any other party
without the permission of the institution involved. It was strongly felt that this
assurance allowed for more honest and enthusiastic participation by the higher
education institutions. An often repeated criticism of the process was its intensity
120 This
cycle, which was to establish a broad set of parameters for quality management
of core academic activities at all institutions. This required particular attention to
the balance between quality assurance and quality enhancement in a manner that
made the process necessarily onerous.
offered at higher education institutions as a mechanism for re-accreditation of the
programmes based on a proper quality assessment. Whereas the institutional
audits were focused on individual institutions, the national reviews focused at the
were to establish acceptable quality benchmarks based on local and international
practice and to formally re-accredit the offering of targeted programmes at the
relevant institutions. The CHE completed programme reviews for the MBA in
2005 and for Education programmes in 2007. Both these reviews resulted in the
withdrawal of accreditation from a few institutions that were considered incapable
of offering such programmes at an acceptable level of quality.121 The CHE has
subsequently reviewed programmes in Social Work, with similar outcomes, and
undergraduate education in Physics and is currently reviewing the LLB degree.
119 CHE (2009) ‘External evaluation report of the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) of
the Council on Higher Education, South Africa’ (report).
120 Ibid.
121 CHE (2004) The state of provision of the MBA; L. Lange & P. Naidoo (2004) From minimum
; for more details see http://www.che.ac.za/
content/master-business-administration-mba-programme-review-2004-2005. .
Regulation 95
Some complication emerged during the implementation of external quality
assurance regarding the accreditation role of legislated professional bodies with
with the responsibility for accreditation of particular higher education programmes
this responsibility was to align with the mandate of the CHE as the principal Quality
Council for higher education, but there was no clear legal means for this alignment.
The problem was largely resolved with the publication of the NQF Act of 2008,
which removed the status of a professional body as an Education and Training
Quality Assurer (ETQA) and reinforced the primary status of the CHE as the single
Quality Council for higher education. While the actual detail of the implementation
relationships between the CHE and professional bodies has still to be completed for
and respective roles are underway.
A resilient problem in higher education is low student throughput rates. An
often quoted statistic, which has remained relatively static over the last decade, is
that around 50% of students who enter higher education studies will leave with a
in minimum time (see Figure 3 below). This has led to a renewed focus by the CHE
on the quality of teaching and learning at higher education institutions. The CHE has
initiated a Quality Enhancement Project (QEP) for 2014-2019 that focuses exclusively
on teaching and learning at institutions, with a view to developing the capacity and
practice at individual institutions as well as sharing existing good practice across
them. The CHE has also provided advice to the Minister of Higher Education on
reforming the undergraduate curriculum structure to allow for extended curricula as
the norm to address the matter of poor throughputs in higher education.122
122 CHE (2013) A proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in South Africa; CHE (2014)
Framework for institutional quality enhancement in the second period of quality assurance (QEP).
2008 (excluding UNISA)
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
02007 2008 2007 2008 2007 2008 2007 2008 2007 2008 2007 2008
Regulation time:
non-accumulative N + 1:
non-accumulative
N + 2:
non-accumulative
Regulation time:
accumulative N + 1:
accumulative
N + 2:
accumulative
Diploma grads 20% 19% 15% 16% 9% 9% 20% 19% 35% 36% 44% 45%
3-yr degree grads 29% 30% 19% 18% 9% 8% 29% 30% 48% 48% 57% 56%
2006 Graduated 38% 42% 15% 15% 6% 6% 38% 42% 53% 57% 59% 63%
2006 Dropped out 27% 29% 15% 16% 8% 8% 27% 29% 43% 45% 50% 53%
Source: Adapted from Figure 125, p.78 of CHE VitalStats 2013
96 Higher education reviewed
the regulatory environment
A characteristic feature of the development of public policy, especially when social
change as radical as the end of apartheid occurs, is the possibility of unintended
consequences when the policies are implemented. This has certainly been a feature
in the development of a regulatory environment for higher education in South
Africa over the past twenty years. Legislation and policy have often had to be
incrementally amended as responses from the sector became apparent.
It can be argued that government regulation has helped to point higher
education in a direction that better aligns the sector with the principles of the
South African Constitution, following the transformation framework envisioned
in the 1996 NCHE report. Such positive developments as have been achieved
also came about because of the efforts of higher education institutions that
supported the transformation of the sector. A question to be asked is about the
extent to which government regulation has acted to facilitate and stimulate the
transformation efforts of higher education institutions.
The government’s approach to regulating and steering the sector has sometimes
been experienced as contrary to its espoused purpose. For instance, one view is
that there has been a tendency to treat all institutions with the same regulatory
instruments which are often too blunt to deal with localised problems that occur
in only a few institutions, at the same time creating an unnecessary hindrance
in institutions where the problem does not manifest as seriously. An example
of this approach has been the allocation of teaching and research development
grants on the basis of the measured research and teaching output performance
of an individual institution. Both the task teams appointed in 2008 to review the
basis for these allocations and the institutions in their input to the Ministerial
Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities pointed out that, on the
one hand, the institutions at the high end of research and teaching performance
received little to no development grant funding to further develop their capacity.
On the other hand, many of the very poorly performing institutions received large
development grants which they were unable to utilise for research and teaching
development because of a lack of the internal capacity or the necessary skills
for such development. As such, it has been suggested that all universities should
qualify for development grants but that these should be earmarked and based on
approved plans.123
Similarly, some institutions have raised concerns in regard to the approach to
quality assurance. Despite known and clear differences in institutional capacities
and processes for the management of academic quality, all institutions are
required to follow the same external processes for programme accreditation
and institutional audits, to the distraction of those institutions who believe the
necessary internal capacity for such processes exists.
There are widespread views that external reporting requirements have become
over-bureaucratised. With government’s increasing use of earmarked funding,
123 DHET (2013) Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities.
Regulation 97
each category with its own conditions and administrative requirements, the
reporting requirements have become onerous and have forced a growth in the
administrative functions and expenses of institutions, possibly at the expense of
principal academic activities.124 While the improved quality of higher education
data available has been a positive development, there is a perception that much
of the reporting requirements are formalistic and make little contribution to
government’s understanding of the institutions’ strategies and activities. There
are also complaints that different regulations or conditions call for similar
information to be presented to different monitoring units and this could be better
arranged to reduce the administrative burden on institutions.
An important manifestation of concern about regulation as a steering mechanism
has been the use by the government of the Administrator mechanism in the Higher
and governance at institutions in crisis. The extent to which this mechanism has had
to be employed points to the possibility that the general regulatory instruments
with developmental issues at institutions where they were most needed.
The government’s responses to institutional crises have elicited much concern.
The amendments to the Higher Education Act (2012) were written in such a way
that they appeared to give the Minister the power to intervene in institutions
that are considered to be dysfunctional on grounds that appeared to be too open-
ended.125 The appointment of a Ministerial Transformation Oversight Committee
in response to the apparently slow transformation in higher education institutions
elicited similar concerns from the higher education sector. Such developments
suggest an over-reliance by the government on regulation which applies across
the board as the main vehicle for dealing with particular challenges in higher
education in South Africa.
government policy and regulation into the detail of institutional operation has
been too deep. Such views argue that this approach has not produced the desired
outcomes in terms of student access and success, quality of academic activities,
governance effectiveness and transformation. A further aspect of the critique is
that in response to unresolved problems in the system, there has been a tendency
for the government to resort to increasing the reach of regulation. At the end of
two decades of experience with regulatory steering, the appropriateness of such
an approach could be questioned. Consideration should be given to combining
appropriately focused regulation with more engaged advocacy and negotiation
with the higher education sector around particular challenges. At the same time,
however, there are strident calls for government to intervene more decisively to
bring about more rapid transformation in individual institutions through greater
124 A. Du Toit (2013) ‘Policy and regulatory changes in higher education: A historical and
comparative academic freedom perspective’ (report); A. Du Toit (2014) Revisiting ‘co-operative
governance’ in higher education – A discussion document.
125 C. Pretorius (2012) ‘Universities may take minister to court over autonomy’ in University World
News, 14 December.
98 Higher education reviewed
5. Closing comments – Looking forward
From many perspectives, the regulation of higher education over the past
twenty years has had mixed success. The student enrolments in higher education
the aspirations in the policy documents of the immediate post-apartheid era.
Around two-thirds of enrolled students are black African, compared with under
one-third in 1990.126 The quality assurance processes have become embedded
and have contributed to enhancing the quality of academic offerings at most
universities and private higher education institutions. Many universities have
found innovative ways to deal with the pressures experienced by the higher
education system and have actively sought ways in which to balance the tensions
between increasing enrolments and pursuing the academic project. The engaged
and directed approach to enrolment planning and infrastructure development on
development of the sector.
It is clear, however, that the effective functioning of successful universities
and quality in educational offerings cannot be managed by the government
through legislation and regulation alone. The persistence of dysfunction at some
universities that requires ministerial intervention and administration indicates
that this instrument has not been effective in ensuring the sustainability of
good governance at all universities. Directive regulation, together with funding
as a steering instrument, have not been effective in addressing the problem of
integrating and positively developing institutional cultures after the operational
mergers in some institutional contexts. Similarly, the problems of persistently
low throughput and graduation rates of students, and of transformation, have
aim to be supportive rather than directive. A supportive approach depends on
growth in student enrolments needs to be supported both by funding for
additional infrastructure, but also by funding for the additional academic staff
required. The latter, in particular, has been lacking. To quote from the National
Development Plan, “Enrolments have almost doubled in 18 years yet the funding
has not kept up.”127
Private higher education institutions are viewed by the NDP as an important
component of successful higher education provision. This is an important signal
that consolidation of the approach to private higher education institutions
is necessary for expansion of capacity and access to higher education. This
acknowledgement of the role of private higher education means that the current
regulatory and funding arrangements for this sector may need to be fundamentally
reconsidered to enable it to become an integral component of an expanding
higher education sector. In addition, possibilities for the positive stimulation of
126 NPC (2011) National Development Plan: 2030. Our future – make it work; CHE (2012) VitalStats.
Public Higher Education 2010; CHE (2013) VitalStats. Public Higher Education 2011; CHE (2014)
VitalStats. Public Higher Education 2012.
127 NPC (2011) National Development Plan, p. 317.
Regulation 99
the sector will need to be sought. The private higher education sector will also
have to demonstrate that it has the will and the wherewithal to manage suitable
levels of self-regulation within individual institutions in order to assure greater
The NDP has set ambitious targets for the higher education sector. By 2030, it
foresees a 70% growth in enrolments (from 953 373 students in 2012 to 1.62m
students); 75% of academic staff holding doctoral degrees (compared to 20% in
2012); 25% of enrolments to be at the postgraduate level (compared to 16% in
2012, which would mean an increase from 149 026 postgraduate students to 400
general use of ICT in teaching and learning at contact programmes; universities
clearly differentiated along lines of research intensity and an actively contributing
college sector that is properly aligned with the higher education sector, and with a
university student graduation rate of 75% (compared to 50% of the 2007 cohort
for the way in which the state chooses to steer and regulate the higher education
sector. They also raise the question of the suitability of the present legislative
and regulatory arrangements to stimulate and support the achievement of these
targets.128
The Higher Education Act and its attendant regulatory framework may
consequently now be in need of a fundamental reconsideration. The current
framework has done much to make positive shifts away from apartheid’s
imagination of the form, structure and operation of higher education. Twenty
years after 1994, there are new and important challenges in both the internal
and external environments in which universities operate, as outlined in Chapter
1. These challenges to the context and the currents that higher education has to
navigate will require fresh mechanisms and approaches to directing and steering
on the part of the DHET, and innovation and creativity on the part of higher
education institutions.
In the process of re-thinking the way in which legislation and regulations
are to be used as a means of directing the activities and performance of higher
education institutions, prudent use of the negotiated self-regulation approach
would be most likely to render positive results. Such an approach would have the
to managing the relationship between the state and the higher education sector
to strongly support an argument that this approach should be broadened and
deepened. The success of such an approach requires agile and sophisticated
use and analysis of good quality data about the performance of individual and
clustered higher education institutions, both public and private.
128 Ibid.
100 Higher education reviewed
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Regulation 103
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In framing the analysis in this chapter, we are taking as our point of departure
the Council on Higher Education’s (CHE) analysis and assessment of the
South African higher education policy framework, and governance for the
period 1994 to 2004.1 We believe that both analyses are deeply connected,
not only because the different role-players of the system of higher education
governance (from national department to individual higher education institutions)
were expected to implement policy, but because governance itself was expected
that started in 1994. At the same time, we believe that what we will call, for
now, ‘changes’ in policy and in the modes of governance at system level between
development and implementation on the part of the new democratic government.
Given all of this, it is not possible to talk about governance without making
reference to the legislative and policy framework that constituted and shaped
the higher education system and its individual components. In a similar vein, we
believe that there is a dynamic relationship between system-level governance and
institutional governance. In looking at higher education policy development and
implementation from the hindsight of 2004, the CHE’s ten-year review examined
three themes: the extent to which the policy process unfolded in unpredictable
ways; the extent to which policy had achieved its objectives; and the extent to
which policy was used to provide a blueprint for transformation.2 One of the main
arguments put across in the 2004 CHE analysis was that policy implementation
turned out to be non-linear and much more complex in terms of unexpected
outcomes and impacts than the conceptualisation of policy development
and implementation held at the time had allowed for in the early days of the
democratic government. The 2001 government-led restructuring of the public
higher education system through mergers and incorporations was, according to
the CHE, a response to these unforeseen developments of policy implementation
or, put differently, to the lack of an ‘acceptable’ response from institutions to
national policy until 2001. Having explored these issues, the CHE arrived at
two conclusions: that the outcomes of policy were going to be ‘co-produced’ by
government, the higher education sector, individual institutions and other social
actors, and that this process was bound to be characterised by cooperation and
close monitoring and a review of “system-level governance dynamics” in order to
understand the system and systemic change. 3
Governance
Writers and editors: Lis Lange & Thierry Luescher-Mamashela
Task team leader: Jairam Reddy
Members/contributors: Bennie Anderson, Magda Fourie-Malherbe,
Tembile Kulati, Thami Ledwaba & Anthony Staak
CHE research assistant: Ntokozo Bhengu
3
1 CHE (2004) South Africa Higher Education in the First Decade of Democracy, pp. 173-186.
2 In developing the argument of this chapter we will engage with the notion of transformation in
higher education policy, but for now we are taking it as a common sense notion.
3 CHE (2004) , p. 37.
106 Higher education reviewed
The analysis of higher education governance presented in the same publication
was largely based on the CHE’s own work on governance, but it argued more
forcefully a point that other analysts had raised before,4 that while at the beginning
of the democratic dispensation, transformation was driven by stakeholder
participation, the publication of the National Plan for Higher Education in 2001
altered the model of governance in practice “from a comparatively loose system
of state steering” to a system where “the state exercises increasing control”.5 This
conclusion prompted the CHE to propose a revision of the notion of cooperative
governance, enunciated in the 1996 Report of the National Commission on
Higher Education, to ensure that it was adapted to the ‘new realities’ of the higher
education system.6 The analysis went on to suggest that in 2004, three main
system-level questions needed answering:
• What were the appropriate nature and modes of government involvement in
• What was the appropriate relationship between government and higher
• What were the most appropriate conceptions of institutional autonomy,
academic freedom and public accountability in the context of South African
By then, the CHE had already appointed a task team to conduct an investigation
into higher education institutional autonomy and academic freedom (HEIAAF),
in the midst of growing concern among HEIs of increasing regulation and
2008 and, for a variety of reasons, it ended up being one of the least discussed,
publicised and utilised CHE research reports ever.7
This chapter takes off where the CHE’s previous assessment concluded, but
it also engages with some of the conceptual and interpretive issues that the
subsequent decade of democracy has shown to be problematic or unsatisfactory
to explain the current state of higher education governance. First of all, we are
of both the system and individual institutions and it also allows for a complex
conceptualisation of the policy process.8 Secondly, we believe that to arrive at a
nuanced understanding of higher education governance it is necessary to work
4 See, for example, N. Cloete, R. Fehnel, P. Maasen, T. Moja, H. Perold & T. Gibbon (eds.) (2002)
Transformation in higher education: Global pressures and local realities in South Africa.
5 CHE (2004) , pp. 97-98.
6 NCHE (1996) A framework for transformation.
7
autonomy and public accountability’ in CHE Academic Freedom, pp. 28-56.
8 B. Lingard & J. Ozga (2007) The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Education Policy and Politics.
Governance 107
governance of higher education institutions and the consequences that they
had for the evolution of leadership and management inside institutions. We
believe that this exercise might provide some conceptual space to revisit the
view of 2001 as the watershed moment in which ‘state intervention’ replaced
cooperative governance. Our argument is that from the perspective of hindsight,
system level as profoundly as, if not more than, those signalled by the National
Plan in 2001.
In addition, we have decided to do research on institutional governance using
as our sources the reports of the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC)
institutional audits that took place between 2004 and 2011 with a cross-section of
ten public higher education institutions, and the fourteen reports of the assessors
appointed by the Minister between 1994 and 2012 to deal with public higher
education institutions in crisis. We believe that both sets of documents provide rich
evidence that, when clustered together, can help to shed light on the complexities
of institutional governance. Some of the issues that emerge from the closer
investigation of institutions’ governance and management structures point to
several commonalities between the South African higher education system and its
counterparts in other continents. In this regard, we think it is important to step out
of the habit of seeing South Africa as a special case in the ‘global history’ of higher
from some of the crudest onslaught of Thatcherite neo-liberalism and new public
management approaches in the 1980s, South Africa’s international reinsertion
also implied the local utilisation of a globalised higher education policy toolkit.9
In this sense, we will argue that many aspects of the relationship between higher
education and the state and many elements of how higher education management
from globalisation as much as the result of local constraints.
This chapter is organised in seven sections. Sections 1 and 2 introduce the
chapter and conceptualise the key terms used, including governance, leadership
and management, and how we position them in relation to the CHE 2004 report.
Section 3 explains the approach we have taken to periodise and analyse the
evolution of South African higher education from a governance point of view.
Sections 4 to 6 present an analytical narrative of the system and institutional level
periodisations based on research produced since 2004. They provide an analysis
of governance, leadership and management at both system and institutional level
including our analyses of legislative changes, selected HEQC quality audit reports
issues for further consideration and we propose in more detail a conceptualisation
of knowledge-based leadership and management for system and institutional
level governance.
9 B.G. Dale (2007) ‘Tools and techniques: An overview’ in B.G. Dale, T. Van der Wiele & J. van
Iwaarden (eds.) Managing quality; M. Singh (2011) ‘Global ‘toolboxes’, local ‘toolmaking’: The
contradictions of external evaluation in South African higher education reform’ in R. King, S.
Marginson & R. Naidoo (eds.) Handbook of globalization and higher education, pp. 197-221.
108 Higher education reviewed
2. Conceptualisation of key terms
In this review, we draw distinctions between higher education governance,
leadership and management. As far as governance is concerned, we focus on
interactions by which various higher education role-players participate in high
and informal ways of regulating higher education involving interactions between
various role-players at system and institutional levels of higher education. The
pluricentric or network forms of regulation,10 which in higher education
governance is particularly associated with the emergence of the evaluative state,11
de-centred forms of regulation and the proliferation of intermediary regulatory
bodies.12 It is further inspired by research that examines changes in governance
and their effects on the autonomy and accountability of higher education and its
responsiveness to societal needs.
While there are various conceptual and operational links among them,
governance is conceptually distinct from leadership and from management.
Leadership is concerned with establishing and promoting the direction of the
system or individual institutions of higher education, and the formulation of
priorities, policy and strategy in relation to established rules. Management, on
the other hand, refers to the implementation of these policies and related goals
and objectives. Leadership and management, therefore, relate to the question
of how rules and regulations set at governance level are initiated and applied,
13
the structures and processes of policy making and oversight at system level and
level governance as “the relationship between the state and higher education
institutions”.14 It is only later as part of the CHE’s HEIAAF investigations that Ruth
state and government.
To insist on a careful distinction between ‘state’ and ‘government’ is neither semantic
‘transformation’ – the process of substantive democratisation – is to be understood.
For the building of a democratic state is not an event coinciding with the election of a
democratically representative government: it is a lengthy process in which all ‘organs
of state’ – the judiciary, government, the civil service, the health and welfare sectors
10 K. van Keersbergen & F. van Waarden (2004) ‘Governance as a bridge between disciplines:
Cross-disciplinary inspiration regarding shifts in governance and problems of governability,
accountability and legitimacy in European Journal of Political Research, 43(2), p. 145.
11 G. Neave (1998) ‘The evaluative state reconsidered’ in European Journal of Education, 33(3), pp.
265-284.
12 R. King (2006) ‘Analysing the higher education regulatory state’.
13 Eurydice European Unit (2008) Higher education governance in Europe: Policies, structures,
funding and academic staff, p. 12.
14 CHE (2004) y, p. 173.
Governance 109
and public education at all levels – as well as those bodies and groupings which make
up civil society and cultural life, play their part.15
Part of this insistence is an acknowledgement that public higher education
institutions may be deemed organs of state in that they are established and perform
public functions in terms of the Higher Education Act of 1997.16 Consequently,
system-level governance ought to “observe and adhere to the principles of co-
operative government” as set out in Chapter 3 of the South African Constitution.
The constitutional standing of the principle of co-operative governance as sector-
discourse by the National Commission on Higher Education (1996) is currently
being debated.17 The debate as to whether or not higher education institutions
were organs of the state was prominent in the deliberation of the HEIAAF task
team and its resolution conceptually uncomfortable.18
governance as ‘state-sector relations’ as we believe this forecloses closer scrutiny
of notions that, twenty years into a democratic dispensation, need to be revisited.19
In keeping with this conceptualisation of system-level governance, the key role-
players involved in higher education governance are, therefore, government in
general, the Ministry and Department of Higher Education and Training and other
intermediary bodies such as the Council on Higher Education and its Higher
Education Quality Committee, the public and private higher education institutions,
and certain non-governmental organisations, including higher education research
centres and think-tanks, and representative stakeholder bodies. The latter include
Higher Education South Africa (HESA), i.e. the association of the Vice-Chancellors
of all public universities, national student formations such as the South African
Students’ Congress (SASCO), and trade unions of (non-academic) staff. With
the partial exception of HESA, the role played by stakeholder formations in
institutional and systemic governance has been rather marginal, inward looking
and concerned with factional interests. In part as a response to this, a University
for university councils at national level. Still pending is a response to repeated
15 R. Jonathan (2006) Academic freedom, institutional autonomy and public accountability in higher
education: a framework for analysis of the ‘State-Sector’ relationship in a democratic South Africa, p. 6.
16 See, for example, South African Government (1996) South African Constitution, section 239.
17
autonomy and public accountability’ in CHE Academic Freedom; A. Du Toit (2014) Revisiting ‘Co-
operative Governance’ in higher education.
18 CHE (2008) Academic freedom, institutional autonomy and public accountability in South African
higher education: Report of the Independent Task Team on Higher Education, Institutional Autonomy
and Academic Freedom (HEIAAF), pp. 25-32, 71.
19 The Higher Education Laws Amendment Act of 2010 (amending Section 51 of the Higher
Education4.3 Act, 1997; our emphasis) states in relation to the registration of private HEIs that:
“51.(1) No person other than a public higher education institution or an organ of state may provide
higher education unless [….]”. While this sets public higher education institutions on the same
footing with organs of state in terms of this amendment, it does not settle the question whether
public higher education institutions are indeed also organs of state or not.
110 Higher education reviewed
calls for the establishment of a national representative body for academic staff
that could give academics a collective voice as important role-players in the
higher education system and in the governance of higher education.20
Current research on higher education governance in South Africa does not paint
the full picture of the diversity of institutional experiences, thus constraining
the possibility of achieving a greater understanding of governance issues.
This is not because of a lack of readily available categorisations. Besides the
obvious distinction between private and public higher education institutions
comprehensive universities and universities of technology on the basis of their
also the older categorisation into historically advantaged, English or Afrikaans
medium institutions (HAIs) and historically disadvantaged institutions (HDIs)
that were historically designated to serve different population groups and funded
and administrated unequally and separately.21 Lastly, a new type of institutional
differentiation has emerged recently based on knowledge productivity indicators
(i.e. CHET’s blue, green and red institutions).22 This chapter will attempt to use
some of these categories to develop an analytical matrix to identify trends in
institutional governance.
In a review which spans the post-apartheid history of higher education
governance at system and institutional levels, the effects of system-level
governance changes on the autonomy and accountability of institutions have
to be interpreted in relation to the starting points of institutions and in terms
of related developmental trajectories. Too frequently has the analysis and
interpretation of governance in higher education been undertaken through the
lens of the experience of historically advantaged universities while the concrete
governance experience of these institutions has seldom triggered system-level
interventions. As we will argue below, some of the most incisive forms of system-
level interventions in institutional governance have actually been prompted by
the experiences of historically disadvantaged institutions and, to a lesser extent,
private higher education providers.
The basic distinction between public and private providers of higher
education is also especially relevant at the level of institutional governance,
where the regulatory framework only prescribes a set of formal governance
structures for public institutions. Most critically, this set comprises a council as
the highest decision-making body, a senate which is accountable for academic
affairs, an institutional forum (IF) as advisory body to council, and the students’
or principal, who is responsible for providing leadership and for managing
the institution. While this set of structures and its basic composition has been
common to all public universities since 1997, and is meant to give effect to the
principle of democratisation enshrined in post-apartheid higher education
20 See, for example, A. Du Toit (2007) Autonomy as a social compact, p. 132.
21 I. Bunting (2002) ‘The higher education landscape under apartheid’ in Cloete et al. Transformation
in higher education: Global pressures and local realities in South Africa.
22 Centre for Higher Education Transformation (2012) ‘South African Higher Education Open Data’
from http://chet.org.za/data/sahe-open-data.
Governance 111
legislation, institutional experiences have varied greatly. They depend not only on
individual institutional histories, traditions and culture. It also seems important
to understand how, and to what extent, government-led regional and local
development plays a role in enabling, or otherwise, institutional development and
governance issues. Governance, leadership and management troubles of rural and
peri-urban universities have as one of their typical components the tensions that
arise when universities become a source of access to resources in impoverished or
underdeveloped areas. In this sense the HEIAAF report, pointing out to government
the need for accountability at both a macro and micro level, cannot be left out of the
analysis. Over and above this is the way in which different institutions are affected
by global trends, including but not limited to the rise of managerialism and the
decline of collegiality and academic rule in higher education. The issue that seems
of governance, leadership and management in South Africa.
3. Periodising higher education governance
In the last decade there have been different attempts at periodising the history
of South African higher education. Depending on when the periodisations were
constructed and what the focus of the analysis was, different authors have
organised and labelled a variety of timelines. For the purpose of our analysis
Maassen and Cloete, and looks at higher education between 1993 and 2002 from
a governance point of view; the second one was proposed by Badat and looks at
the intensity of the process of policy development and implementation between
1994 and 2009; the third one covers the period 1995 to 2010 and focuses on the
priorities of policy implementation.23
The periodisation we are proposing covers the period 1994 to 2014 and uses
four analytical categories to examine any given period at the system level. Focus
refers to the predominant object and purpose of the policy, e.g. increased access
and equity. A predominant focus does not mean that other foci have been replaced
or that objectives have been achieved. On the contrary, part of our argument is
precisely that each new focus proceeds in an additive manner, adding as it were
another layer of complexity (and area of accountability) to the already existing
ones. Policy refers to the actual legislation or policy document that shaped a
chosen priority. Instruments refer to the tools developed or established by the
state for the purpose of policy implementation. Finally, governance structure
refers to the element in the system governance architecture that is responsible
for implementation and sits at the top of the accountability chain in relation to a
particular policy.
23 J. Muller, P. Maassen & N. Cloete (2006) ‘Modes of governance and the limits of policy’ in N. Cloete,
R. Fehnel, P. Maasen, T. Moja, H. Perold & T. Gibbon (eds.) Transformation in higher education,
pp. 289-310; S. Badat (2009) ‘Theorising institutional change: Post-1994 South African higher
education’ in Studies in Higher Education, 34(4), pp. 455-467; L. Lange (2012) ‘The public purposes
of the university: A historical view 1995-2010’ in B. Leibowitz (ed.) Higher education for the public
good: Views from the South.
112 Higher education reviewed
At institutional level we keep the same chronology and we use the analytical
categories described below. Note that, as is evident in Table 1, at institutional
level the focus does not replicate the system-level priorities straightforwardly.
While institutions no doubt are attentive to ‘central’ direction, and this plays a
very important role in shaping institutional policy and the allocation of internal
resources, individual institutions are also involved in the management of internal
structures refer to the structures established in the Higher Education Act and
Institutional Statutes. Management and leadership structures refer to the positions
we refer to the grouping of HEIs according to various operative typologies current in
the governance of institutions by central government.
Given the interrelation between system and institutional level governance, the
proposed periodisations for the higher education system and for HEIs have to be
read together. We propose that both at system and institutional level, governance,
leadership and management can be periodised in three basic periods: 1994 to 2000,
2001 to 2009, and 2009 to 2014. The periodisations are characterised in Table 1.
Periodisaon System level characterisaon Instuon level characterisaon
1994 - 2000
Polical consensus, implementaon
vacuum and the seng up of
government
Democrasaon and the unfolding of
instuonal governance
2001 - 2009 Policy contestaon, state steering
and the rise of the ‘evaluave state’
Assimilang steering mechanisms:
Merger governance, the rise
of managerialism and post-
managerialism
2009 - 2014 State managerialism and the queson
of democrac accountability
Managing identy and instuonal
crises: Towards knowledge-based
management?
As can be seen from the table above, there is no simple correspondence between
the characterisation of each period at system and institutional level. While the
system level sets key conditions in which all institutions participate, there are
interesting and important variations in the institutional level characterisation
analysis unfolds.
Governance 113
4. 1994 to 2000: Political consensus and
democratisation
The period of policy formulation from 1994 to 2000 was characterised by the
development of a new framework of principles, values and goals that “embodied
the key principles of the new government”.24 This process involved an attempt to
diagnosis was clear: South Africa’s higher education was unable to match the needs
of a society in social, political and economic transition.25 The detail of what this
meant was not immediately available, as the state did not yet have the necessary
baseline information or the tools to translate proposed solutions into actions. In
many respects it can be argued that the accumulation of policy focus and priorities
between 1997 and 2014 was precipitated by the development of greater capacity in
the state and the higher education system to identify problems through evidence-
based research as well as the growing specialisation of policy-making.
We would like to argue three points in relation to a period which can
simultaneously be characterised as participative and consultative,26 clearly
focused on access, equity and redress,27 and lacking in policy implementation.28
First, it was the diagnoses of the problems of higher education, principally around
the lack of access and equity and the need for redress and democratisation, that
provided for continuity of popular participation between the 1990 and 1994
National Congress (ANC) electoral victory. Secondly, the lack of policy detail and of
proposed by the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE), the proposal
of central planning of enrolments included in the White Paper 3, etc.) would have
on the system and on the country’s other priorities, allowed for a greater sense of
consensus than what was going to be possible in the post-2000 period.29 Thirdly,
hand-in-hand with instruments for the democratisation of higher education
and the realisation of co-operative governance, the NCHE and the White Paper
3 introduced a suite of tools that were going to become the focus of the critique
of state interference levelled against the Ministry and Department of Education
in the second and third ANC governments: a new funding formula; a new
management information system; planning and reporting to government; and the
eventual setting up of a national system of quality assurance.
The fact that the development and implementation of the new funding formula and
systems for planning and quality assurance were lengthy processes that only started
24 Muller et al. (2006) ‘Modes of governance and the limits of policy’ in Cloete et al. (eds.)
Transformation in higher education.
25 Lange (2012) ‘The public purposes of the university: A historical view 1995-2010’ in Leibowitz
(ed.) Higher education for the public good, p. 48.
26 Cloete et al. (2002) Transformation in higher education.
27 Ibid.; Lange (2012) ‘The public purposes of the university: A historical view 1995-2010 in
Leibowitz (ed.) Higher education for the public good.
28 Badat (2009) ‘Theorising institutional change: Post-1994 South African higher education’ in Studies
in Higher Education, 34(4), pp. 455-467.
29 NCHE (1996) A framework for transformation; DoE (1997) White Paper 3: A programme for the
transformation of higher education.
114 Higher education reviewed
taking shape after 2003, created the space for institutional initiative at those higher
and paralysis sliding into overall crises when little or none of these conditions were
universities,30 the expansion of distance education programmes at contact institutions
and the public-private partnerships in the offering of certain programmes. Examples
of the latter are the growing debt of many historically black institutions and the need
31
deal with serious cases of governance breakdown, maladministration and near
collapse of higher education institutions. By 1999, the nature of the problems
that emerged in the assessors’ reports must have suggested to the government
that direct action was needed. The Higher Education Act was amended in 1999
for the Minister, based on the assessor’s report, to appoint an administrator
who could replace the council and the vice-chancellor of a given institution, or
both. Like all other amendments to the Act until 2009, this amendment was
sent to the newly constituted Council on Higher Education (CHE), which despite
misgivings, endorsed the reform proposed by the Minister, admittedly suggesting
limiting clauses. The passing of the 1999 Higher Education Amendment Act was
followed by the appointment of three administrators, namely at the Vaal Triangle
Technikon, the University of Transkei and the University of the North.
It is important to note that the process of creating a system of higher education in
South Africa required the homogenisation of the conditions under which all public
higher education institutions operated and the ability to include emerging private
educational consequences that, in hindsight, do not seem to have been contemplated
instruments. Whether this was inexperience and lack of technical expertise or
idealism, or both, is not easy to determine without detailed research.
At institutional level, the period was a mixture of great uncertainty regarding the
provision of redress funding for historically black institutions, and great activity
as the promulgation of the Higher Education Act of 1997 set in motion a process
to harmonise institutional governance across the sector. A new architecture of
institutional governance was put in place as the Higher Education Act, together
with related policy and, eventually, each institution’s Institutional Statute and
Rules came to determine the function, responsibilities and composition of key
governance structures. The Act thus settled earlier debates concerning the
role of the broad transformation forums established at some institutions even
institutions. In keeping with the NCHE and White Paper 3, the legitimacy of
institutional governance structures thus came to be hinged on the composition
30 I. Bunting (2002) ‘The higher education landscape under apartheid’ in Cloete et al. (eds.)
Transformation in higher education.
31 Ibid.; T. Barnes (2005) ‘Changing discourses and meanings of redress in South African higher
education: 1994–2001’ in Journal of Asian and African Studies, 41(1/2), pp. 149-170; M. Nkomo, D.
Swartz & B. Maja (2006) Within the realm of possibility: From disadvantage to development at the
University of Fort Hare and the University of the North.
Governance 115
of council, senate, etc., to ensure that marginalised groups and constituencies
were represented in institutional decision-making, and on their effectiveness
to ensure good governance.32 The combination of ‘transformed’ governance
structures thus put in place was meant to give effect to ‘co-operative governance’
at institutional level, giving public institutions a great degree of autonomy in their
‘co-operative governance’ had in the relationships between internal institutional
going to be the most constant challenge to the development of higher education
governance, management and leadership in twenty years of democracy.
Three characteristics of co-operative governance in practice at institutional
level could be discerned during the period of 1994 to 2000: the predominance
of transformation issues in day-to-day governance; the interdependency of
governance structures; and dependence of good governance on the capacity
of individuals.33 If transformation occupied much of the governance activity of
that period, institutional leadership involved anticipating and responding to the
changing environment, responding to policy initiatives and mitigating unintended
consequences of policy or a vacuum thereof, as well as negotiating and responding
to demands arising from role-players at institution level. This put enormous
pressure on institutional leadership, and particularly on the vice-chancellor,
with a concomitant high turn-over at senior leadership level.34 Yet the analysis of
leadership and management also reveals strikingly different experiences between
historically advantaged and disadvantaged institutions. On the one hand, a
legitimation of institutional management was achieved through the replacement
of discredited appointees of the apartheid state and the installation in historically
white institutions of black senior managers, typically as a response to prolonged
student activism. On the other hand, the effect of the changing policy and market
environment presented opportunities and threats. In particular, the inclusion of
all public institutions into the South African Post-Secondary Education (SAPSE)
the academic standards of some institutions, threw historically disadvantaged
institutions from an apartheid-determined captive market into open competition
in an “egalitarian democratic” market with disastrous consequences for all these
institutions, but, particularly so for the administratively weaker ex-Bantustan
universities.35 Many historically advantaged institutions, in contrast, were able
to marshal their considerable resources to reposition themselves and take
advantage of the emerging higher education market. The same pattern can be
observed in relation to the new demands placed on institutional leadership and
management by the emerging planning regime, which required the development
of unique institutional visions, missions, and three-year rolling plans starting in
1998. Governance in about a third of all institutions was thus ‘contested’ and the
day-to-day experience was characteristic of crisis leadership; at the same time
32 T. Kulati & T. Moja (2002) ‘Leadership’ in N. Cloete et al. (eds.) Transformation in higher education.
33 M. Hall, A. Symes & T.M. Luescher (2002) Governance in South African higher education.
34 Kulati & Moja (2002) ‘Leadership’ in Cloete et al. (eds.) Transformation in higher education.
35 Bunting (2002) ‘The higher education landscape under apartheid’ in Cloete et al. (eds.)
Transformation in higher education.
116 Higher education reviewed
various forms of managerialism emerged in other institutions as their response
to the multiplicity of challenges at institutional level.36
Our detailed analysis of the reports of assessors deployed to the four
worst affected institutions, all of which were historically disadvantaged rural
institutions, diagnoses a continuum of governance, leadership and management
matters often involving weak, marginalised or dysfunctional senates; and
several institutions found themselves in the period between 1994 and 2000
can, therefore, not simply be explained as a legacy of colonial and apartheid
underdevelopment and funding constraints.
Nonetheless, as it has been explained in several important analyses, the funding
democracy was done through an apartheid-inherited formula based on assumptions
that were inimical to the equity, redress and democratisation focus of the political
consensus, let alone affordable for the country in a context of system expansion
and competing developmental and political priorities.37 The lack of forthcoming
institutional redress,38 the dip in student enrolments at black institutions as
well as the post-2000 government decision to restructure the higher education
system through mergers decided by the Minister of Education, help to develop the
sense that the principles and goals of access, equity, redress and democratisation
expectations in the period from 1994 to 2000 needs to be reassessed in the light
of necessary trade-offs in policy formulation and policy prioritisation; the limits
that history put to different institutions’ ability to respond to policy change; and
the different possibilities and limits of various governance regimes.39 However, not
many analyses written during this period, and after it, have focused on unpacking
the nature and rationale of the trade-offs, on analysing the structural constraints
of institutions, or on understanding the limitations of the different governance
regimes and put all of this in the ‘glocal’ context.
Overall, the 1994 to 2000 period focused on three main issues: the laying out of
common principles and values; the achievement of the goals of access, equity and
redress; and the democratisation of the system which included the implementation
of cooperative governance at institutional level. The policy tools of this period were
the incorporation of all HEIs into the SAPSE system, the development of the National
36 Kulati & Moja (2002) ‘Leadership’ in Cloete et al. (eds.) Transformation in higher education; Hall et
al. (2002) Governance in South African higher education.
37 See, for example, D. Swartz (2006) ‘New pathways to sustainability: African universities in
globalising world’ in Nkomo et al. (eds.) Within the Realm of Possibility, pp. 127-166.
38 Barnes (2005) ‘Changing discourses and meanings of redress in South African higher education:
1994-2001’ in Journal of Asian and African Studies, 41(1/2), pp. 149-151.
39 J. Muller, P. Maassen & N. Cloete (2006) ‘Modes of Governance and the limits of policy’ in Cloete et al.
(eds.) Transformation in higher education, p. 289.
Governance 117
the Department of Education and the CHE (1998) emerged as new governance
structures in the architecture of the system, with the CHE in particular trying to
of institutional participation in policy making. Lastly, by the end of the period the
deployment of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) had an effect of
moderating the disappointment of progressive student leaders with the failure of
the ANC-led government to provide free higher education.40
By the end of this period it had thus become clear, as the 2004 CHE report
indicated, that the policy process was not linear; that it could be derailed by
political and economic conjunctures, institutional histories and sociological
make-up and the role that individuals and interest groups played institutionally,
regionally and nationally. Yet a sociological history of this period remains to be
written. Moreover, this period already anticipated what holds, more especially, for
the relationship between system and institutional governance in later periods:
that system-level interventions and legislative changes tend to be generalised
Amendment Act which showed in no uncertain terms that ultimate responsibility
for addressing institutional failure would be with government.
5. 2001 to 2008: The rise of the evaluative
state and managerialism
This period comprises almost a decade of higher education policy and
implementation during the second and third ANC governments, two different
Ministers of Education, and some continuity in the state bureaucracy. In order to
understand how change unfolded during these years it is necessary to separate
out the period from the launch of the National Plan for Higher Education to the
from the second phase of consolidation of the steering mechanisms between
2005/6 to 2008 under Minister Naledi Pandor.
in which the focus of equity, access, redress and democratisation gave way to
much more top-down and less participative form of governance at system level,
and, at the same time, as a period of increased policy activity.41 Particularly the
period 2001 to 2005 marks a moment of intense policy making and roll out of
the steering mechanisms announced in the policy: funding (new funding formula,
2003), planning (PQMs and mergers, both in 2002) and quality assurance
(implementation of accreditation and institutional audits on national scale,
2004). In this process, it was argued, co-operative governance at system level had
40 M.B.G. Cele (2015) ‘Student politics and the funding of higher education in South Africa: The case of
the University of the Western Cape, 1995-2005’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation).
41 N. Cloete et al. (eds.) (2006) Transformation in higher education; Badat (2009) ‘Theorising
institutional change: Post-1994 South African higher education’ in Studies in Higher Education
34(4), p. 455-467.
118 Higher education reviewed
given way to ‘conditional autonomy’,42 ‘strong steering’ or even ‘interference’,43
and that this was now threatening institutional autonomy in the sector; while at
institutional level, most authors lamented the rise of managerialism.44
Against the backdrop of this analysis, the years from 2006 to 2008 mark
with the exception of the beginning of the settlement of the Higher Education
around the NQF. In general, between 2005 and 2008 government consolidated
and “tweaked” existing instruments (funding formula and enrolment planning) to
make them more responsive to individual institutions’ circumstances, and sought
to allow for the mergers to settle down.
Moreover, especially from 2005 onwards, there was a shift inward in the policy
implementation gaze both at system and institutional level. The new focus of
attention shifted now to the extent to which higher education institutions were
delivering the numbers and types of graduates required by the South African
economy. The creation of the Presidential Working Group in 2002/03 composed
of all higher education institutions, the Ministry of Education and the Ministers
in the economic cluster at the time the Mbeki Presidency was rolling out Joint
Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) and Accelerated and Shared
Growth Initiative – South Africa (ASGISA), gave the higher education system,
according to Badat, a greater sense of a common purpose.45 While the agreements
between institutions and government for the ‘production’ of agreed upon
numbers of, for example, engineers, could be read as a form of state planning and
concomitant institutional managerialism, there was more to this period of policy
implementation than a concern with a simplistic notion of the higher education
production line and its ability to respond to the labour market.
level came from a critique of the failures of the higher education system to deliver
on equity and redress that was possible thanks to the growing availability of
information on higher education performance at system and institutional level.
This was interpreted and used differently at different higher education institutions.
Given the characterisations of the period 2001 to 2005, it seems appropriate to
remember how the Ministry itself introduced the National Plan in 2001:
The goal [of the White Paper], however, remains unachieved. This is largely due to the
fact that the Ministry has adopted an incremental approach to the development and
implementation of the key policy instruments necessary to enable the creation of a
42 Hall et al. (2002) Governance in South African higher education.
43 CHE (2008) Academic freedom, institutional autonomy and public accountability in South African
higher education: Report of the independent task team on Higher Education, Institutional Autonomy
and Academic Freedom (HEIAAF).
44 A. Du Toit (2000) ‘From autonomy to accountability: Academic freedom under threat in South
Social Dynamics 26(1), pp. 76-133; Du Toit (2007) Autonomy as a social compact; E.
Webster & S. Mosoetsa (2002) ‘At the chalk face: Managerialism and the changing academic
workplace: 1995-2001’ in Transformation, (48); Kulati & Moja (2002) ‘Leadership’ in Cloete et al.
(eds.) Transformation in higher education.
45 Badat (2009) ‘Theorising institutional change: Post-1994 in South African higher education’ in
Studies in Higher Education, 34(4), p. 461.
Governance 119
single, co-ordinated system. Thus, although the development of institutional three-
year “rolling” plans began in 1998, these were developed in the context of the broad
transformation agenda and policy goals signalled in the White Paper, rather than a
clear set of implementation and funding guidelines linked to a national plan.46
The document explains the incremental approach through the lack of statistical
modelling and analytical skills available earlier to implement a planning agenda;
the need to consult and interact with institutions in order to establish cooperation
and partnerships. It points out that the policy vacuum to which this situation led
had both unanticipated and undesirable consequences. 47
At least in terms of its own construction, the National Plan was conceptualised
not as a hiatus with the access, equity and redress goals but as a way of rescuing
these principles from unintended and unanticipated consequences that threatened
for all institutions to develop three-year rolling plans based on symbolic policy,
steering redundant; even less was it desirable to let market forces undermine the
principle and goal of equity or the other values supporting the transformation of
the sector. Put differently, from a government perspective, the guarantee of the
realisation of access, equity and redress, was state steering. This assertion has
several important consequences for a re-evaluation of the model of governance at
of what participation in the process of planning meant during this period.
In many respects, the restructuring of the higher education landscape which
was enunciated in the CHE’s Size and Shape Report of 2000, announced in
the National Plan in 2001, and effected based on the recommendation of the
Ministerial Working Group in 2002, somehow overshadows other aspects of the
complexity of policy making during this period and how it affected governance,
management and leadership at system as much as at institutional level. The
governance task involved in the mergers, and the deployment of organisational,
out of this process, starting with the establishment of the Merger Unit in the
Department of Education, was phenomenal.48 The political, intellectual and
emotional involvement of the merger process was captured to some extent in the
relevant HEQC institutional audits, while the challenges and breakdowns faced
by some institutions surfaced in the three assessor reports produced during the
period. Besides this, not much research-based rigorous analysis of the actual
mergers has been done and published that could help construct a richer narrative.
Ten years later, the unbundling of the University of Limpopo and Medunsa,
and recurring crises at Walter Sisulu University and the Tshwane University
46 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education, p. 8.
47 Ibid., pp. 8-10.
48 Hall et al. (2002) Governance in South African higher education.
120 Higher education reviewed
the “geo-political imagination of apartheid planners”.49 It is clear that for a new
imaginary of higher education to be possible much more was needed by way of
leadership, management infrastructure, and regional socio-economic development
No merger was plain sailing, and even if in many cases institutional crises did not
descend into situations requiring direct government intervention, the outcomes
of the mergers were not in all cases what was expected by government. From
the point of view of management and leadership the available documentation
possibly required – strongly directive if not brutal leadership.50
The mergers were by all accounts conceived as a lengthy process, unfolding
in three phases: a short pre-merger phase for consultation and planning
purposes; a transitional phase lasting up to twelve months during which the
newly merged institution was governed by interim governance structures and all
assets, liabilities, rights and obligations, and the existing workforce and student
bodies of former institutions were transferred to the merged institution; and
51 During this phase a new
vision and mission, culture, ethos and identity had to be developed, teaching
and learning programmes integrated, and policies, systems and procedures
homogenised or newly developed. The analysis of the HEQC audits and assessor
reports shows that the integration phase which started in 2004/5 remained
incomplete in several cases. While most (but not all) merged public institutions
have successfully developed a new institutional statute in compliance with the
Higher Education Act, and established the basic set of governance structures
contemplated therein, fundamental challenges remained. Governance problems
included councils’ factionalism and lack of competence, and councils that fared
poorly in establishing basic systems of management accountability and settling
uniform conditions of service for staff.52 Many of these problems can be regarded
as prompting government intervention in universities’ management and
governance in the next period.
institutional governance and laid the ground for the governance of mergers. Broadly
in keeping with the CHE’s work and advice on governance, the size of councils was
restricted in 2002 to a maximum of thirty members and council remuneration
legally regulated. Furthermore, provision was made for interim councils and
interim senates and institutional forums to be established in merged institutions.
The unfolding of mergers together with the implementation of a new suite of
policies and steering tools was not too well received. By 2004/05 system disquiet
49 K. Asmal (1999) ‘Call to action: Mobilising citizens to build a South African education and training
system for the 21st century ‘(press statement).
50 R.M.O. Pritchard (1993) ‘Mergers and linkages in British higher education’ in Higher Education
Quarterly, 47(2), pp. 79-102.
51 Hall et al. (2002) Governance in South African higher education.
52
merged institutions equally affected.
Governance 121
to establish a task team on higher education, institutional autonomy and academic
freedom.53 The report of this task team, published almost four years later, indicates a
fairly complex set of institutional perceptions and experiences of the three steering
mechanisms of higher education reform: planning, funding and quality assurance.
It is interesting to note how, particularly in the case of the instruments in the hands
of government, the period from 2005 to 2008 was seen as representing a softening
of the most criticised aspects of their implementation: its top-down manner and its
undifferentiated approach.54 On the one hand, this softening of state steering may
be attributed to the sector-based concerns and debates and the HEIAAF process
itself; on the other hand, it is tempting, and possibly not completely off the mark,
to attribute some of the post-2005 changes to different ministers’ focus for change.
While the HEIAAF report ended up one of the least discussed and least used
reports ever produced by the CHE, in its process the HEIAAF put the spotlight
not only on system-level governance but also investigated the academic freedom
implications of institution level change.55 Every building block of the steering
system seemed to have multiplied the size of the management tier at institutions
and created greater distance between university leadership and the academics, as
well as between university leadership and student leaders.56
The rise of managerialism in South African higher education had already
been observed in the late 1990s at some historically advantaged institutions; it
became more widely generalised and more evident across the sector during the
period from 2001 to 2005 in response to mounting policy demands, institutional
crises and the process of mergers and incorporations. To consider the rise of
managerialism an isolated local development is, however, to fall into the familiar
trap of South African exceptionalism.
There is abundant literature showing that the trend towards adopting more
business-like management styles was indeed a global and incisive one,57 which
53 CHE (2008) Academic freedom, institutional autonomy and public accountability in South African
higher education: Report of the Independent Task Team on Higher Education, Institutional Autonomy
and Academic Freedom (HEIAAF).
54 Ibid., pp. 51-61.
55 K. Bentley, A. Habib & S. Morrow (2006) Academic Freedom, institutional autonomy and the
corporatised university in contemporary South Africa; Du Toit (2007) Autonomy as a social compact;
autonomy and public accountability’ in Kagisano, 8, pp. 28-56.
56 T.M. Luescher-Mamashela (2010) ‘From university democratisation to managerialism: The
changing legitimation of university governance and the place of students’ in Tertiary Education and
Management, 16(4), pp. 259-283.
57 M. Kogan, M. Bauer, I. Bleiklie & M. Henkel (2000) Transforming higher education. A comparative
study; A. Amaral, V.L. Meek & I.M. Larsen (eds.) (2003) The higher education managerial revolution
universities’ in M. Walker & J. Nixon (eds.) Reclaiming universities from a runaway world; C.J.
changes in higher education’ in Perspectives in Education 23(2), pp. 85-97; C. Bundy (2006) ‘Global
South Africa’ in Kagisano, 4, pp. 1-20; L. Zipin & M. Brennan (2004) ‘Managerial governmentality
and the suppression of ethics’ in M. Walker & J. Nixon (eds.) Reclaiming universities from a runaway
world; T.M. Luescher (2009) ‘Student governance in transition: University democratisation and
managerialism’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation).
122 Higher education reviewed
included a typical set of tools: management by strategic plan; new centralised
organs of decision-making; streamlined governance committee systems;
core; decentralised budgeting with departments becoming cost-centres; the
for administrators and managers.58 The restructuring of faculties, schools and
departments, appointment of executive deans, the outsourcing of support services
and the sprawl of planning and institutional research units, quality assurance
style that introduced performance and line management, even into the core
functions of universities. South Africa’s policy makers and implementers as well
as universities struggled in many cases with the tensions and contradictions
between their political convictions and the neo-liberal whiff of their choice of
policies and instruments. The tension of using ‘conservative tools’ to achieve
progressive ends was intensely debated on the occasion of the celebrations
59 Yet, this does not mean that it was totally
inconceivable to develop entirely new local alternatives to the global offering.60
But the reality is that neither universities nor the government did so.
This said, from the start of audits in 2005, HEQC reports provide evidence of a
subtle critique of managerialism and make recommendations towards what we
tentatively conceptualise as a post-managerialist knowledge-based regime. This
move was supported by growing work on indicators and monitoring systems in the
country as well as by the CHE’s own production and use of analytical institutional
61 With the implementation of steering instruments between
2001 and 2005 the available tools to generate knowledge on the higher education
system and institutions had increased considerably. By 2003 the new funding
formula, only fully implemented in 2005, could rely on several years of collected
Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS) information about
universities’ performance in student enrolments and graduations and staff
better understanding of the extent to which higher education institutions were
being successful in delivering equity of outcomes at undergraduate level.62
The implementation of the HEQC’s quality assurance system produced detailed
58
in Walker & Nixon (eds.) Reclaiming universities from a runaway world, p. 167.
59 See especially, CHE (2006) Ten years of higher education under democracy; B.G. Dale (2007) ‘Tools
and techniques: An overview’ in B.G. Dale, T. van der Wiele & J. van Iwaarden (eds.) Managing
quality; King (2006) ‘Analysing the higher education regulatory state’; L. Lange (2014) ‘Higher
education policy and the fatality of nostalgia’ in Thinking Africa.
60 Singh (2011) ‘Global ‘toolboxes’, local ‘toolmaking’’ in King et al. (eds.) Handbook of globalization
and higher education, pp. 197-221.
61 CHE (2004) ; N. Cloete, L. Bunting & I.
Bunting (2002) Transformation indicators applied to two South African higher education institutions;
I. Bunting & N. Cloete (2004) Developing performance indicators for higher education: A South
African case study; I. Bunting, C. Sheppard, N. Cloete & L. Belding (2010) Performance indicators:
South African higher education 2000 – 2008.
62 I. Scott, N. Yeld & J. Hendry, J. (2007) ‘A case for improving teaching and learning in South African
higher education’ in Higher Education Monitor, 6.
Governance 123
qualitative data about programmes and institutions from 2004. By the end of
2008, the HEQC had audited the bulk of the public higher education system and an
evidence-based thicker description of the individual institutions and, therefore, of
what the higher education system looked like, started to emerge. The HEQC began
commissioning system-level research on different aspects of the audits in order
to develop a systemic understanding of the different development trajectories of
institutions and the obstacles on the way to the realisation of policy objectives
and institutional missions and visions.63 At the same time, research conducted
by academics at their own institutions, and often in partnership with the CHE,
level and institutional performance in the core functions.64
It is true that, as Cloete et al. argue, after 2001 there was a redirection in the
and effectiveness.65 Yet, in the same way that the discourse of equity at the time of
the NCHE was not naive and saw that the gains in access hid profound inequalities
mostly focused on throughput at undergraduate level and was often argued from
a social justice perspective.66 This was possible because the system knew more
about itself. We, therefore, argue that a key characteristic of the second decade of
higher education under democracy was a remarkable increase in the knowledge
available on higher education and in the tools to extract it. A comparison between
and the subsequent one provides an interesting example of this point. For our
discussion, the enlarged knowledge base has several important consequences:
for state steering; second, it made more forceful the need for universities not just
to manage their data carefully for reporting purposes, but to use this and other
data with a view to develop institutional research capable of supporting internal
management and decision making.67
The aftermath of events like the 2008 racist incident at the University of the
Free State, brought to the fore additional complexities underlying the notion of
management and leadership and the sense of progress or otherwise in relation
to the realisation of the White Paper’s notion of transformation. This was
dealt with at system level by the appointment, by the Minister of Education,
63 C. Boughey (2007) ‘Educational development in South Africa: From social reproduction to capitalist
Higher Education Policy (20), pp. 5-18; C. Boughey (2009) ‘A meta-analysis of
C. Boughey (2010) ‘A meta-analysis of teaching and learning (Part two)’ (unpublished paper); J.
Mouton (2009) A meta-analysis of the institutional research audit process.
64 See for example the CHE’s Higher Education Monitor series.
65 N. Cloete et al. (eds.) (2006) Transformation in higher education.
66 This argument had been made more generally in the HEQC Founding Framework in relation to
transformation and shaped every audit of public higher education institutions between 2004 and
2011; CHE (2004) ; Scott et al. (2007)
‘A case for improving teaching and learning in South African higher education’ in Higher Education
Monitor, 6.
67 CHE (2009) ‘The state of higher education report’ in Higher Education Monitor, 8.
124 Higher education reviewed
of a Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the Elimination of
Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions, whose report provided
an important system-level diagnostic of transformation.68 Transformation failure
thus added yet another layer of complexity to the management and leadership of
higher education institutions and their ability to generate knowledge of and for
transformation and, at the same time, it added a new and greyer area for state
steering: institutional culture. With hindsight, the process also opened a new
era of government intervention into higher education institutions, of which the
appointment of a permanent Transformation Oversight Committee in 2013 is a
prime example.
How did the university governance structures respond to the new availability
of information and to the supposedly more managerial outlook of institutions’
systems to use the steering mechanisms to their advantage and utilise the data
generated at system level for institutional governance, leadership and day-to-day
management, became more prone to crises. Some of these issues become evident
reading the post-merger assessor reports.
Conversely, the HEQC audit reports also provide a list of good governance
practices of councils that were interested and engaged as well as attuned to the
and regularly assessed the performance of senior management against
senates where a sustained focus on the academic project was underpinned by
open deliberation and effective committee systems able to clear senate business
and allow members of senate time for intellectual engagement and to focus on the
bigger picture of academic governance. Institutional forums, as the novel invention
of democratic university governance post-1994, had a more chequered history
and do not seem to have been much affected by the abundance of knowledge we
discussed above or by the managerialist trends in institutional leadership. If, as
the legislation proposed, the role of the IF was to gather stakeholder views of the
variety of matters that constituted the purview of this structure to advise council
on, the failure of the IFs could result, and indeed it did in many cases, in growing
factionalism of councils. There are few cases in which IFs have performed their
role effectively and, in some of these, it seems that the fact that the chair (or co-
chair) of the IF was occupied by a senior member of the university ensured the
existence of a productive link with council.
One of the sector complaints at the height of the implementation period was
a lack of institutional participation in decision-making. Our analysis suggests
that this accusation, levelled by institutions and their sector body, HESA, against
system-level structures forgets some of the internal governance practices at
institutions. Thus, calls for return to the NCHE recommendation to establish a
higher education forum at system level and a higher education council with
more extensive powers do not seem to take account of the failure within most
68 DoE (2008) Report of the Ministerial Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the
Elimination of Discrimination in Public Education Institutions.
Governance 125
institutions to engage their own stakeholders in decision-making at levels
satisfactory to these role-players.
Some analysts have argued that government’s disregard for some of the NCHE
recommendations about system-level governance are at the origin of a much less
participative process in planning and implementation of higher education policy.69
of the meaning of steering or an indication of how co-operative governance
should work at system level under conditions of policy implementation with
transformative goals.
Whether the consultative process was perceived to be ineffective or
unsatisfactory, or both, by the different role-players, during the period 2001 to
stakeholders (especially students and trade unions) and sector representatives
(such as HESA), not to mention the direct interaction of universities with the
presidency through the Presidential Working Group on Higher Education.
Furthermore, during the period 1998 to 2007, the CHE, following on its legislated
obligations, organised annual consultative conferences of higher education
stakeholders that provided the occasion to interact with government in relation
The 2007 CHE consultative conference, interestingly, focused on the alignment
between planning, funding and quality, while the last recorded consultative
conference was held in 2008 and focused on the CHE advisory function. The
alignment of planning instruments that concerned the CHE in its 2007 conference
only became an issue of practical concern when the full implementation of the
the HEMIS data, could provide an important source of information about the
state of individual higher education institutions, which, at least in some cases,
could act as an early warning system for the department. Attempts at a more co-
operative information sharing approach between the CHE and the Department
plans and possibilities were being explored in the Department for setting up an
evidence-based early warning system for governance, leadership, management
and academic problems in HEIs based on the consolidation of the monitoring
and as quality assurance activity of the CHE, the change in the CHE leadership,
as well change of government, seemed to have brought forward a different set of
priorities. Despite this, and certainly in an unplanned or unarticulated manner,
the HEQC audits seem to have played a role in developing a model of knowledge-
based higher education governance, leadership and management at institutional
level which we call ‘post-managerialist’, the details of which we elaborate below.
69 See, for example, Cloete, et al. (eds.) (2006) Transformation in higher education; Du Toit (2014)
Revisiting ‘co-operative governance’ in higher education.
126 Higher education reviewed
6. 2009 to 2014: State managerialism and
This period opens in the context of a government change and a radical
remodelling of ministerial portfolios. The split of the ministry and department
of education into basic education and higher education and training required not
only a revision of the architecture of higher education governance at the system
level, it also implied a major conceptual change. The creation of the post-schooling
education sector made up of a college and a university sector, the transfer of
the responsibility for the implementation of the Skills Development Act and its
Skills Education Training Authorities or SETAs) from the Department of Labour to
the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), and the establishment
of a Quality Council for Trades and Occupations, all reopened and attempted to
resolve the education/skills development debate that started in 1994, and which
Framework in 2007.
While the policy focus has been fairly consistently explained in the discourse of
the DHET and the Ministry since 2010, the policy blueprint was only released in
2013 and it still needs to be translated into implementation plans. This said, the
problems of development in South Africa and their possible solutions, and, in
particular, by the realisation that the number of youth out of employment and
out of education has reached alarming proportions. Thus, the revitalisation and
expansion of the technical and vocational education and training sector and
the establishment of articulation paths between colleges and higher education
institutions constitute the overarching policy preoccupation of the Ministry in the
fourth ANC government.
The White Paper for Post-School Education and Training (2013) marks a
continuity with the goals of access (expansion) and equity and development which
the notion of a responsive post-school system which is attuned with the needs of
the world of work through a more direct and productive relationship between
university sector, the White Paper reintroduces the concept of differentiation
providing some signals as to what such differentiation might entail in terms of
higher education planning and funding.
While the ‘policy manifesto’ has been received with a fair amount of consensus
and collaborative spirit among the university sector, the instruments and
structures that the Ministry has put in place since 2010 have been the object
of strong contestation. A number of radical amendments of higher education
legislation were necessary to build the architecture of the post-schooling system.
Particularly important in this regard were the changes effected by the Higher
Education Laws Amendment Act 26 of 2010 which, among other things, created
Governance 127
the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations, and amended the NQF Act 67 of
2008.
The legislative changes that followed had little to do with the architecture of
the post-secondary system. They focused entirely on the universities and system-
level governance.70 They represent a considerable tightening of the power of the
Minister to determine who can be a member of council, under what circumstances
and for how long assessors and administrators can be appointed, and the reporting
obligations of SAQA. This has been supplemented with substantive changes in the
reporting obligations of higher education institutions published for comment at
with alarm and resistance by many in the higher education system, including, at
constitutionality of the amendments.
this took the tally of government interventions into higher education institutions
between 1994 and 2014 to fourteen, with the largest number of interventions
taking place in the current period. The Minister and the department have often
indicated that the recurrence of these problems requires government to have
greater powers to intervene and more information that could serve as a warning
of potential problems arising. It is precisely this argument that has been the most
contentious with the higher education system.
Now, as in the context of the HEIAAF investigation, what seems to concern
system that multiplies reporting obligations of all institutions instead of
addressing problems where the problems arise. As we have been arguing in
assessors over the full period of analysis. Out of fourteen reports, twelve indicate
council level and problems with the lack or the style of institutional leadership;
eight reports indicate that institutions’ administrative systems are weak or non-
quality being undermined, and weak and/or dysfunctional senates. Of all other
governance structures.
There is an overwhelming consistency in this analysis that should invite
power government has to intervene, but on how the available information (since
1998 in some cases) has been used to think of the structural problems many of
these institutions faced and are still facing. Some institutions, like the University
of Limpopo, Walter Sisulu University, Mangosuthu University of Technology,
and Tshwane University of Technology, have been the subject of investigations
more than once at different stages of their institutional history. In many cases,
70 DHET (2011) Higher Education Laws Amendment Act 21 of 2011; DHET (2012) Higher Education
and Training Laws Amendment Act 23 of 2012.
128 Higher education reviewed
the HEQC audit reports of these institutions produced between 2004 and 2011
contained information about these issues or information that put these issues in
context. What seems to be lacking at institutional as well as at system level is the
ability and the capacity to put together all the information available to produce
complex knowledge and deep insight into the institution and, therefore, to be able
to produce a plan for change. This ability and capacity will not come from more
reporting from all higher education institutions.
That in the large majority of the cases the universities that had assessors and/
or administrators appointed are historically disadvantaged and in many cases
rural or peri-urban, and to a lesser extent, components in a merger, speaks
volumes of the issues that the higher education system and the government have
not confronted.
A decade ago, Habib and Barnes offered sharp and devastating analyses of the
structural conditions that constituted disadvantage.71 Read together, they show
why even some of the best efforts did not always succeed, or often succeeded only
by the different assessors.72 The continuities and discontinuities in this description
require detailed research that provides hard evidence on the hows, whats, whys,
and whos of a historical process that started in 1959 and the outcome of which
is still in many cases uncertain. How will they be dealt with within a possible
and performance is not the problem that more detailed institutional reporting to
government and increased government power to intervene in universities is going
since the early 1990s and, especially, active parts in higher education governance,
‘stakeholderisation’ of the governance system through the government seeking,
and sometimes creating, independent and parallel channels of communication with
internal higher education stakeholders as such, rather than communicating with
institutions themselves or with their representative sectoral body, HESA. Moreover,
the CHE as the statutory body with an advisory function to the Minister has been
clearly side-lined as demonstrated in government’s lack of engagement with CHE
advice in relation to e.g. transformation, the establishment of new universities, and
the review of funding. It is possible that the apparent CHE side-lining is not just
a function of government’s approach to higher education governance, but also a
function of a seemingly weaker CHE. Considerable work will be needed not only to
provide appropriate evidence of this process, but especially to theorise what this
means for the current conceptualisation of co-operative governance.
71 A. Habib (2001) ‘Structural disadvantage, leadership ineptitude, and stakeholder complicity:
A study of the institutional crisis of the University of the Transkei’; Barnes (2005) ‘Changing
discourses and meanings of redress in South African higher education, 1994–2001’ in Journal of
Asian and African Studies, 41 (1/2).
72 Nkomo et al. (2006) Within the Realm of Possibility.
Governance 129
There is a parallel to this at institutional level. The factionalism of councils often
mentioned in assessors reports, but by no means only a feature of institutions
in crisis, constitutes another manifestation of ‘stakeholderisation’ of governance.
Unions, students, and in some institutions convocations, sitting in council seem to
be unable to understand that their role is not that of stakeholder representatives.
This trend, together with institutional circumstances, means that councils can
dysfunctional and ineffective IFs might serve to explain, as we have suggested
earlier, an increased stakeholderisation in council, there is also evidence pointing
to universities in underdeveloped regional economies (but not only) becoming
the favoured means to access resources from tenders to jobs for friends and
family. This is yet another area in which much more evidence and theorisation is
needed to develop a fuller understanding of institutional governance today.
As we indicated in the previous section, the appointment of the Ministerial
Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and its report, brought into
sharp relief the issue of transformation failure and opened up the question of how
to deal with this at institutional and systemic level. The recommendation by the
Soudien Report for government to constitute a permanent oversight committee
to monitor transformation was taken up in this period. Once again, the creation of
the Transformation Oversight Committee (TOC) was received with mixed feelings
by the higher education sector. Besides issues with its membership, it was argued
that the task should have been given to the CHE, which could have reported to
both the Ministry and to Parliament through the portfolio committee.
There is no doubt that, taking a conceptually complex notion of transformation
into account (see below), all higher education institutions in South Africa provide
examples of halted, slowed, or never started transformation, and that this needs
to be addressed. Yet, so far, besides the much criticised transformation index
there is little public evidence of the work of the TOC, its understanding of its
terms of reference and the work it is actually doing and how it is being managed.
There is also little clarity as to the role of the TOC in relation to the new reporting
obligations of universities. From the point of view of the conceptualisation of both
transformation and accountability, the ‘lifting’ of transformation from the core
reinforcing the view of transformation as something different from the educational,
social and administrative processes that sustain the life of universities. There are
a number of practical questions that need to be answered as to the position of the
TOC in the chain of governance and accountability; in this sense it seems too early
of view of the governance, leadership and management of the higher system, the
TOC represents a political intervention as opposed to a systemic or organically-
based one in the existing system of accountability; in that sense, as imperative as
accelerated and deepened transformation is, it might fail to achieve its goals. If, as
it is rumoured, the Minister is planning to make the TOC a permanent structure in
create his own body instead of using existing capacity and experience.
While the new architecture of the post-school system as well as the new focus on
130 Higher education reviewed
development emerged as clear new features in system governance, there have been
other movements, less noted but not less important, that need to be mentioned.
Here we want to discuss two: the relationship between additive policy focus and
knowledge development, and the weakening of governance structures.
As we have argued throughout this chapter, the policy focus in South African
higher education has proceeded in an additive manner: this process is not only a
function of the time it takes to effect changes in terms of, for example, access or the
quality of teaching and learning; it is also a function of the system and institutions
gaining more knowledge about themselves and their core functions as more data is
gathered and analysed in different places. The conceptualisation and management
of the Teaching Development Grant (TDG) as steering funding is a case in point.
As government’s ability to evaluate proposals and assess reports has grown, a
sharper and more effective implementation of the grant has come about which in
turn has forced institutions to focus their proposals for funding more carefully and
more clearly. Both moves should result in greater effectiveness of the interventions,
better accountability and transparency in allocations, and again new knowledge
as to the type and outcomes of the interventions. This constitutes in our view one
example of knowledge-based management at system level.
to the Minister on higher education matters is an example of the weakening of
democratic structures in the architecture of the system. There is no transparency
with regard to how much proactive advice the CHE has provided to government
nor as to how much advice the Minister has requested and accepted from the
fading advisory role of the CHE is a consequence of a growing politicisation of
higher education governance, which makes independent advice unnecessary
and unwanted; a consequence of the quality of advice provided; the result of a
perceived loss of authority of the CHE vis-a-vis the institutions themselves; or
a combination of some or all of them. Whatever the reasons, it seems important
that instead of letting the CHE die by ‘natural’ attrition, its contribution to the
development of South African higher education should be independently assessed
as a way of deciding whether it has a role in the future of higher education and
what this role might be beyond its quality assurance functions.
Lastly, throughout this chapter we have mentioned the notion of knowledge-
based management and we have argued that the HEQC audit reports played a role
in the development of what we tentatively call an option for a post-managerial
of this chapter, we offer for discussion what would be features of post-managerial
knowledge-based governance, leadership and management for South African
higher education into the third decade of democracy. These features are grounded
in our observation of emerging trends in some institutions and our appreciation
and interpretation of their potential for providing options for a post-managerial
system of decision-making.
Governance 131
7. Conclusion: Towards new knowledge-
management
In the last twenty years, much theorisation has gone into discerning what kind
of relationships between government and higher education institutions, higher
education management and its internal stakeholders, and higher education
institutions and the public should shape a democratic and transformative higher
of South Africa’s constitution. In this conclusion we offer the characteristics of
feature of which is the ability to use and produce knowledge of transformation
and knowledge for transformation at both institutional and system level .
In the introductory section of this chapter we have referred to the ‘common-
sense’ ideological notion of transformation. Returning to the founding debates
radical change in South African society that clearly breaks with the apartheid
past. In the context of higher education, transformation implies and derives
from ‘knowledges’ of two kinds that are to support decisions and actions: the
knowledge that needs to be produced in order to make change possible, and the
knowledge generated about how change is taking place. They may be respectively
called “knowledge for transformation” and “knowledge of transformation”.73
knowledge of the self, i.e. of institutional history, culture and practices; secondly,
knowledge of the academic core business or knowledge of knowledge that
basis of the knowledge produced and disseminated by an institution; and, thirdly,
knowledge of the other, i.e. knowledge of the social and cultural diversity of the
people (staff and students) involved in higher education institutions.
Our conception of post-managerial knowledge-based governance, leadership
and management at both institutional and system levels is premised on the
understanding that transformation fundamentally requires knowledge to decide
and to act along with a different way of governing, leading and managing. This
section starts by looking at the institutional level and moves on to system-level
considerations.
Our analysis of the HEQC audit reports has shown a fairly consistent, empirically
grounded, critique of managerialism subsumed in the arguments that precede
the HEQC commendations and recommendations, as well as in their actual
formulation. The point of departure of this conceptualisation is two-fold. First,
recognises that individual universities operate within the structural constraints
of the immediate socio-economic environment within which they are located
73 L. Lange (2013) ‘The knowledge(s) of transformation’ (unpublished paper).
132 Higher education reviewed
development as well as their fundamental obligations in relation to their missions,
a social compact between themselves and the government at local, provincial and
national level is necessary. In this sense, there has to be a deliberate insertion
of the university as partner in government-driven local and regional structural
transformation as a condition sine qua non of institutional transformation.
Hence, the role of councils cannot be focused exclusively on stewardship of the
institutional health and interests abstracted from the institution’s socio-economic
context as this often directly affects institutional well-being. Institutional
III. King III revolves around three elements: leadership and good governance,
sustainability and corporate citizenship. Two elements deserve special mention
in this context: the focus on the extent of the positive and negative impact that
reporting with the company’s strategy. In this respect, it is disappointing that
instead of radically changing and adapting the manner in which universities
report to the DHET based on the philosophy of King III, the proposed changes
to higher education reporting only add a ‘coat of paint’ of King III to a list of old
and new reports; they do not change and integrate, but only multiply, reporting
requirements.
The complexity of higher education institutions has grown exponentially with
the multiplication of their functions as well as the expansion of enrolments, not to
mention that in many cases mergers and incorporations have resulted in the need
to manage multi-campus institutions and ensuring equivalence of provision. In
this context transformational leadership, that is, a leadership capable of proposing
into action, becomes essential for the development of higher education.74 Yet,
transformative leadership at the top level is not enough. Leadership also has to
be participatory and distributed, that is, it has to exist in each of the academic,
support and administrative functional units of the university starting with the
senior leadership team and make an effort at deliberative engagement. This
is particularly important at universities where homogeneity and regimented
management is more often disabling than supportive of innovation and free
thinking.
and deputy vice-chancellors, must provide a strong central point of integration
of all university processes and functions in their complexity. At this level,
audit reports frequently insist on the important role that registrars can play in
providing a conceptual and operational link between institutional governance
and management.
We see transformative and distributive leadership as having three fundamental
deans, play in both sustaining the focus on the academic project and in acting
as custodians of academic freedom. Deans need to have at their disposal, and
74 T. Bush (2007) ‘Educational leadership and management: Theory, policy, and practice’ in South
African Journal of Education, 27(3), p. 395.
Governance 133
be able to use effectively, knowledge of and knowledge for transformation as it
pertains to their faculties. This entails that they become the drivers, translators
and managers of transformation in their faculties for which they are accountable.
The distributive character of leadership has to be effective at faculty level too,
thus involving heads of departments and/or schools. Secondly, there is the role
that support services have in facilitating and aligning administrative processes to
universities’ missions. Thirdly, there is the ability and the capacity of the institution
to generate and use knowledge at different levels of the organisation and of
integrating that knowledge in an analytical narrative that explains institutional
trajectories to itself and to its stakeholders. As we will elaborate below, for this to
happen a number of conditions need to be in place.
The audit reports suggest that the centrality of knowledge in management of
higher education needs to be made explicit for the institution and needs to be
agreed upon. This can take a variety of forms that institutions need to decide on
and adapt to, but it presupposes the ability of connecting different institutional
of national and international level data for benchmarking purposes; and a
strong capability for institutional research that can not only produce new and
relevant knowledge on the institution but that can integrate knowledge produced
in different parts of the institution. In particular, it requires the distribution of
appropriate information and the development of the capability to use it at different
levels of the institution from the senior leadership to academic departments.
Institutional goals must be assigned to responsible managers whose performance
is evaluated against key performance indicators.
As mentioned above, the very notion of knowledge-based management as a
post-managerialist option in higher education is predicated on the contested
and dialogical character of knowledge itself and on the fact that analysis and
intelligence on processes and events need to be built collectively. For this to happen
basis of the knowledge of higher education is complex and resides in a variety
of academic disciplines and is not independent from disciplinary theoretical
and methodological debates. Secondly, it has to be accepted that the validity of
this knowledge has to be open to question and that, therefore, knowledge of the
university has to become simultaneously more reliable and more tentative and
cautious about the processes about which it is trying to give account. Thirdly,
knowledge of the university requires an examination of the notion of evidence
and the development of this understanding not as the end but as the beginning of
a process of evaluation. Finally, it is important to internalise that the purpose of
“institutional knowledge” is to generate understanding for decision making and
that this is often about incommensurable educative processes and outcomes. 75
Managerialism produced two fundamental casualties in higher education
decision-making: academics and students. Academics have found their role in
the academic enterprise to become decentred and alienated from a management
discourse that they felt ‘did not belong’ in the university. Academics have also
75 Lange (2014) ‘Higher education policy and the fatality of nostalgia’ in Thinking Africa.
134 Higher education reviewed
76 T.M. Luescher-Mamashela (2013) ‘Student representation in university decision making: Good
Studies in Higher Education, 38(10), p. 1442-1456.
77 Ibid.
78 CHE (2008) Academic freedom, institutional autonomy and public accountability in South African
higher education: Report of the Independent Task Team on Higher Education, Institutional Autonomy
and Academic Freedom (HEIAAF).
requirements, which has added to the marginalisation and ineffectiveness of
many senates. We argue that in a post-managerialist model, academics must be
the direct interlocutors and actors in the generation and utilisation of knowledge
of and for transformation. Students, despite noises about student-centeredness,
have in the managerialist conception typically been reduced to being clients of
the university, thus often replacing pedagogy with edutainment, the normative
nature of education with marketing and communication campaigns, and their role
in university governance to acting as sounding boards on user committees.76 Re-
centering academics and students as the heart of the academic enterprise will not
only increase the knowledge available at the centre and re-insert fundamentally
critical voices into the management discourse, it might also help to give effect to a
‘thick’ notion of academic freedom in which students’ rights to quality education
is included.
From a governance point of view, this implies the re-establishment of academic
rule based on the principles enunciated above as well as the return of senate
to the heart of institutional governance. Yet, a senate can only be effective in
the space for free deliberation and critique, including critique of the university
response to the concerns raised earlier about the dangers of stakeholderisation,
student interest and how statutory representation of students in council, senate,
institutional forum, student services council and, last but not least, the SRC
itself, can give effect to a conception of students not as clients, but as members
of the academic community, partners in their education and co-producers of
knowledge.77
In a post-managerialist model of governance, leadership and management
accountability is exercised, as it was suggested in the HEIAAF report, in
multiple directions.78 Universities understand that they have a responsibility
to be transparent about what they do with public and private funds and, just
as importantly, with the new generation of professionals, scientists, artists and
academics they have the responsibility to educate.
In a knowledge-based model of system governance, government has a steering
role in relation to the achievement of national goals through higher education. This
does not imply that government can, or should, intervene in the determination of
institutional goals and visions. First of all, in this model government is accountable
for the outcomes of its decisions, such as the outcome of the mergers, and for
the nature and level of support it provides for the achievement of agreed upon
goals with institutions. The remarkable increase in the knowledge available on
higher education at system level over the last two decades provides a necessary
condition for knowledge-based steering of a differentiated, developmentally
Governance 135
oriented higher education system, by means of the development of individualised,
clear and accurate targets for state steering; a detailed system-level diagnostic of
institutional performance that provides early warning signals of looming crisis;
landscape of higher education provision.79 In this respect, the critique of the ‘one
harnessing transformation knowledge available at system level and thus enabling
a more individualised, more effective, and transparent and accountable form of
steering based on empirically grounded indicators.
In our analysis of audit and assessor reports we have repeatedly encountered the
fact that rural, peri-urban, and historically disadvantaged institutions, and some
merged institutions, have been disproportionally affected by governance and
leadership crises. In addition, we found that mounting demands for reporting to
government have not led to more knowledge-based leadership and management
in these institutions, but rather tended to cause administrative overload and
on this situation and begin a consultative process to consider how best to support
poorer endowed institutions in rural and peri-urban environments to address
the structural constraints affecting their ability to give effect to a developmental
mandate in conjoining with local, provincial and national governments, local
industries, and other stakeholders. In this respect it should be noted that
institutional transformation has as its structural limits the depth and direction
of transformation of society. This is not to abdicate a potential leadership role of
universities; yet, in the bigger scheme of social change universities are but a small
component in the pursuit of social justice and socio-economic development.
Lastly, governance relations between the Minister and the higher education
sector have been strained, particularly since the Higher Education Amendment
of 2011 and the related threat of court action. To some extent government
has reinforced the ‘stakeholderisation’ of higher education by intervening
politically in relation to certain constituencies. This has undermined the
university leadership and government. It is urgent in this regard that structured
modes of interaction between government and institutions are systematically
and purposefully reinstated. For this to take place it might be necessary that
the government reviews the unfortunate effect that the separation between
relationship and communication between institutions and the Ministry. After
2010 there have been no direct interactions between the government and higher
education institutions with the purpose of public deliberation on the direction of
the higher education system.
79 The most recent policy proposal for differentiated state steering returns to a differentiation of
universities that offer a combination of undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes along
with high-levels of knowledge output and thus instead of advancing the discussion sends it back a
decade (DHET (2014) ‘Call for comments on the draft policy framework on differentiation in the
South African post-school system’).
136 Higher education reviewed
At the same time, senior observers of the sector have pointed out how the
CHE’s consultative and advisory function has been side-lined and its role
increasingly attenuated to that of a Quality Council.80 We do not believe this is
solely a government responsibility. The CHE needs to enter into a period of deep
after its creation. Independent specialist bodies are a characteristic trait of the
modern evaluative state and its more democratic version.81 In this sense it is clear
that also in South Africa, government needs the critical support of independent
specialist bodies and that, by virtue of its functions, the CHE could provide much
needed capacity in the production, gathering and interpretation of knowledge of
and for transformation.
At government level a post-managerialist approach to governance should be
based not on legislating problems but on greater deliberative capacity whereby
accountability is based on knowledge, much of which is already available to the
DHET. Stakeholder interest bodies like HESA have a fundamental role to play in
this – as have other stakeholder representative bodies. Preconditions for this to
happen are that internal divisions within HESA are dealt with, and that a seriously
critical view of university leadership replaces the unproductive esprit de corps
that seems to have characterised HESA’s public presence in the last decade.82
If the next decade of higher education under democracy is to be characterised
as post-managerial in terms of the features proposed here, self-critique at all
levels of the system and an appropriate use of knowledge and tools already at our
disposal are of essence.
80
deliberations in the task team.
81 G. Neave (1998) ‘The evaluative state reconsidered’ in European Journal of Education, 33(3).
82 HESA has since changed its name to Universities South Africa.
Governance 137
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with macro development policy’ in South African Journal of Higher Education,
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Harper, A., Olivier, N., Thobakgale, S. & Tshwete, Z. (2001) Institutional forums in
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Teaching and learning are never neutral. Every aspect is ideological in
nature: from the admission of students, to the selection of curriculum
content, to the adoption of learning materials, to the pedagogical
approach, to the mode of assessment and the quality of the feedback.
The form of disciplinary knowledge may vary from the more subjective and
contentious to the more objective and broadly accepted, but teaching and learning
remain highly political acts across all institutions, faculties and disciplines. So it
is unsurprising that when a country undergoes major social change, ideological
demands are placed on teaching and learning.
One of the explicit demands placed on teaching and learning in post-apartheid
South Africa is that it contributes to social justice. The White Paper on Higher
the restructuring of an unequal society.1 The National Plan for Higher Education
states that higher education has immense potential to contribute to the formation
of a socially just society, and the 2013 White Paper on the post-school sector lists
2
This chapter asks questions about the extent to which higher education
teaching has been responsive to the social justice agenda. As South Africa moves
this chapter asks about the role that has been played by teaching and learning
in forging an inclusive society with equitable access to quality education for all
sections of the population.3
Teaching and learning are simultaneously held to be: the key way in which higher
education can address the inequalities of society; the solution to the country’s
dire need for skills; an essential means to economic growth; and the path that
on teaching and learning over the last twenty years. In 1993, Wolpe, Badat and
Barends argued that the tensions between development and equity should not be
ignored if both aims are to be addressed in the post-apartheid education sector.4
They concluded that blindness to the tensions could result in placatory rhetoric
Teaching and Learning
Writers and editors: Sioux McKenna
Task team leader: Matete Madiba
Members/contributors: Gerry Bokana, Vivienne Bozalek, Siyabulela Sabata,
Ian Scott & Yusef Waghid
CHE research assistant: Precious Sipuka
4
1 DoE (1997) White Paper 3: A programme for the transformation of higher education.
2 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education; DHET (2013) White Paper for Post-school Education
.
3 S. Badat & Y. Sayed (2014) ‘Post-1994 South African education: The challenge of social justice’ in The
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 652(1), pp. 127-148; DHET (2013)
White Paper for Post-School Education and Training.
4 H. Wolpe, S. Badat & Z. Barends (1993) The post-secondary education system: Beyond the equality
versus development impasse and towards policy formulation for equality and development.
144 Higher education reviewed
and the reality that one is privileged over the other. They cautioned, two decades
ago, that postponing democracy would not be in the interests of development.
However, scrutinising the successes and failures of teaching and learning
in terms of both the equity and development agendas is not a straightforward
matter. Higher education is not conducted within a laboratory in which variables
can be controlled and manipulated so that we can map out cause and effect.
Higher education is a major social structure, which means that almost every issue
and learning occurs within our universities. This chapter is, therefore, by its very
nature partial and incomplete.
The degree of large-scale structural change in the higher education landscape
over the last twenty years is remarkable. The number of public universities
was decreased from 36 to 23 (with three new universities having subsequently
been established); we have seen the emergence of new institutional types; and
changes are described in detail elsewhere in this publication but in this chapter
we consider the implications of some of these for teaching and learning.
The higher education sector inherited in 1994 was not only deeply fragmented
but also small, owing to the severe under-representation of African, coloured and
institutions. Demand for access to higher education among black students boiled
over in the early 1990s during the transition to democracy. Wolpe et al. articulated
the tension between open opportunity for access to higher education, and the
importance of ensuring that the sector maintained the capacity to produce high-
level knowledge and skills of the kind needed to take the country forward and
sought policy formulation that could address this tension, but it has nevertheless
continued to be a key issue in higher education.5
The strong demand for places in higher education, supported by the 1997 White
Paper’s commitment to equity of access,6 has manifested in substantial growth in
black student enrolment over the last two decades, in terms of absolute numbers
as well as proportion of the total headcount. Total enrolment has increased by
over 80% to close to one million. The major portion of this growth has been in
African enrolment, which reached 79% of the total in 2010. At the same time,
enrolment by gender has changed markedly, with women making up 57% of
undergraduate students in 2010.7
However, despite this achievement, equity of physical access is not close to being
achieved. Black student growth has occurred from a very low base, as shown in the
5 Ibid.
6 DoE (1997) White Paper 3.
7 CHE (2013)
curriculum structure, p. 39.
Teaching and Learning 145
relative participation rates of the different population groups. While the historical
gaps in the gross enrolment ratio (GER) by population group have narrowed, they
remain very large: in 2011 there was a fourfold disparity between the African and
coloured GER on one hand (14%) and the white GER on the other (57%).8 This
means that, when the mature adults in the enrolment are discounted, only about
10% of the youth of South Africa’s majority population groups are entering any
form of higher education. Black and white aspirant higher education students thus
still live in different worlds of opportunity. It is evident then, that the challenge of
widening participation and equity of physical access has not yet been met and is
likely to be a major issue for the higher education sector in the decade to come.
Major inequities in the school sector remain and this too continues to impact on
participation in higher education.
In terms of student success in higher education, the challenges are similar
to those of access but arguably more pressing. It is imperative that throughput
and completion rates should be substantially improved across the sector, for all
student groups but particularly for the historically most disadvantaged groups,
that is African and coloured students. The fact that the intake is small and highly
selected, as outlined above, suggests that the current student body collectively
has high potential to succeed. However, this is not borne out in the performance
cohort key aspects include the following:
• About one in four contact students (that is, excluding UNISA) fail or drop out
before their second year of study. If UNISA is included, the number is one in three.
• 27% of contact students in all three- and four-year programmes graduate in
the time intended (regulation time). In contrast, by the end of regulation time
the attrition rate in these programmes is 40%.
• Performance in diploma programmes, a key area for expansion, has improved
• Racial disparities in performance have been somewhat reduced in a number
the completion rate of white contact students is 50% higher than that of
African contact students.
• Performance at UNISA needs to be assessed on a different scale because it is
common for distance education students to take longer than contact students
students now make up approximately 40% of the total higher education
headcount, performance there is critical for South Africa’s development as
well as for the large numbers of individual students concerned. Therefore,
notwithstanding that the full picture of UNISA performance needs to be
8 Ibid., p. 41.
146 Higher education reviewed
considered over a longer period, it is of concern that only 8% of UNISA
years, including only 2% in diploma programmes.
as well as patterns of students returning to higher education after initially
dropping out, it is estimated that some 45% of contact students, and 55% of
all students, will never graduate.
• A consequence of the patterns above is that only 5% of the youth of South Africa’s
majority population groups is succeeding in any form of higher education.9
It is clear that, in terms of output overall and equity of outcomes in particular,
graduate production remains very low and far from meeting the country’s needs
in relation to both development and social cohesion. An additional concern is the
proportion of graduates who are completing their studies with marginal passes,
often after failing a number of courses. The extent of the latter problem has not
of graduate outcomes.
Failure and dropout on this scale, among a small and selected student intake, cannot
to be played by teaching and learning in addressing these realities have not been
fully interrogated. Innovative pedagogical approaches, sustained student support,
high dropout and low throughput rates, and indeed there is ample evidence in higher
education journal articles and conference proceedings of such endeavours being
implemented across the country. But such solutions are often undertaken in an ad hoc,
uncoordinated and under-theorised manner and so their impact is not maximised.10
As more and more students enter higher education in the hopes of increasing
their skills and income potential, there is a belief that this will have an effect
on overall income distribution.11 From this perspective, the development goals
dovetail with the equity agenda as a more educated workforce is seen to attend
to both economic growth and social justice. In South Africa where the Gini
unequal distributions of income in the world. The 2013 White Paper and the
National Planning Commission’s National Development Plan (NDP) both call for
massive growth in headcount enrolment in the public system.12 However, in the
context of our losing half our student body before graduation, questions need to
be asked about whether such straightforward growth is possible.13
9 Ibid.
10 I. Scott, N. Yeld & J. Hendry (2007) ‘A case for improving teaching and learning in South African
higher education’ in Higher Education Monitor, 6.
11 O. Ashenfelter & C. Rouse (1999) ‘Schooling, intelligence, and income in America: Cracks in the bell
curve’ in National Bureau of Economic Research Paper Series, 6902, pp. 1-43.
12 DHET (2013) White Paper for Post-School Education and Training; NPC (2011) National
Development Plan: 2030. Our future – make it work.
13 Scott et al (2007) ‘A case for improving teaching and learning in South African higher education’
in Higher Education Monitor, 6; CHE (2013) A proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in
South Africa.
Teaching and Learning 147
Critics of the pressures to increase student numbers argue that the quality
of degrees will not be maintained.14 The growth plan would mean admitting
undergraduate students, with the result that the pass and retention rates, and
graduation and throughput rates could deteriorate even further.15 Furthermore,
for teaching such diverse students in such numbers.16
As we move from an elite system to one of wider participation, more students
from lower socio-economic backgrounds enter higher education. It should be noted
that such shifts take particular forms in different institutional types. Historically
disadvantaged institutions continue to admit predominantly economically
deprived students and historically advantaged institutions continue to admit
mainly middle-class students.17 The teaching and learning demands of shifts in
the student body to include a broader spectrum of socio-economic groups bring
trained academics to meet this need. In the last twenty years, however, growth
in the student population has not been matched by growth in the academic body
(see Chapter 7).
For the period 2005 to 2010 the headcount of academic (instructional and
research) staff increased by 14.6% while student to staff FTE ratio grew from
24 to 28.18
are professors.19 Dhunpath asks whether South African universities are able
to produce, develop and retain the needed demographically representative
generation of academics and raises concerns about the lure of the private sector
and state opportunities.20
detail in Chapter 7 of this review.
There is also the issue of leadership capacity to deal with the proposed growth,
that bringing about positive change constitutes a substantial leadership challenge
involving strengthening both accountability and incentive.
Both the 2013 White Paper and the National Development Plan provide a
description of the current education and training landscape as incoherent and
in our curriculum structures and pedagogical approaches are required if we are to
14 E. Craig & S. Bird (2013) ‘Assuring quality while reducing the higher education regulatory burden’
(speech).
15 C. Sheppard (2013) ‘Subsidy implications of extended curricula’ (unpublished report).
16 J.R. Behrman, S.W. Parker & P.E .Todd (2011) ‘Do conditional cash transfers for schooling generate
Journal of Human Resources,
46(1), p. 93-122; D. Filmer & N. Schady (2009) ‘School enrollment, selection and test scores’ in
World Bank policy research working paper, 4998.
17 V. Bozalek & C. Boughey (2012) ‘(Mis)framing higher education in South Africa’ in Social Policy and
Administration, 46(6), p. 688-703.
18 CHE (2012) VitalStats. Public higher education 2010.
19
universities: Zuma’ in News24, 22 October.
20 R. Dhunpath (2013) ‘Re-envisioning African higher education: Alternative paradigms, emerging
trends and new directions’ (conference paper).
148 Higher education reviewed
meet the demand for growth, particularly if such growth is to include all potential
students who are willing and able to attend university and not be limited to those
from advantaged backgrounds.
expensive to achieve a greater number of graduates through increased intake than
it would be to re-curriculate in ways that increase the retention and completion
rates of the student body.21 If the status quo in terms of teaching and learning
structures and cultures is assumed, and student numbers are simply increased,
there will be wastage of many millions of Rands of subsidy funding paid for
students who fail or who are excluded from the system. There is a case to be
made for focusing on changing the teaching and learning system for the existing
22 Questions arise
about how well the plan for massive future growth has been conceived and how
comprehensively it speaks to the present.
The concerns about calls for massive growth within a sector characterised by
nature; this is also an issue of social justice. Social justice as articulated in post-
1994 South African higher education policy is probably its most distinguishing
feature. The express injunction in such policy to transform and to achieve equity
and redress of the racially segregated education system indicates that social
justice refers to inclusion, redistribution and representation.23 The statistics sadly
suggest that our success in this regard has been limited.
3. Teaching and learning in the private sector
As at 25 October 2013, the DHET listed 89 registered private providers of higher
education, with a further 26 holding provisional registration. Recent statistics
suggest that there are approximately 80 000 students enrolled in private higher
education, though these amount to about 43 000 full-time equivalent (FTE)
students, indicating that much of the student body is studying part-time.24 This
is a great reduction from the approximately 150 000 students enrolled in 1995.25
The private higher education sector grew rapidly post 1994 and included a
number of foreign providers who had entered the market once sanctions against
South Africa had ended.26 Mabizela states that “private providers operate on the
21 Sheppard (2013) ‘Subsidy implications of extended curricula’ (unpublished report); CHE (2013) A
proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in South Africa.
22 Scott et al. (2007) ‘A case for improving teaching and learning in South African higher education’ in
Higher Education Monitor, 6; CHE (2013) A proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in South
Africa.
23
some implications for South Africa’ in Kagisano, 4.
24 F. Coughlan (2011) ‘Private higher education 2011: A report on a survey of private higher education
institutions’ (unpublished report).
25 CHE (2003) ‘The state of private higher education in South Africa’ in Higher Education Monitor, 1.
26 D. Levy (2002) ‘Commercial private higher education: South Africa as a stark example: The
private higher education landscape: Developing conceptual and empirical analysis’ in South
African Journal of Higher Education, 20; M. Mabizela (2004) ‘Recounting the state of private
higher education in South Africa’ (conference paper).
Teaching and Learning 149
fringes of the public higher education sector and have long been regarded as
inferior institutions” and concerns about this rapid growth soon emerged as the
night’ nature of many of these institutions.27
28 Furthermore,
the Regulations for the Registration of Private Higher Education Institutions (an
amendment to the Higher Education Act gazetted in 2002) only allowed private
institutions to offer programmes if the institution was registered with the DoE
and provided that the programmes were accredited by the Higher Education
Quality Committee (HEQC) of the Council on Higher Education (CHE). With the
implementation of these processes, the rapid increase in the private sector was
stemmed and a number of institutions were closed.
In 2003, a CHE report indicated that after the initial round of accreditation of
and programme design, as well as other quality indicators of teaching and
29 Questions about the quality of teaching and
learning in the private higher education sector have decreased with the more
stringent quality assurance processes being enforced, but concerns do still exist.
While private higher education is often associated with the marketisation of
education and the pressures of globalisation, Mabizela reminds us that higher
education in South Africa began in the private sector and many of our well-
established public universities began as private colleges.30 He goes on to point
out that under apartheid private higher education was a key provider to black
students excluded from many of the public institutions.31 Kruss tracks the
histories of private higher education provision in South Africa and argues that,
“Private institutions have … mutated and adapted to take quite different forms in
a short space of time”.32 She warns that the private higher education sector is very
diverse in both form and purpose, making generalised comments on the sector
Of concern is that 33% of academics in the private higher education sector
33 Academic
quality indicator for teaching and learning. Only 39% of academics in the public
27 M. Mabizela (2002) ‘The evolution of private provision of higher education in South Africa’ in
Perspectives in Education, 20(4).
28 DoE (1997) Higher Education Act 101 (as amended).
29 CHE (2003) ‘The state of private higher education in South Africa’ in Higher Education Monitor, 1.
30 M. Mabizela (2000) ‘Towards a typology of structural patterns of private-public higher education
in South Africa: A contextual analysis’ (dissertation); Mabizela (2002) ‘The evolution of private
provision of higher education in South Africa’ in Perspectives in Education, 20(4).
31 M. Mabizela (2006) ‘Recounting the state of private higher education in South Africa’ in N.V.
Varghese (ed.)
in Africa.
32 G. Kruss (2004) Chasing Credentials and Mobility: Private Higher Education in South Africa, p. 53.
33 Coughlan (2011) ‘Private higher education 2011’ (unpublished report).
150 Higher education reviewed
higher education sector had a doctorate in 2012, a number that is frequently
quoted as being unacceptably low and as having negative effects on the culture of
teaching and learning.34 In the private sector, only 9% of academics have doctoral
35
The private sector focuses primarily on business and theological courses, which
make up 62% of their offerings. It is unclear whether this attends to the role the
1997 White Paper indicates that private provision should play in ‘niche areas’. The
extent to which private providers can or should be held to share a responsibility
with public universities for supporting social transformation and public good is a
matter of some deliberation.36
Private providers are expected to follow the same processes of quality
Accreditation Committee (AC) of the HEQC and by the Department of Higher
Education and Training (DHET) prior to their being accredited. They are also
subject to audit processes in line with public institutions. Unlike public providers,
private providers pay a cost-recovery fee for all their engagements with the CHE.
They do not, however, accrue any direct public funding through government
subsidisation of student admission, throughput or research output; nor are they
currently permitted to use the term ‘university’ in their name or in any of their
marketing.
While the Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS) run
by the DHET captures detailed data on most aspects of public higher education,
there is far less data available about the private sector, but this is changing and
systems are being put in place to ensure rigorous monitoring at a system level.37
Institutions provide data to the Higher Education Quality Committee Information
System (HEQCIS), but this is not audited and is not always complete. Given the
limited extent to which the public sector is able to meet the demand for higher
education, further growth in the private sector is expected.
While providing direct funding to this sector is unaffordable, it may become
necessary to provide support to foster this growth and to ensure that it occurs
in alignment with national goals, not least the focus on social justice outlined in
higher education policy documents. One possibility may be through the provision
of National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) funding to students in the
private higher education sector who are studying in demarcated programmes
34 ASSAf (2010) The PhD study. An evidence-based study on how to meet the demands for high-level
skills in an emerging economy.
35 Coughlan (2011) ‘Private higher education 2011: A report on a survey of private higher education
institutions’ (unpublished report).
36 Kruss (2004) Chasing Credentials and Mobility; G. Kruss (2007) ‘Credentials and mobility: An
in South Africa’ in Journal on Higher Education in Africa, 5(2/3), pp. 135-154; D. Levy (2002)
‘Commercial private higher education: South Africa as a stark example: The private higher
education landscape: Developing conceptual and empirical analysis’ in South African Journal of
Higher Education, 20.
37 Coughlan (2011) ‘Private higher education 2011’ (unpublished report); CHE (2009) ‘The state of
private higher education in South Africa’ in Higher Education Monitor, 1.
Teaching and Learning 151
4. The impact of institutional mergers on
teaching and learning
From 2002, the Ministry of Education used a series of institutional mergers
to redress the unevenness of the public higher education landscape under
apartheid. The then Minister of Education, Professor Kader Asmal, indicated
that the mergers were intended “to create a system that is equitable in its
sustainable and productive so that it can more actively meet the teaching,
skills development and research needs of our country”.38 The mergers led to
institutions with very different histories needing to forge a shared academic
identity; a major national project that many warned would have deleterious
effects on teaching and learning.39
There was much debate about the extent to which the mergers could undo
the inequities of apartheid or provide a suitably differentiated university
sector.40 Jansen argues that although the mergers were met with intense political
resistance from a number of different stakeholders, they were nonetheless
implemented, though often in ways and with consequences that were unforeseen
in their centralised framing. The mergers occurred through a “complex interplay
between ‘governmental macro-politics’ and ‘institutional micro-politics’” and
little assistance was given to the merged institutions to deal with the resistances
that were unleashed. 41
Henkel, Becher and Trowler tell us that having a strong academic identity
is central to good teaching practice and that such identities are complex and
emerge from a number of different allegiances.42 They agree, however, that
key to strong academic identities is a feeling of membership in a ‘discipline’
and a strong affiliation to an ‘institution’. The institutional affiliation is not
always to a particular university, it can be to a type of university that shares
a particular academic project. The extent to which the mergers unsettled
academic identities, drawing together very different institutions and
rearranging disciplinary and programme configurations as they did, should
not be underestimated.
Literature on the mergers has focused on issues of governance and the ways
in which management was elected. The implications for teaching and learning
seem to have been less researched despite reference to unhappinesses caused
38 Durban University of Technology (2008) Heralding the centenary: 100 years of wisdom, p. 16.
39 DoE (2002) Transformation and restructuring: A new institutional landscape for higher education.
40 See, for example, J.D. Jansen (2003) ‘How mergers shape the institutional curriculum’ in Education
as Change, 7(2), p. 3-19; C. Chipunza & S.A. Gwarinda (2010) ‘Transformational leadership in
merging higher education institutions: A case study’ in SA Journal of Human Resource Management,
8(1) p. 197.
41 J. Jansen (2003) ‘Mergers in South African higher education: Theorising change in transitional
contexts’ in Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies, 30(1), p. 27-50.
42 M. Henkel (2005) ‘Academic identity and autonomy in a changing policy environment’ in Higher
Education, 49(1/2), pp. 155-176; T. Becher & P. Trowler (2001) Academic tribes and territories:
intellectual enquiry and the culture of disciplines.
152 Higher education reviewed
experienced an increased workload”.43 The documentation for the institutional
audits undertaken by the CHE between 2004 and 2011 made frequent references
to the extent to which the mergers had impacted on this area. Institutional
portfolios included such descriptions of the merger process as “deep divisions
in a bruised organisation”, “a divided institution in which race and institution of
origin play debilitating roles that contribute to the lack of a strong, productive
university culture”, and “the institutional atmosphere is charged with anxiety
and uncertainty amongst staff and students”. There were also a number of
concerns that decisions about “the location of the faculties and departments post-
merger” were being undertaken on ‘technicist grounds’ without due concern for
educational interests.44
The audit reports produced by the CHE pick up on these concerns and
note that in many cases staff felt alienated, that there were schisms in the
institutional cultures and that some campuses remained unequally resourced
with the potential to be ghettoized through the placement of only certain kinds
programmes.
In 2014, the merger between the University of Limpopo and Medunsa was
reversed. The two campuses, 300 kilometres apart, have had ongoing rifts that
resulted in a ministerial task team being set up in 2010. All other mergers remain
in place. The last merger took place in 2007 and thus many of the upheavals
experienced as a result of these processes have now been settled, but the extent
to which merged universities have been able to develop shared academic projects
and ensure institutional cultures that foster strong academic identities, so crucial
to good teaching and learning, is debatable, and much work in this area continues
to be needed.
One measure of the extent to which the mergers have had a positive impact
on teaching and learning is whether there has been improvement in the student
performance patterns referred to earlier. The longitudinal nature of cohort
studies means that it will take a number of years still for convincing evidence of
this to be gathered. However, it may be noted that analyses of the 2005 to 2008
entry cohorts do not indicate any substantial improvement relative to the 2000
and 2001 entry cohorts.45
Not all universities underwent mergers and there has been criticism that
the decision to leave some institutions, which were primarily well-resourced
traditional universities, out of the merger process enabled institutional cultures
resistant to transformation to continue unabated. It has been argued that, “The
fact that some of these institutions remain largely white and unwelcoming to
black academic staff and students speaks volumes”. 46
43
South Africa: Implications for strategic management’ in Acta Commercii, 13(1), pp. 175-189.
44 http://www.che.ac.za/focus_areas/auditing_of_institutions/overview.
45 CHE (2013) A proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in South Africa.
46 University World News, 28
November.
Teaching and Learning 153
5. The implications of differentiation on
teaching
There are currently three institutional types in the public higher education
sector in South Africa: traditional universities, universities of technology and
comprehensive universities. While the mergers had a major role to play in the
structuring of this three-type landscape, the White Paper had already signalled
the need to create a single coherent higher education system which used
differentiation to allow for diverse educational needs to be addressed.47
The idea of a differentiated higher education system, whereby a range of
institutional types meet industry needs and student demands, is fairly common
across the world,48 but given the iniquitous use of differentiation under apartheid to
create highly unequal institutions, it is unsurprising that the notion is particularly
controversial in South Africa. Mamdani asserts that, “Black universities coming
out of apartheid were the intellectual counterparts of Bantustans. They were
designed to function as detention centres for black intellectuals [and not] as
centres that would nourish intellectual thought. As such, they had little tradition
of intellectual freedom or institutional autonomy”.49
Singh argues that debates about differentiation need to be undertaken within
considerations of “the qualifying conditionalities of context”.50 The conditionalities
of the South African context mean that discussions about differentiation are
particularly emotionally charged given that differentiation during apartheid
was based on race, ethnicity and language and “impacted negatively on access,
quality, mobility and opportunity for the majority of the country’s population and
exacerbated social cleavages along class and gender lines within and between
racial and ethnic categories”. 51
National policy indicates that differentiation is a goal as it promises better
improved accountability by each university to a clearer set of stakeholders and
more streamlined and directed resource allocation.52 But, possibly as a result of
the sensitivities emerging from our past, the mandates of the three institutional
that some universities lack a clear academic project tied to their particular
institutional type and thus are vulnerable to academic drift,53 no doubt served
47 DoE (1997) White Paper 3.
48 V.L. Meek, L. Goedebuure & J. Huisman (2000) ‘Understanding diversity and differentiation in
higher education: An overview’ in Higher Education Policy, 13, pp. 1-6.
49 M. Mamdani (1999) ‘There can be no African renaissance without an Africa-focused intelligentsia’
in M.W. Makgoba (ed.) African renaissance.
50
education’ in Higher Education Policy, 21, p. 246.
51 Ibid., p. 251
52 NCHE (1996) A framework for transformation; DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education;
CHE (2000) Towards a new higher education landscape. Meeting the equity, quality and social
development imperatives of South Africa in the 21st century.
53
Perspectives in Education, 24(3), pp. 135-152.
154 Higher education reviewed
by a funding formula that funds all institutional types identically and privileges
research output.54
In the development of a system differentiated by institutional type rather than
by history, “the tussle between differentiation and homogenization, between
desired and undesirable forms of differentiation, and between differentiation
and other policy goals is far from over”.55 The Centre for Higher Transformation
wide range of performance indicators.56 These analyses make a strong, albeit
controversial, case for differentiation but they also bring into question the extent
to which differentiation is steering the sector in meaningful ways that promote
The implications of institutional differentiation for teaching and learning
are also coloured by institutional history. Despite the mergers, there remains
a division between historically advantaged and historically disadvantaged
institutions in relation to both physical resources and cultural capital and this
57 inter alia, differences in the school results of the entering
the ability of institutions to manage their resources in the interests of quality
teaching and learning. 58
Some higher education institutions remain largely homogeneous in terms of
race and particularly class of their student body, with poorer students continuing
to attend the historically disadvantaged institutions, which are cheaper and
easier to access academically. Letseka and Maile as well as Breier suggest that
many students who leave such institutions prematurely appear to do so because
they cannot afford to remain studying.59 Such institutions thus feel the burden of
student debt most acutely and the funding formula fails to take such contextual
60
Teaching and learning is also often conceptualised in decontextualised, generic
ways, but literature shows that both institutional and programme type have
54
disadvantaged universities’ (unpublished paper).
55
education’ in Higher Education Policy, (21), p. 251.
56 N. Cloete & I. Bunting (2000) Higher education transformation: Assessing performance in South
Africa; I. Bunting & N. Cloete (2004) Developing performance indicators for higher education:
A South African case study; I. Bunting, C. Sheppard, N. Cloete, N. L. Belding (2010) Performance
indicators: South African higher education 2000–2008.
57 Bozalek & Boughey (2012) ‘(Mis)framing higher education in South Africa’ in Social Policy and
Administration, 46(6), pp. 688–703.
58
disadvantaged universities’ (unpublished paper); Bunting & Cloete (2004) Developing performance
indicators for higher education: A South African case study; Bunting et al. (2010) Performance
indicators: South African higher education 2000–2008.
59 M. Letseka & S. Maile (2008) ‘High university drop-out rates: A threat to South Africa’s future’
Letseka, M. Cosser, M. Breier & M. Visser (eds.) Student retention & graduate destination: Higher
education and labour market access & success.
60 C. Koen, M. Cele & A. Libhaber (2006) ‘Student activism and student exclusions in South Africa’ in
International Journal of Educational Development (26), pp. 404-414.
Teaching and Learning 155
substantial effects on what constitutes good pedagogy.61 This is not least because
different kinds of knowledge demand the acquisition of very different dispositions
and very different teaching practices.62
For example, the heavy teaching load in universities of technology (UoTs)
emerges in part from the vocational and practical nature of the knowledge, which
implications for academic identity.63 Without a clear sense of institutional identity, the
determining what is expected of them in terms of the kinds of graduates they should
be developing, the kinds of teaching, learning and assessment they should be engaged
with, the extent and nature of their relationship with industry, the extent and nature
teaching and learning when the purpose of the university is not clearly articulated.
As technikons changed to become UoTs, the expectations placed on academics
shifted and so their industry expertise, which had long been the basis on which
they were hired and legitimated, became of lesser importance to their academic
technikon to university of technology has had much impact. Certainly, universities of
which has led to cautions about the need for such institutions to focus on diploma
programmes.64
Framework (NQF) as programmes that provide a “depth and specialisation of
knowledge, together with practical skills and experience in the workplace” to enable
successful learners to “enter a number of career paths and to apply their learning to
particular employment contexts from the outset”.65 South Africa’s need for medium-
level skills means that we need substantial growth in vocational, technological and
career-focused education and training and so academic drift from the diploma to the
degree has serious national implications. There is also indication of academic drift
in traditional universities with a number of general undergraduate degree curricula
focused strongly on workplace specialisations from year one.66
61 Becher & Trowler (2001) Academic tribes and territories: Intellectual enquiry and the culture of
disciplines.
62 See, for example, S. Shay (2008) ‘Beyond social constructivist perspectives on assessment: The
centring of knowledge’ in Teaching in Higher Education, 13(5), pp. 595-605; S. Shay (2011)
‘Curriculum formation: A case study from history’ in Studies in Higher Education, 36(3), pp. 315-
329; J. Muller (2009) ‘Forms of knowledge and curriculum coherence’ in Journal of Education and
Work, 22(3), pp. 205-226; K. Maton (2014) Knowledge and knowers: Towards a realist sociology of
education.
63 Teaching in
Higher Education, 17(5), pp. 629-635.
64 A. Kraak (2004) An overview of South African human resources development; M. Oosthuizen (2008)
‘South Africa: (Re)forming a sector’ in N. Garrod & B. Macfarlane (eds.) Challenging Boundaries:
Managing the integration of post-secondary education.
65 CHE (2012)
66 Oosthuizen (2008) ‘South Africa: (Re)forming a sector’ in Garrod & Macfarlane (eds.) Challenging
boundaries.
156 Higher education reviewed
The use of experiential learning, or work integrated learning (WIL), was a
central characteristic of most national diplomas, but research on the use of
this pedagogical approach showed that in many cases this form of learning was
then spending their time on activities that provided no access to specialized
workplace knowledge, such as making tea and doing photocopies.67 The
programme accreditation process introduced in 2004 made it clear that work
integrated learning modules could not count for credits unless they were very
clearly curriculated, with the university responsible for the placement, support
and assessment of students.68 As a result of this, some programmes have
dropped this aspect of their programme or reduced it from a full year to a few
weeks.
Arguably, this has led to a greater divide between workplace demands and the
diploma curriculum, a divide that may have been exacerbated by the lapsing of
advisory boards in many programmes. Advisory boards, comprising industry
experts and academics, had long been used to provide curriculum guidance to
technikons, but in recent times many of these formal arrangements have ended.69
This has happened at least in part because of the demise of the national nature
of diplomas. Previously, each diploma programme was centrally curriculated
by one ‘convenor’ technikon, in discussion with the other technikons offering
the particular programme. This process was “highly bureaucratic, power
being vested in those technikons which hold convenorship for particular
programmes”.70 The convenorship process allowed the Ministry of Education
to have far more control over the teaching and learning in technikons than it
ever did in traditional universities. A major effect of the convenorship system
has been that individual institutions and academics did not build up curriculum
development capacity, unless they happened to have convenorship status.71
development training activities in the sector, which were meant to support the
registration of programmes, but the training as well the registration process
produced programme descriptions that did not contribute much towards the
quality of teaching and learning.72
Muller and Cloete note that the terms ‘technikon’ and ‘university’ were used
in an essentialist way to signify differences in both knowledge forms and
67 C. Winberg (2006) ‘Undisciplining knowledge production: Development driven higher education’
in South Africa Higher Education, 51, p. 159-172; P. Powell (2010) ‘A critical investigation into
curriculum development discourses of academic staff at a South African university of technology’
(unpublished doctoral dissertation).
68 CHE (2004) Framework for Programme Accreditation.
69 P. Powell (2010) ‘A critical investigation into curriculum development discourses of academic staff
at a South African university of technology’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation).
70
SAQA Bulletin, 2(2), p. 12.
71 C. Boughey & S. McKenna (2011) A meta-analysis of teaching and learning at four comprehensive
universities; Powell (2010) ‘A critical investigation into curriculum development discourses of
academic staff at a South African university of technology’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation).
72 M. Madiba (2011) ‘Curriculum mapping as inquiry in higher education’ in E.M. Bitzer & M.M
Botha (eds.)
challenges.
Teaching and Learning 157
pedagogy, but they also argue that the introduction of a “homogenising
discourse… suggests that different knowledge types can be unproblematically
integrated, [and] is likely to produce deep confusion amongst staff and
students”.73 This debate about the extent to which traditional universities and
universities of technology should have different focus areas, develop different
knowledge types through different forms of curricula, and use different
pedagogical approaches, and how articulation pathways should be created
between them, is made more complex for universities tasked with being both
kinds of institution at the same time.
The development of comprehensive universities as a new institutional type
was met with a great deal of uncertainty. The National Plan for Higher Education
foretold the creation of “new institutional and organisational forms” but raised
concerns that, “…the programme distinction between technikons and universities
has been eroded in line with the White Paper’s suggestion of a ‘loosening of
boundaries’ between institutional types [which] has resulted in a slow, but sure,
move towards uniformity”.74 The formation of the comprehensive university thus
seems to be at odds with the National Plan’s declared intention to maintain such
boundaries.
The prescription of percentages of technikon-type programmes within such
were set up as the policy tool whereby further drift would be avoided. It is possible
both university and technikon type programmes; indeed this is what much of the
national documentation does. But the ways in which knowledge structures are
translated into curricula are associated with far more than just their vocational or
formative nature and include issues of pedagogical approach, academic identity,
extent and type of research and links to industry. Muller and Cloete argue that, “By
advancing a rather ‘loose’ notion of a ‘comprehensive’ institution, the Minister has
created a situation where both institutional and knowledge boundaries become
blurred”.75
The work by CHET uses a range of measures to argue that institutional type,
and movement between sub-categories and even main categories of such types,
should be on the grounds of evidence-based criteria and not simply on the
analysis of institutional strategic plans and missions together with negotiations
between government and institutions.76 Because teaching and learning is not a
set of generic practices, it is crucial that deliberations about the extent to which
learning seriously into account. At the moment, institutional differentiation
continues to be the ‘biggest elephant in the room’ and the silences around it have
serious negative effects for teaching and learning.77
73 J. Muller & N. Cloete (2004) ‘Playing fast and loose with knowledge boundaries’ (unpublished
paper).
74 DoE (2001) The National Plan for Higher Education.
75 Muller et al. (2004) ‘Playing fast and loose with knowledge boundaries’ (unpublished paper).
76 I. Bunting (2013) ‘Differentiation in the public higher education system’ (unpublished
presentation).
77 K. MacGregor (2014) ‘Vice-chancellors explore research potential and limits’ in University World
News, 4 April.
158 Higher education reviewed
6. Teaching and learning within a
The decision to steer differentiation of programme type and spread, through the
Framework (HEQSF), and published in an incorporated format with the General
The purpose of these frameworks is multiple – pertinent to our concern with
and its aim is to ensure articulation across the sectors. The framework has raised
concerns that attempts to merge different knowledge forms and social bases into
one structure will prove unworkable.78
The NQF is underpinned by Outcomes Based Education (OBE). OBE was
acquisition of ‘high skills’, which it was believed would lead to economic growth.79
The introduction of OBE was the subject of much critique.80 The school system had
to follow a national curriculum (which has had various versions) but the university
sector is far more autonomous and so, although the NQF draws on the language
of OBE, the underlying philosophy was only implemented to a limited extent and
only in some universities. While most universities began using the language of
‘outcomes’ and ‘assessment criteria’ and sought to ensure curriculum alignment
between goals, activities and the learning that students should demonstrate, the
actual teaching and learning approaches and programme design was not much
affected. Increasingly, the idea of constructive alignment is being called upon as a
quality indicator for curriculum design, and the popularity of this idea may well
have emerged out of the philosophy of OBE, but beyond this, much of OBE was
could not be segmentalised into lists of unit standards, and that learning did not
always translate into clearly stated, predetermined outcomes.81
78
Some epistemological issues’ in Journal of Education and Work, 16 (3), pp. 325-346.
79 A. Kraak (1999) ‘Competing education & training policy discourses: A “systematic” versus “unit
standards” framework’ in J. Jansen & P. Christie (eds.) Changing Curriculum: Studies on Outcomes-
based Education in South Africa, pp. 21 - 58.
80 See, for example, Jansen & Christie (1999) Changing Curriculum: Studies on Outcomes-based
Education in South Africa; S.M. Allais (2011) ‘The changing faces of the South African National
Journal of Education and Work, 24.
81 J. Biggs (1996) ‘Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment’ in Higher Education, 32, pp.
347-364; Kraak (1999) ‘Competing education & training policy discourses: A “systematic” versus
“unit standards” framework’ in Jansen & Christie (eds.) Changing Curriculum, pp. 21-58; Allais
Journal of
Education and Work, 24.
Teaching and Learning 159
professional and general, cannot be neatly allocated to programme type, with
numerous examples of both diplomas and degrees claiming a professional focus,
in the public higher education sector, with 476 840 students registered for
undergraduate degrees.82 Scott warned that this “persistent imbalance between
enrolments in ‘academic’ and vocational programmes” raises questions about
whether the UoT sector is “providing the technical and career-oriented skills that
the economy requires”.83 There has been a strong call for a growth in diploma
offerings that have industry credibility to attend to the issues of the inverted
pyramid and meet the skills development needs of the economy.84
The inverted pyramid relates not only to the spread of student participation
within the higher education sector. There have been frequent calls for increased
participation in the Technical and Vocational Education and Training sector
85
The co-published HEQSF and GFETQSF are structured as one means of increasing
participation in the TVET sector, by improving the articulation between these
formative, general degree study by default, rather than by choice and inclination.
The GFETQSF is overseen by Umalusi, the HEQSF is overseen by the CHE and
Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTO). Meeting the teaching and learning
needs of the nation will require clear articulation paths between these frameworks
and close liaison by the three Quality Councils. The political will necessary for such
collaboration may be in short supply and this will undoubtedly continue to impact
on the problem of the inverted pyramid of post-school education in South Africa.
growth. This sector has been under the spotlight of policy makers and a great
deal of money has already been invested in the reform and expansion of this
sector. The extent to which the higher education sector can play a role in enabling
such renewal, given its own internal problems, is debatable, but it is clear that
there needs to be better coherence and articulation between the TVET and
higher education sector.86 The 2013 White Paper for Post-school Education and
makes
82 CHE (2013) VitalStats. Public higher education 2011.
83 G. Fisher & I. Scott (2011) ‘The role of higher education in closing the skills gap in South Africa’
(background paper).
84 Kraak (2004) An overview of South African human resources development; Oosthuizen (2008) ‘South
Africa: (Re)forming a sector’ in Garrod & Macfarlane (eds.) Challenging Boundaries.
85 In the White Paper for Post School Education and Training (2013), the Technical and Vocational
Education and Training (TVET) sector is the new name given to the previous Further Education
and Training (FET) sector; R. Daniels (2009) ‘Skills shortages in South Africa: A literature review’
(working paper).
86 Scott et al. (2007) ‘A case for improving teaching and learning in South African higher education’ in
Higher Education Monitor, 6.
160 Higher education reviewed
it clear that the greatest expansion will be in technical and vocational education
and training in order to develop scarce skills needed for the country’s economic
development. It is planned that the TVET colleges will increase student intake to
2.5 million by 2030 from the 650 000 students enrolled in 2010.
7. Quality assurance of teaching and learning
A major change in higher education worldwide in the last two decades has
been the introduction of national quality assurance measures. The ‘audit culture’
has been simultaneously associated with better accountability and improved
standards and with a surveillance culture in which education is reduced to
87 In South Africa, the CHE was promulgated through an act
of parliament (Higher Education Act, as amended, No 101 of 1997) and established
in 1998. The role of the CHE and the HEQC is discussed in detail elsewhere in
quality assurance processes have had on teaching and learning.
Prior to the introduction of such processes, the ways in which institutions assured
themselves of the quality of their teaching and learning differed markedly across
(SERTEC) requirements, which were primarily compliance based and they had
a convenorship system for curriculum design.88 Historically black institutions
and technikons both worked under much stronger state inspection and control
than historically white universities. Bunting reminds us that such institutions
had to have their budget approved by the relevant government department and
in some cases even needed state approval of staff employment.89 The ideology
underpinning such compliance systems was often in direct opposition to current
notions of both social justice and academic freedom. One effect of working under
such systems of control was that there were often few internally developed
quality assurance mechanisms.
Furthermore, many institutions in South Africa were developed with the
explicit aim of ensuring skilled labour for the teaching profession and for the
civil services of the ‘homelands’, and this had profound implications for both the
types of programmes offered and for curricula design and pedagogy.90 Historically
advantaged universities managed their own quality assurance processes but there
was a distinct lack of coherence to the approaches used and many of them used
fairly insular processes of benchmarking and external examining. It can be said
that there was little debate across the sector as to what constituted quality or how
it should be assured. The introduction of national level policies and processes was
87 S. Clegg (2009) ‘Forms of knowing and academic development practice’ in Studies in Higher
Education, 34(4), pp. 403-416; C. Shore (2008) ‘Audit culture and illiberal governance: Universities
and the politics of accountability’ in Anthropological Theory, 8(3), pp. 278-298.
88 CHE (2000) An evaluation of SERTEC and the Quality Promotion Unit.
89 I. Bunting (2002) ‘The higher education landscape under apartheid’ in N. Cloete, R. Fehnel, P.
Maasen, T.Moja, H. Perold & T. Gibbon (eds.) Transformation in higher education: Global pressures
and local realities in South Africa.
90 C. Boughey (2010)
training system in South Africa.
Teaching and Learning 161
thus an extremely onerous task with pronounced political implications.
Institutional audits, national reviews and programme accreditation processes
have ensured that all universities have had fairly extensive engagements with the
CHE. There has been much critique of such quality processes, both nationally and
internationally, with many arguing that they are administrative burdens that deal
with nuanced issues in technicist ways.91 Luckett argues that the South African
92
Others point to the very uneven quality that characterises our higher education
system and argue that we need strong national systems to drive improvement.
structure in steering a shift towards more engagement with pedagogy and in
opening debates about the extent to which the system is meeting its mandate. The
institutions making explicit what their teaching and learning goals and strategies
for their context, and in particular in regard to the national transformation and
purpose).93
A read through the executive summaries of the institutional audits, available on
the CHE website, makes clear the concerns about enormous disparities in quality
of teaching and learning and a number of recommendations were made related to,
Concerns were also raised about institutions that had failed to engage with
the implications of teaching large classes of students for whom the medium of
instruction is not their home language, who come from a range of socio-economic
backgrounds and who have experienced poor schooling. 94
has now announced the process that will be followed in the next institutional
level engagement. This time there will not be audits but rather there will be a
learning. Given the problems experienced in the sector in this area, and given that
all South African universities are primarily undergraduate teaching and learning
institutions, there is a great need for a national project focused on this. The
extent to which the proposed process can shift the sector from compliance-based
responses to the teaching and learning demands of their institutions remains to
be seen.
91 R. Barnett (2003) Beyond all reason: Living with ideology in the university; Shore (2008) ‘Audit
culture and illiberal governance: Universities and the politics of accountability’ in Anthropological
Theory, 8(3), pp. 278-298; S. Wright & A. Rabo (2010) ‘Introduction: Anthropologies of university
reform’ in Social Anthropology, 8(1).
92 K. Luckett (2007) ‘Methodology matters: Possible methods to improve quality’ in Perspectives in
Education, 25(3).
93 Boughey (2010)
system in South Africa.
94
audits’ in South African Journal of Higher Education, 26(5), pp. 1033- 1044.
162 Higher education reviewed
8. National teaching and learning
development initiatives
There have been a number of funding initiatives aimed at addressing the many
problems experienced in teaching and learning as manifested in poor throughput
and completion rates. The teaching development grants and foundational
provision funding are the main examples of these.95
The teaching development grant (TDG) is provided in the form of earmarked
funding, which is to be used according to each institution’s own plans and strategies
on projects aimed at improving teaching. The funds have been allocated on the basis of
discrepancies between actual and normative teaching outputs on the funding formula.
A major problem associated with this funding has been the lack of clarity as to what can
be funded and the lack of accountability as to how the funds have been spent. This has
resulted in a number of interventions that are theoretically and ideologically problematic
and a number of institutions using these funds for budget line items unrelated to the
development of teaching. Another issue has been the disjuncture between the academic
year at higher education institutions (January to December), over which teaching
March), over which funds become available for allocation. Further, the cycle for which
was found to be too short to allow for substantive activities to be implemented, and for
tangible results to be targeted and observed.
these problems. All public universities can now access TDG funds and institutions
are required to develop a systematic, coordinated and structured Teaching
Development Plan for the 2014/15 to 2016/17 funding cycle, with enhanced
student success as its aim.96 Furthermore, there is the inclusion of collaborative
project funding that brings together a number of institutions tackling a shared
concern. Nevertheless, the use of large amounts of money (in the 2014/15 cycle
about R630 million was earmarked for the TDG) on a project basis carries with it
the danger that teaching improvement efforts remain short-term and somewhat
out of the mainstream. Criteria for future cycles will need to ensure that the
allocation of these funds does not in fact marginalise efforts to improve teaching
and learning rather than contribute to systemic enhancement.
State funding for foundational provision has also been in the form of earmarked
funding, allocated for extended programmes since 2004. Almost all institutions
now have extended versions of their main programmes. The grants are based on
applications made by the institutions and full-time-equivalent enrolments in each
approved programme. The funding has historically been prospective, based on
enrolment projections, but a migration process is underway to make the funding
retrospective, based on actual enrolments, to bring it in line with the mainstream
95 DHET (2004) A new funding framework: How government grants are allocated to public higher
education institutions.
96 DHET (2013) Draft policy statement on the management and utilisation of the Teaching Development
Teaching and Learning 163
teaching input subsidy approach.
The grants were initially provided in three-year cycles, at the end of each of
which the institutions had to re-apply for their programmes to be approved. This
was an important measure for monitoring quality and accountability in the early
formative stage of the intervention, but also had the unintended consequence of
acting against continuity and the development of expertise in extended provision.
Because the funding was not guaranteed beyond the three-year cycle, many
institutions were unwilling to appoint extended programme staff on long-term
academic conditions of service. Such conditions are necessary for professional
and academic career development, for staff to fully invest their energy and
creativity in innovative pedagogy and programme design, and for fostering
positive engagement in professional development.97 The short-term nature of the
funding also tended to reinforce the marginalisation of extended programmes
arising from their non-standard nature.98
However, the DHET took these limitations seriously, and in new policy for 2013
and beyond, the cyclical nature of the funding has been discontinued. The approval
time as the programme is terminated or substantially altered (the latter requiring
a new application). Together with substantial increases in the value of foundation
funding,99
future of extended provision, and removes any restriction on institutions’ capacity
to appoint extended programme staff on permanent conditions that foster the
ongoing development of expertise in this area. The effectiveness of foundation
provision to ensure wider physical access to higher education and improved
retention and throughput is discussed in the next section.
9. Teaching and learning in extended
curricula
One of the key initiatives emerging from the academic development movement
over the last three decades has been the development of foundation programmes,
now formally known as extended curriculum programmes (or just extended
expansion post-1994.100
education policy in the 1997 White Paper, and have been funded by the state since
97 I. Scott (2009) ‘Academic development in South Africa’ in E. Bitzer (ed.) Higher Education in South
Africa: A scholarly look behind the scenes; S. McKenna (2013) ‘The context of access and foundation
provisioning in South Africa’ in R. Dhunpath & R. Vithal (eds.) Alternative access to higher education.
98
student learning at South African universities’ in R. Dhunpath & R. Vithal (eds.) Alternative access
to higher education.
99 DHET (2013)
100
academic development in South Africa’ in H. Griesel (ed.) Curriculum responsiveness: Case studies
in higher education; Scott (2009) ‘Academic development in South Africa’ in Bitzer (ed.) Higher
Education in South Africa
higher education and training system in South Africa’.
164 Higher education reviewed
2004 through a process of proposals and ring-fenced funding. 101
Since their inception, extended programmes have represented recognition that,
for the majority of potential students in South Africa, success in higher education
is severely constrained by systemic faults; and the extended programme initiative
has constituted an attempt to address these faults at a curriculum level. The
major problem that extended programmes have focused on is the discontinuity,
or articulation gap, between students’ educational backgrounds – as shaped by
their familial and socio-economic circumstances as well as schooling – and the
assumptions about prior learning on which South Africa’s traditional higher
education programmes are based. The articulation gap has, for some time,
negatively affected the majority of the student intake even though this intake
represents the top-achieving echelon of secondary schooling.
range of facets of learning such as conceptual development, academic literacies,
and socialisation. It affects learning not only at entry level but also at key points
throughout curricula, particularly where there are substantial transitions (in
knowledge domain or contextual knowledge) for which students are differently
prepared.102
National throughput and completion statistics reveal the acute nature of this
problem of preparedness in South Africa; the apartheid legacy, ongoing economic
inequalities, and major problems with the school sector exacerbate the way in
which student underpreparedness is experienced in this country.103 However, it
should be noted that around the world, there is a correlation between students’
socioeconomic background and their chances of higher education success.104
The need for teaching aimed at careful induction of all students into the target
knowledge practices and for concomitant critique of the practices valued by the
academy has emerged as a global concern accompanying the shift from elite to a
mass higher education system.
Through their capacity to mitigate the articulation gap at entry-level, extended
programmes have begun to address the systemic constraints on both access and
success. They have allowed for the admission of students who would not otherwise
have gained entry to their choice of programme in higher education, and have
enabled many thousands of students, including a proportion of struggling students
initially admitted to the mainstream, to complete their studies and achieve a
as swelling the overall numbers of graduates in the country.105
However, despite their achievements, the effectiveness of extended programmes
in addressing the needs of the majority of the student body is limited. The essence
of this is that extended programmes, in their current form, are perforce designed
101 DoE (1997) White Paper 3.
102 CHE (2013) A proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in South Africa.
103 Ibid.; Scott et al. (2007) ‘A case for improving teaching and learning in South African higher
education’ in Higher Education Monitor, 6.
104 P. Bourdieu & J. Passeron (1971) Die illusion der chancengleichheit. Untersuchungen zur soziologie des
bildungswesens am beispiel frankreichs; M. Walpole (2003) ‘Socioeconomic status and college: How
SES affects college experiences and outcomes’ in The Review of Higher Education, 27(1), pp. 45-73.
105 CHE (2013) A proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in South Africa.
Teaching and Learning 165
and funded as a minority intervention even though, as the performance patterns
more than about 15% of the student intake. In terms of design, the foundational
provision in extended programmes has had to be grafted on to rigid mainstream
curricula that were never intended for this purpose, resulting in gaps and step-
changes that detract from the coherence of many extended curricula.106 Moreover,
because of their design constraints, most extended programmes cannot deal
with the key systemic faults blocking student learning other than the entry-level
articulation gap. In particular, there is little capacity for addressing substantial in-
curriculum transitions or for sustaining focused academic literacy development
throughout the curriculum.
In many cases, the additional year has been understood to be an opportunity
practices students need for success in their chosen programme. The pedagogical
underpinnings of extended curriculum programmes have at times been guilty of
atheoretical approaches that treat teaching and learning as neutral and asocial.107
Even where there is a more theorised social approach, the ‘grafted on’ nature of
many foundation courses has meant that the ‘mainstream curriculum’ has remained
untouched and the focus is on the student alone without a simultaneous critique
of the existing curriculum and institutional structures. 108 This is particularly the
case as most institutions hired staff on a contract basis to curriculate and teach
the ‘extended’ portion of the extended curriculum programmes and these people
often had little to no communication with the academics offering the rest of the
programme. They also often had limited disciplinary expertise and were hired on
the premise that students needed to be remediated in generic skills rather than
inducted into the academic practices of their chosen courses.
majority of the present and future student intake to be successful in their learning
difference, there is a case for analysing the educational principles underlying
scale required to substantially improve learning and graduate output. The
performance patterns – particularly the fact that, even among contact students,
only 27% graduate in regulation time and well under 50% graduate within
mainstream provision, not on the margins of the system.109
higher education, appointed by the CHE in 2011, produced a comprehensive
106 Ibid.
107
student learning at South African universities’ in R. Dhunpath & R. Vithal (eds.) Alternative access
to higher education.
108 McKenna (2013) ‘The context of access and foundation provisioning in South Africa’ in R. Dhunpath
& R. Vithal, (eds.) Alternative access to higher education.
109 CHE (2013) A proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in South Africa.
166 Higher education reviewed
report on the role of structural curriculum reform in improving student learning,
graduate output and equity of outcomes.110 The task team analysed the structural
undergraduate curriculum structure with the following main features:
• Allowing for additional structured and funded time-on-task for all who
need it, to enable students who are underprepared for existing mainstream
curricula to gain the foundations – at entry level, at key transition points
within curricula, and through the sustained development of the academic
literacies relevant to their programmes – that they require for realising
their potential and succeeding in their studies. Since it is the majority of the
formal duration of current three- and four-year programmes by one year as
the norm. The mechanisms for implementing this include adding 120 HEQSF
credits and one HEMIS funding unit for each programme concerned.
• To allow productively for the diversity in educational background that
characterises the student intake, enabling students who can complete their
studies in less than the new formal time to be able to do so.
• Promoting curriculum enhancement, particularly with a view to enabling
students to gain the graduate competences and attributes needed in the
contemporary world.
• Maintaining academic standards at approximately their current level while
proportion of the student body.
The CHE has prepared formal advice on the report to the Minister of Higher
Education and Training, informed by analysis of the responses that were received
from the higher education sector and the public at large.
10. Academic Staff Development
There have been a number of analyses of the phases of academic development in
the last twenty years.111 They all agree that these phases have overlapped and that
vestiges of previous phases continue alongside new shifts. The earliest approaches to
academic support and development focused largely on student remediation. The only
focus on academics in these early stages was in the form of academic staff development
as ‘technique’ where academics were invited to attend workshops to improve their
teaching methods.112 Such interventions were often premised on theories that explained
110 Ibid.
111
reappraisal of academic development in South Africa’ in Griesel (ed.) Curriculum responsiveness;
Scott (2009) ‘Academic development in South Africa’ in Bitzer (ed.) Higher Education in
South Africa
education and training system in South Africa’; C. Winberg (2011) ‘Five generations of academic
development’ (presentation).
112 Winberg (2011) ‘Five generations of academic development’ (presentation).
Teaching and Learning 167
The advent of a more scholarly approach to academic staff development saw the
in Higher Education in many universities, where sociological accounts of teaching
and learning gained particular prominence.113 At almost the same time, there was
a move to undertake both staff and student development in more sophisticated
ways that took the norms and values of the disciplines into account. This period
effect of leading to many central academic development units being closed and
the staff being subsumed into academic departments. In the absence of such
units and without strong academic identities and rigorous research backgrounds,
many of these staff were ill-equipped to undertake the necessary curriculum
development or to guide theoretically sound student development, and thus
found themselves running tutorials or assisting with assessment. This has meant
that some universities have very little in the way of institutional expertise to guide
teaching and learning policies and practices.
Boughey refers to a third generation of academic development where the focus is
on a systemic view of institutions and how infrastructure could be used to support
the teaching and learning project.114 The growing audit culture and requirements
from professional bodies placed new expectations of re-curriculation on academic
departments and saw the revival and formalisation of academic development
centres as higher education or teaching and learning units in the form of faculties
or departments. The development of strategic plans on teaching and learning
also led to new institution-wide roles for academic development staff, many of
whom were re-conceptualised as teaching and learning specialists or managers.
New senior positions such as Deputy Vice-Chancellors and Deans of Teaching and
Learning were created to drive and implement these plans across institutions.
Gosling’s survey of leaders in academic development revealed that there
was a lack of consensus about what academic development meant, besides the
agreement that it means professional development of staff as teachers.115 Other
conceptions included student development and education technology units.
from two to 130 staff. Academic development work was seen as promoting staff
development, researching teaching and learning, strategic interventions such as
university planning and policy development, and the development of new courses.
Most units report directly to Deputy Vice-Chancellors and to Senate teaching and
learning committees. Some units work closely with faculties and others work
centrally.
While most universities have had research awards for many years, the
introduction of similar awards to recognise good teaching practice is a relatively
new phenomenon. Almost all South African institutions now have teaching and
learning awards or are developing such awards, with the number of awards and
the remuneration differing from one institution to the other. National Teaching
113 L. Quinn (ed.) (2010) Re-imagining academic staff development: Spaces for disruption.
114
development’ in Perspectives in Education, 25 (3).
115 D. Gosling (2009) ‘Report on the survey of directors of academic development in South African
universities’.
168 Higher education reviewed
and Learning Awards have been offered by the CHE in collaboration with
the Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of Southern Africa
(HELTASA) since 2009. There is a concern that the teaching and learning awards
offered nationally could exacerbate existing inequalities between institutions
through their failure to develop context-sensitive criteria. There is also critique
internationally that they may be driving a managerialist and individualist agenda,
and do not necessarily promote good quality teaching.116 However, such awards
do clearly signal an increasing focus on teaching and learning.
Alongside the introduction of teaching and learning awards, has been an increased
focus on teaching and learning for probation and promotion purposes. Many
institutions now demand evidence-based portfolios in which academics articulate
their understanding of and approach to teaching and learning. This has also provided
a wealth of resources that can be integrated into teaching and learning conversations;
a potential that has been better utilised in some institutions than others.
The establishment of a chair in teaching and learning at the University of
Johannesburg and a South African Research Chair (SARCHI) in higher education
and human development at the University of the Free State is further evidence of
an increased focus on this core aspect of higher education.
11. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Despite the increased focus on teaching and learning outlined above,
there remains a fairly widespread idea in higher education that teaching is
commonsense and that there is a generic set of ‘best practices’ to be acquired.117
Certainly it is only in the higher education sector that one can teach without any
learning’ (SOTL). This has seen a move to better theorised accounts of teaching
and learning and more nuanced explanations of what affects quality in this area
and what constrains or enables student success.118
In South Africa, much of this research, though certainly not all, has been undertaken
in the “relatively unstable communities” of academic developers,119 though even
within this community the quantity and quality of such research has been highly
uneven and strongly focused on practice based, student focused solutions.120 This
research has often focused on an attempted move from ‘transmission mode’ to
more student-centred or problem-based approaches to teaching.121
116 B. Leibowitz, J. Farmer & M. Franklin (2012) ‘Teaching and learning awards in South Africa’
(unpublished paper).
117 Clegg (2009) ‘Forms of knowing and academic development practice’ in Studies in Higher
Education, 34(4), pp. 403-416; P. Niven (2012) ‘Narrating emergence in the curious terrain of
academic development research: A realist perspective’ (doctoral dissertation).
118 Y. Waghid (2013) African philosophy of education reconsidered: On being human.
119 C. Boughey & P. Niven (2012) ‘The emergence of research in the South African academic
development movement’ in Higher Education Research & Development, 31(5).
120 Higher Education Research
& Development, 31(3), pp. 311–323.
121 Waghid (2013) African philosophy of education reconsidered.
Teaching and Learning 169
The move to ‘alternative’ pedagogical approaches has often drawn on SOTL
research, although sometimes in ways that misappropriate the original theory.
For example, in South Africa, an extremely popular theory is that of ‘deep and
surface approaches to learning’. This theory suggests that students use various
social cues to determine whether to use a ‘surface’ or a ‘deep’ approach to their
learning.122 This has been reduced in much of the South African SOTL literature
pathologise students as ‘surface learners’.123
Similarly, the social theory that explains how literacy practices in the academy
emerge as complex manifestations of the norms and values of particular
Literacy Studies) has been adulterated to justify add-on generic skills courses
that are called ‘Academic Literacy’ but are the antithesis of the theory that shares
the name. There is a substantial body of internationally regarded, South African
research in the area of academic literacies that provides a more nuanced account
practices of the university, but these publications do not seem to have translated
into meaningful curriculum change.124 Similarly, there is a body of research that
attends in rigorous detail to the related issues of knowledge forms and curriculum
125
from predominantly individualised accounts of learning to more social ones, to
concerns with issues of affect and ontology.126 But while there has been growth in
the scholarship of teaching and learning, it has generally been of uneven quality
In as much as teaching and learning has assumed a more scholarly, critical stance
in post-apartheid South Africa, it has not yet achieved its potential in becoming a
deliberative encounter – one that allows for openness, mutual trust and critical
engagement amongst lecturers and students, so necessary to enable more acceptable
122 F. Marton & R. Säljö (1984) ‘Approaches to learning’ in F. Marton, D. Hounsell & N. Entwistle (eds.) The
123
training system in South Africa’.
124 H. Janks (2000) ‘Domination, access, diversity and design: A synthesis model for critical
literacy education’ in Educational Review, 52(2) pp. 175-186; H. Janks (2008) ‘Critical literacy:
Critical literacies in action.
Social perspectives and teaching practices; M.I.J. Paxton (2003) ‘Developing academic literacy in
economics in a South African university’ in Literacy and Numeracy Studies, 12(2), pp. 1-14; L.
Thesen & E. van Pletzen (2006) Academic literacy and the languages of change; C. Jacobs (2005)
‘On being an insider on the outside: New spaces for integrating academic literacies’ in Teaching in
Higher Education, 10(4).
125 See, for example, Shay (2008) ‘Beyond social constructivist perspectives on assessment:
The centering of knowledge’ in Teaching in Higher Education, 13(5); Muller (2009) ‘Forms
of knowledge and curriculum coherence’ in Journal of Education and Work, 22(3); J.M. Case
(2013) Researching student learning in higher education: A social realist approach; C. Winberg, P.
Engel-Hills, J. Garraway & C. Jacobs (2013) ‘Professionally orientated knowledge and the role of
professionally orientated higher education’ in Kagisano, 9, pp. 98-119.
126 V. Bozalek, B. Leibowitz, R. Carolissen & M. Boler (eds.) (2014) Discerning critical hope in
educational practices.
170 Higher education reviewed
retention and success rates of university students.127 Concerns about the extent to
which a neoliberal agenda has begun to underpin university structures have also
been raised in relation to teaching and learning, where the preparation of work-ready
graduates is increasingly seen to be the primary task of the sector. Some would argue
that the tensions between the social equity agenda and the economic development
production of skilled labour to be the primary goal of higher education.128
The idea of the ‘knowledge economy’ (as discussed in the chapter on Research)
knowledge to be a market-responsive product with currency, then their job would
be to ensure that their graduates have cutting-edge workplace skills and problem
to attend equally to notions of critical citizenship and public good.129 The National
Development Plan proposes the achievement of sixteen outcomes that range from
increasing student access, particularly of black communities into the university
sector, to enhancing students’ cognitive abilities vis-à-vis technical and professional
competences that would not only ensure greater competitiveness in an ever-evolving
labour market but also increased participation as democratic citizens in service of
the public good. The extent to which university curricula attend to all these outcomes
is debatable. It is of course dangerous to set up a dichotomy between career focused
between and beyond these, but the concern is that if curricula are understood as
workplace training programmes only, there is little room for engagement with
graduate attributes such as criticality or responsibility for sustainable development .130
Locally, Waghid, Nash and Badat, and other international scholars, have
expressed their view that teaching and learning ought to become more concerned
with restoring the balance between higher education for technical purposes
and higher education for the cultivation of moral persons.131 Waghid argues
that teaching and learning as critique is a matter of enhancing the possibility of
dissent and of a diversity of interpretations; of complicating what is taken for
granted; and of pointing to what has been overlooked in establishing identities.132
To achieve these ideals, we need to have a range of theorised understandings to call
upon in our deliberations around teaching and learning. As indicated, South Africa
127 Waghid (2013) African philosophy of education reconsidered.
128 S. Badat (2007) ‘Higher education transformation in South Africa post 1994: Towards a critical
assessment’ (lecture).
129 A. Nash (2013) ‘Excellence in higher education: Is there really no alternative’ in Kagisano, 9, pp. 42-
62.; N. Graham (2013) ‘The university: A critical comparison of three ideal types’ in Kagisano, 9, pp.
5-22.
130 Winberg et al. (2013) ‘Professionally orientated knowledge and the role of professionally
orientated higher education’ in Kagisano, 9, pp. 98-119.
131 Waghid (2013) African philosophy of education reconsidered; Nash (2013) ‘Excellence in higher
education: Is there really no alternative’ in Kagisano, 9; S. Badat (2013) ‘Theses on institutional
planning and research at universities’ in South African Journal of Higher Education, 27(2), pp. 295-
308; M. Nussbaum (2011) Creating capabilities: The human development approach.
132 Waghid (2013) African philosophy of education reconsidered.
Teaching and Learning 171
increasingly contributes to international educational debates, but we remain fairly
atheoretical in our everyday teaching and learning deliberations.133 Niven suggests
that the current stock of theories being used by South African educators to understand
our challenges and to address our problems is fairly scant and that if we are as a sector
to “understand disciplinarity, social change, policy formation, curriculum theory
and institutional structuring or planning” then institutions will need “substantive
theoretical resources … in the scholarship of teaching and learning”.134
Niven argues that while the sector has made substantial progress in the
‘structural domain’ of teaching and learning, in the form of policies, committees
and appointments related to the improvement of teaching and learning, it has
made very little progress in the arguably more important ‘cultural domain’ of
ideas and theories.135 While some communities within the sector have access
to and indeed contribute to such theoretical resources, a great many do not and
continue to rely on commonsense understandings of teaching and learning which
can inadvertently reinforce systemic problems. 136
in teaching and learning, such as HELTASA, the South African Society for
Engineering Education (SASEE), the Southern African Association for Research
in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education (SAARMSTE) and The South
African Association of Health Educationalists (SAAHE), seems to indicate that
justice project of teaching and learning.
12. Teaching and learning with technology
use of technology. From 1994 to 1998 technology in higher education teaching and
learning in South Africa was predominantly used for computer-aided instruction,
with a behaviourist drill and practice being common. At this time, academics
began to become aware of the digital divide between students and institutions
with resources and those without technological access. From 1999 to 2003, South
African higher education institutions focused on building their information and
communication technology (ICT) infrastructures. Technologies were used to
access research, and there was in some institutions a growing consciousness of
how the internet could be used to democratise access to information. But most of
these studies focused on how technologies in themselves could improve teaching
and learning, rather than focusing on the pedagogical principles which could
lead to good qualitative outcomes for higher education. The adoption of learning
133
student learning at South African universities’ in Dhunpath & Vithal (eds.) Alternative access to
higher education.
134 Niven (2012) ‘Narrating emergence in the curious terrain of academic development research: A
realist perspective’ (doctoral dissertation).
135 Ibid.
136
student learning at South African universities’ in Dhunpath & Vithal (eds.) Alternative access to
higher education.
172 Higher education reviewed
management systems (LMSs) across a number the sector “revealed a clear
distinction of how in some institutions the acquisition of these systems became a
mere technical project and how in others it was a conceptual one”. 137
From 2004 to 2008, higher education institutions in South Africa began to
develop strategic plans on the use of ICTs for teaching and learning. From 2009
to 2013, mobile learning, social media and bring your own devices (BYOD) –
using mobile devices that students already had access to, became popularised
in teaching and learning in higher education. Cloud-based ICT infrastructure and
open educational resources (OER) have the potential to transition technology out
of institutional control to free, easy and open availability anywhere and anytime,
although mobile social media, OER, and other technology enhanced learning
opportunities are available in South Africa, teaching and learning practices in
higher education remain largely untransformed.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) could be seen as just one way of
addressing higher education teaching and learning challenges in South Africa
through the application of technology. However, the relationship between MOOCs,
increasing and widening intake, and improvement of throughput and graduation
rates needs to be researched much more thoroughly. Despite the increasing
and their pedagogic worth remain largely unexplored.138
Most institutions now have some kind of Learning Management System (LMS)
for their courses though these are often used as convenient, easily accessible
places for course information storage rather than dynamic learning spaces.
Other innovations, such as Clickers and Lecture Capturing, have also added to the
student learning experience.
The blurring of physical access to technology with epistemological access to
the knowledge relayed by technology has led to some overly optimistic claims
being made about the democratising potential of educational technology. The
assumption that the mere presence of technology can address the need for
equity of access and equity of outcomes for students is highly problematic.139 It
is clear that being technologically adept is a crucial attribute for every graduate
but we have as yet made very limited progress in using technology to enhance
student success. Scholarly efforts are needed to steer the use of technology in
educationally sound directions.140
The rapid improvements in broadband access in South Africa make teaching
and learning with technology a particular exciting area for growth. It also makes
this an opportunity for collaboration across institutions to develop technical and
pedagogical expertise in this area.
137 Madiba (2011) ‘Curriculum mapping as inquiry in higher education’ in Bitzer & Botha (eds.)
Curriculum inquiry in South African higher education.
138 M. Sharples, P. McAndrew, M. Weller, R. Ferguson, E. FitzGerald, T. Hirst & M. Gaved (2013)
Innovating pedagogy 2013: Open university innovation report 2; G. Siemens, V. Irvine & J. Code
(2013) ‘An academic perspective on an emerging technological and social trend’ in Journal of
Online Learning and Teaching, 9(2); G. Veletsianos (2013) ‘Learner Experiences with MOOCs and
139 D. Ng’ambi & V. Bozalek (2014) ‘Learning technology in developing nations’ in N. Rushby & D.
Surry (eds.) Wiley handbook of learning technology.
140 M. Rowe, V. Bozalek & J. Frantz (2013) ‘Using Google Drive to facilitate a blended approach to
authentic learning’ in British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(4).
Teaching and Learning 173
13. Language medium of teaching and
learning
Students who are studying in a language that is not the one they were raised
language requirements, may seem a daunting place.141 The South African
their choice in public educational institutions where that education is reasonably
practicable. In order to ensure the effective access to, and implementation of, this
right, the state must consider all reasonable educational alternatives, including single
medium institutions, taking into account:
(a) equity;
(b) practicability; and
(c) the need to redress the results of past racially discriminatory laws and practices.142
But despite the goodwill of the Constitution and the Higher Education language policy,
there has not been much progress in developing local languages for academic use.143
The medium of instruction has long been a volatile issue in South African
education. While millions of Rands were spent under the National Party
government for the development of the Afrikaans language, including ensuring
that it was able to function across multiple disciplines in the academy, far less
has been spent in the last twenty years on developing other local languages for
multiple pressing educational needs and a massive demand for the use of English,
there has been little done within the higher education sector to offer programmes
in alternative languages. There are some notable exceptions, such as the work
on multilingualism within the University of Limpopo,144 or the decision by the
University of KwaZulu-Natal to require that all students successfully complete a
module in isiZulu as part of their curriculum.145
The use of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in universities has seen a
had Afrikaans as their sole medium of instruction and three universities that had
bilingual medium of instruction (English and Afrikaans). This has diminished to
three campuses where Afrikaans is used to any notable extent. This shift has not
been without contention and there have been a number of angry arguments in the
media and student protests around this issue. The language issue has added to the
instability of the social justice project in teaching and learning in higher education.
141 E. de Kadt, E. & N. Mathonsi (2003) ‘Writing in English with an ‘African voice’: Ownership, identity
and learning’ in Journal for Language Teaching, 37 (1).
142 South African Government (1997) South African Constitution, Section 29(2).
143 DoE (2002) Language Policy for Higher Education.
144 M. Joseph & E. Ramani (2012) ‘“Glocalization”: Going beyond the dichotomy of global versus local
through additive multilingualism’ in International Multilingual Research Journal, 6(1), pp. 22-34.
145 S. Rudwick & A. Parmegiani (2013) ‘Divided loyalties: Zulu vis-à-vis English at the University of
KwaZulu-Natal’ in Language Matters: Studies in the Languages of Africa, 44(3).
174 Higher education reviewed
14. Selection and placement of students
the removal of a Higher Grade and Standard Grade system and the introduction
of Life Orientation as a compulsory subject, along with the requirement that all
students take either Mathematics or Mathematical Literacy. While there have
146 an
investigation of equivalence found these exams to be at the same level as the
Cambridge International Exams Advanced Subsidiary Level and the International
Baccalaureate Standard Level.147 Most universities continue to use the NSC as
their main admissions tool.
Increasingly, however, universities are augmenting the admissions process
by looking at prospective students’ results on the National Benchmark Tests
(NBTs).148 The NBTs comprise an Academic and Quantitative Literacies test and
to which the prospective student is prepared for the core academic literacies,
quantitative literacies and mathematics demands of higher education. A number
of universities use the NBTs as a means of allocating students to either mainstream
or extended curricula, or to make decisions between prospective students with
similar NSC results; while a number of institutions require NBT scores as part
of the admissions process, none use these in place of NSC results. Of concern
is that the potential for the NBT results to direct curriculum responsiveness is
underutilised.
Other additional entrance requirements used by institutions include portfolios,
interviews and entrance exams developed internally. There is often a discourse of
‘testing for potential’ in such processes despite research that shows that so-called
‘potential’ for higher education success is a product of socioeconomic status.149
Searching for a single test that predicts future student success is perhaps a fool’s
mission, but given the low retention rates and the enormous demand for entry
into higher education, it is hardly surprising that there continues to be a great
deal of interest in this area.
The demand for university access and the problem of ‘walk-in’ applications
means that admission decisions are often made in less than ideal situations and
under great time pressure. In 2012, the death of Gloria Sekwena, in a stampede of
students hoping for walk-in admission, led to this issue gaining national scrutiny.
set up to allow all hopeful candidates to apply once and such applications to then
be referred to the relevant institutions for timeous decision making. This system
146 See, for example, H. Zille (2014) ‘The problem with the matric results’ from Politicsweb, 19
January; M. Bailey (2014) ‘Why, as a teacher, I’m suspicious of latest matric results’ in Mail &
Guardian, 9 January.
147 S. Grussendorff, E. Booyse & E. Burroughs (2010) Evaluating the South African National Senior
the standing of the NSC.
148 See, ‘More about NBTs’ from http://www.nbt.ac.za/node/89.
149
(report).
Teaching and Learning 175
is being phased in over the next three years. HESA has been supportive of the
system provided all decisions around admission remain entirely in the hands of
the universities and not the state-funded CAO.150
protests
All South African universities provide a range of student support services,
Centres, and Writing Centres. Generally these support structures are managed
activities of this sector and those of the formal curriculum. This is despite the
wellbeing and a positive and supportive university environment are key to student
success.151 There seem to be missed opportunities for the various endeavours of
all institutional departments to be better aligned to the university’s academic
project; it is not common, for example, for support structures to report on their
For students staying on campus, the quality of their residence experience is
also an important factor in their chances of success. The 2012 report on student
accommodation, prepared by a task team appointed by the Minister, described
severe overcrowding and “squalid conditions” endured by many students.152
Students who are malnourished and hungry are clearly not going to perform
well in their studies; such a situation should not be allowed for “both moral and
academic reasons”.153 The 2011 report also found that the severe shortage of
accommodation in the private sector and are then subject to exploitative rental
agreements and are often housed in unsafe areas in unacceptable conditions.
An important part of the broad area of ‘student support’ is the Students’
Representative Council (SRC). The 1997 Higher Education Act required that all
higher education institutions recognise SRCs and approve their constitutions.
Given that the SRC is a student elected organisation described as being an
integral part of institutional governance, with representation on council, senate,
the institutional forum and various other committees, the potential for this
body to impact positively on the teaching and learning ethos of an institution is
enormous. However, often the SRC is a place of battle at the level of party and
identity politics where students are encouraged to vote for SRC members on
that basis. At one university, the Freedom Front, a conservative Afrikaner party,
won the SRC elections for six consecutive years on the exclusionary platform of
150 N. Jenvey (2012) ‘High hopes for central university applications system’ in University World News,
9 November.
151 G.D. Kuh (2011) ‘Student success’ in J. H. Schuh, S. R. Jones & S.R. Harper (eds.) Student services: A
handbook for the profession.
152 DHET (2011) Report on the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Provision of Student Housing
at South African Universities.
153 Ibid.
176 Higher education reviewed
“preserving Christian principles”, while a great deal of student violence at the
intolerance” that has at times been “accommodated and sometimes nursed by
management and staff”.154 The potential for political representation at SRC level
to lead to future ‘tenderpreneur’ opportunities, has led to student politics being
characterised as ‘big business’.155 There are also, at some universities, immediate
clothing allowances, access to motor vehicles and access to poorly monitored
funding for student events. Thus, while the history of student politics in South
Africa is closely attached to demands for social justice in the form of both physical
and epistemological access for students, there are questions about the extent to
and learning opportunities for students.156
The South African higher education system is beset with problems of unplanned
and violent student protests and it is perhaps remarkable how these have become
a normalised part of many institutions’ annual planning. The negative impact of
such protests on an institution is considerable. Not only are teaching days lost and
property damaged, but also the learning culture, so vital to student engagement
and success, suffers ongoing problems as a result of these upheavals. Such events
are often explained as part of the broader nation’s ‘protest culture’, with little space
for the institution to intervene. While understanding student protests necessitates
an awareness of the ways in which they emerge from macro-political contexts,
it is a concern that there is very little interrogation of the relationship between
such protests and teaching and learning.157 The need for such an interrogation
on the relationship between the protests and the institutional culture of learning
is especially strong when the protests include violence and vandalism and the
institutional response includes police intervention, tear gas and rubber bullets.
Most student protests revolve around issues of student exclusion and lack of
student housing. Koen et al. drew up a table of the causes of student protests at
twenty institutions.158 The most common cause was what they term “institutional
and mergers. These protests were also found to be the most chaotic and violent
in nature. The second most common cause was grievances against student
and political accountability, but also the SRCs failure in “protecting students
159 Koen et al.
conclude that while institutions attempt to negotiate with students, protests are
often the only effective means available to students to bring about change.
154 M.M. Hlongwana (2006) ‘An inquiry into counselling interventions and student support systems at
a university in transition’.
155 M. Zine (2012) ‘Student politics turns into big business’ in University World News, 23 October.
156 S. Badat (1999) Black student politics, higher education and apartheid: From SASO to SANSCO,
157 Ibid.
158 Koen et al. (2006) ‘Student activism and student exclusions in South Africa’ in International Journal
of Educational Development, 26.
159 Ibid., p. 409.
Teaching and Learning 177
Oxlund argues that much student resistance emerges in direct response to
the marketisation of the university that views the student as a ‘consumer’ in an
‘education market’.160 He argues that students who have been hardest hit by the
restructuring of higher education through neoliberal reform policies are those
enrolled at historically disadvantaged institutions and this is why most student
protests have been experienced at such institutions. Certainly, in the early post-
apartheid period, historically disadvantaged institutions suffered reductions in
enjoyed great growth and such institutions have not fared well under the sector
been increasingly pitted against each other:
The effect of the new funding formula and ‘opening up’ of higher education access was
to create a new and highly competitive internal market. In theory, it was assumed, this
would put pressure on all institutions to become more responsive to ‘what students
want’, the corollary being that ‘markets’ would shape institutional behaviour.161
The extent to which macro-level politics, the marketisation of the university
or micro-level mismanagement has caused the ongoing student disruptions
experienced in the higher education sector over the last twenty years is a moot
point. It is clear however, that in institutions where such events are regular
occurrences, the relationship between university staff and students is seriously
tarnished and opportunities to foster a thriving learning culture are lost.
Another, often related, institutional event that has major implications for
teaching and learning is that of the ministerial appointment of institutional
crises. While poor teaching and learning practices and appalling throughput have
never been cited as reasons for the appointment of an administrator, the inability
of an institution to govern itself must have dire consequences for its ability to
perform its core function.
There have been a number of concerns expressed within the sector about the
frequency of placing institutions under administration and the implications this
has for institutional autonomy. This was especially with the promulgation of the
Higher Education and Training Laws Amendment Bill of December 2012, which
temporarily take over the running of a university.
This issue raises twin threats to teaching and learning: on the one hand, we
have evidence of poor institutional management with a lack of capacity to ensure
the wellbeing of the academic project and on the other hand we have the issue
of increased state interference in the sector with the potential to curb academic
freedom.
160 B. Oxlund (2010) ‘Responding to university reform in South Africa: Student activism at the
University of Limpopo’ in Social Anthropology, 18(1), pp. 30-42.
161 M. Nkomo, B Maja & D. Swartz (eds.) (2007) Within the realm of possibility: From disadvantage to
development at the University of Fort Hare and the University of the North, p. 153.
178 Higher education reviewed
16. Conclusion
We have argued in this chapter that higher education is failing its students and
emerge from problems in the schooling sector but these are unlikely to be resolved
in the near future and the higher education sector is responsible for addressing
the needs of the students it serves. This will require rethinking many of our
current curriculum structures including our teaching and assessment approaches
Until there is the capacity to achieve reasonable throughput and completion
levels with the current system, we argue that massive student growth is
untenable. It is hardly contentious to state that growth is necessary and that we
school education and training sector more broadly, but we have argued here that
massive increases in student numbers cannot be well served by the current higher
education structures. Attaining limited increases in graduation rates through
enormous increases in failure and dropout rates does not constitute social justice.
Not providing access to post-school education for the large numbers of youth in
the country is equally problematic and so a range of responses is needed. The TVET
sector needs to be strengthened at a faster pace, ways of growing quality private
higher education need to be considered and the public higher education sector
needs to look critically at why it is not meeting the needs of its current intake.
The concerns we have raised are not only those of quantity. We do not wish to
the improvement of their personal opportunities. We have asked whether we are
producing critical graduates with the ability to contribute to social justice. To achieve
the aim of better output of critical graduates, we need policy and scholarship on
teaching and learning to work together to resuscitate the wavering social justice
agenda. We need to seriously and systematically engage in capacity development
and the judicious use of resources. The question we now raise is to what extent
individual institutions have the ability to drive such capacity development and
what national structures might foster and support such initiatives.
There is a need for a nuanced, multi-pronged approach to the scholarship of
teaching and learning that moves beyond small-scale, individual researcher
initiatives. There are already a number of instances of cross-institutional
innovative engagements in the development of teaching and learning. It is such
engagements that need to be fostered and, most importantly, that need to move
few such projects here as examples of potential.
The Cape Higher Education Consortium runs short courses in teaching and
learning developed by and offered across all four public universities in the Western
Cape. Similarly, a Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education (PGDHE) is offered
collaboratively in the Western Cape by the University of Western Cape, CPUT and
Stellenbosch University to the staff of those institutions and beyond. The Centre
for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning at Rhodes University
Teaching and Learning 179
development. It is focused on supporting theorised curriculum development for
a more socially just higher education sector. This course is now being offered
nationally in collaboration with a number of institutions and funded through
Teaching Development Grant funds from the DHET.
The Large Classes Project, managed by the University of Cape Town and drawing
together a number of universities, has considered the ways in which class size
shapes pedagogy and how best to address the needs of a diverse student body in
undergraduate classes of hundreds and even thousands of students. The national
project on supervision, with its focus on issues of pedagogy in postgraduate
education, is being conducted in eighteen universities through funding from
Dutch organization NUFFIC, with funding from the DHET making an additional
sixteen offerings possible in the near future. This international collaboration,
managed within Rhodes University, has resulted in a supervision development
course offered through blended learning with all materials registered under
creative commons to ensure they are freely available to all.
The Special Interest Groups in HELTASA, and formed through National Research
Foundation (NRF) projects focused on teaching and learning in higher education
and the Teaching Excellence Awards offered by HELTASA in collaboration with the
CHE are yet other spaces for inter-institutional focus on teaching and learning.
The Quality Enhancement Project (QEP) launched by the CHE also seeks to drive
a focus on teaching and learning across the sector.
Initiatives such as these that bring together institutions to focus on teaching
and learning should not only be national; we need to seek out opportunities
for co-operative work beyond our borders. Exceptionalism and isolation
are detrimental to the sector and technology offers many opportunities for
international collaboration. The research by the Centre for Higher Education
Transformation on higher education across Africa and the collaborative research
and development project undertaken by HELTASA with the International
Consortium for Educational Development are two examples of possibilities.
The curriculum project run within the South Africa Norway Tertiary Education
Development Programme, the research undertaken under the auspices of
the CHE and culminating in the report entitled A proposal for undergraduate
and
the South African Survey of Student Engagement project are further examples of
inter-institutional research in teaching and learning. Publication of collaborative
teaching and learning research endeavours in books on curriculum inquiry and
on the public good of higher education, also ensures some dissemination of this
work.162 But, as we have argued, such initiatives have not been widely taken up in
meaningful curriculum and pedagogical responses. As a sector, we need structures
that allow such projects to be valorised and supported to ensure greater impact.
We need to forge connections that ensure more productive conversations,
sector-wide capacity building and shared use of resources. More systematic
approaches to such collaborations require that the sector understands its inter-
162 Bitzer & Botha (2011) Curriculum inquiry in South African higher education; Leibowitz (2012)
Higher education for the public good.
180 Higher education reviewed
connectedness in ways that are often not evident in our current interactions,
where we compete with each other for staff and students and for positions on
ranking systems. Such broad-based systematic approaches may need external
drivers in the form of policy and funding. The inclusion of collaborative projects
within the latest teaching development grant allocation has the potential to work
against the sense of competition and defensiveness that often exists between
institutions. Similarly, the latest NRF call for education research required that
proposals show evidence of inter-institutional collaborations.
and its relationship to teaching and learning. Given the heinous forms of
differentiation that occurred under apartheid, it is hardly surprising that this
remains a contentious issue. But the time has come for the sector to work in more
supportive, collaborative ways to ensure a productive spread of institutional focus
be confronted and issues of academic drift addressed.
The extent to which the sector can engage with these two issues – the need
for collaborative capacity development and the need for a differentiated system –
may be limited by a lack of appreciation that improving teaching and learning is a
shared endeavour beyond the interests and capacity of any individual institution.
Most importantly, this requires good governance, management, and leadership
driving the academic project with vision and enthusiasm and integrity. This will
be the key to the success of the teaching and learning project as we move into the
next decade.
Teaching and Learning 181
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The performance of research, understood as the skilled, knowledgeable
and systematic quest for a better understanding of nature and society
through rigorous methodologies, is an integral part of higher education.
Higher education institutions are, to a greater or lesser extent,
simultaneously custodians, transmitters, generators and appliers of knowledge.
and research) are generally inter-dependent.
The functions of academic staff members include all these knowledge-related
activities. During the two decades under review, institutions have recognised
services, and time. Research has become more prominent in recruitment, in
internal funding, and in the organisation of faculties and departments. Multi-,
have broadened to include funding opportunities and applications, grants and
contracts administration, intellectual property protection, supporting conference
attendance, aspects of postgraduate affairs, international partnerships,
monitoring, reporting, and strategy in general. The trend has also been to
encourage the consolidation of research activity in niche areas, and collaboration
with partners within and between institutions, locally and abroad.
Steps to increase research activity have included: the active recruitment of
postgraduate research students; capacity development of academics; and support
for the accessing of outside grants from government agencies, industry and other
sources. Promotions and recognition have increasingly been premised on research
productivity. Similarly, higher education policy and funding are generally aligned
with the emphasis on research productivity. At the individual level, the demands
on academics have become more numerous, and in terms of research, reporting
obligations to multiple funders have become more onerous.
1.1 Research productivity in South Africa
The policy emphasis on research has certainly acted as a catalyst to growth in
this area. There has been extensive growth in peer-reviewed research outputs,
as measured by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) over
the last decade in terms of its policy for the annual accreditation of scholarly
Research
Writers and editors: Genevieve Simpson with Wieland Gevers
Task team leader: Prins Nevhutalu
Members/contributors: Rishidaw Balkaran, Robin Crewe, Pamela Dube,
Andrew Kaniki, Steve Madue & Susan Veldsman
5
194 Higher education reviewed
publications.1 Output grew from 6 660.24 units in 2004 to 12 363.81 units in
nearly all institutions to differing degrees. Another sign of growth has been the
increase in the number of annual doctoral graduations from the low base of 823
in 2001 to 1 274 in 2007, and further to 1 878 in 2012.2
in numbers of researchers has been in the contract category, or through the
provision of research chairs and centres of excellence. A number of initiatives of
the Department of Science and Technology (DST), administered by the National
Research Foundation (NRF), have resulted in the expansion or establishment of
a broad range of National Research Facilities providing academics with external
opportunities to conduct research.3 By 2014, within the universities, 150 Research
funding streams additional to government subsidies for research. The DHET has
in turn provided substantial funding to institutions generated by formula on the
basis of research outputs in the form of publications, as noted above, and graduated
research students.4 While these awards have not been earmarked for research, the
policy has encouraged the development of capacity and research activity. Research
development grants have also been provided to support research in the less
research-intensive institutions. In addition to the above, foreign funding to support
research in South Africa has grown markedly. Much of this has been focused on the
twin pandemics of chronic HIV and mycobacterium tuberculosis infections, and on
astronomy and astrophysics as in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project.
In this environment, South African scientists and scholars spread across local
been brought about.5
The gains in higher education research, however, have been unequal across the
institutional and demographic spectrum. The country’s overall spend on research
and development has remained too low and is faltering.6 Given the increasing
pressures on academic staff, supervision capacity is under pressure.7 These, and
other internal tensions, and the unintended consequences of policy are examined
in this chapter.
1 In 2003, the then Department of Education (DoE) published its Policy and Procedures for the
Measurement of Research Output of Public Higher Education Institutions. This policy was applied from
the 2004 output onwards. Outputs in a given year are always measured a year later, i.e. the 2011
outputs were assessed in 2012.
2 CHE (2014) VitalStats. Public higher education 2012.
3 See Section 3.3 and http://www.nrf.ac.za/ for further details.
4 DHET (2014) University State budgets. Public report, 2014; CHE (2014) VitalStats.
5 See, for example, ASSAf (2009) The state of science in South Africa for a review of the reorganisation
of faculty structures in this regard.
6 See Section 2.6.
7 ASSAf (2010) The PhD Study. An evidence-based study on how to meet the demands for high-level skills
in an emerging economy.
Research 195
2. The national and international research
context
2.1 The immediate historical legacy
As with the higher education sector as a whole, apartheid-era education policy
left a clear imprint on the research activity in the institutions of the time. The
1996 report of the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE) pointed
out that in 1993, historically white universities produced 83% of the research
output of the entire higher education sector, and 81% of masters and doctoral
graduates, despite having only approximately 50% of the permanent academic
staff in the system.8 By contrast, historically black universities produced only 7%
of the research output and 5% of masters and doctoral graduates, with the then
two distance-learning institutions producing 9% and 12% of these outputs. The
historically white technikon sector produced only 1% of the research outputs,
and 2% of masters and doctoral graduates.9
particular ideology and was isolated internationally. This does not mean, however,
that South Africa did not have areas of ground-breaking research and advanced
technological applications. Science and technology were used in a command manner
by the state, primarily to lessen the impact of international boycotts and economic
restrictions (for instance the oil and arms embargoes). These dominant missions of
defence and energy independence were associated with levels of national research
and development expenditure as a percentage of GDP that would not be attained
again until well into the second decade of democracy. The intellectual impact of the
academic boycott was considerably greater in the humanities and social sciences,
system and those struggling for reform and freedom. The essential feature of
apartheid-era research was that it was focused on preoccupations of the state
rather than on being responsive to the needs of the broader community. Thus, one
of the major policy aims post-1994 was the development of a more co-ordinated,
accountable and responsive research sector that included not only higher education
institutions but also science councils and other government-funded research
entities and the private sector.
The NCHE laid the basis for much of the research policy that would be
developed over the next decade. It saw transformation in terms of research as
moving away from “insularity and closed-system disciplinary programmes”
towards “internationally recognised standards of academic quality… sensitive to
10 To achieve
this, a large number of “competent, higher education-trained professionals and
knowledge workers” drawn from the whole population would be needed, as well
as an “interactive system of research and development” to allow for meaningful
participation in technological innovation and economic development.11
8 NCHE (1996) A framework for transformation.
9 Ibid., pp. 39-41.
10 Ibid., p. 70.
11 Ibid., p. 55.
196 Higher education reviewed
The NCHE accepted as a principle that higher education “was a main custodian
of the knowledge process itself”.12
At the time that South Africa sought to move out of the apartheid-era isolation
back into the global economy, there was an increased global focus on the economic
value of knowledge, so that the notion of a ‘knowledge economy’ or ‘knowledge
society’ became prominent as a key route to economic viability. The NCHE
concluded that “it was clear that advancing research and development capacity
and associated technological infrastructure is a precondition for economic
reconstruction and that higher education institutions need to play a critical role
in regenerating this capacity and infrastructure”. 13
2.2 A new policy environment for higher education research
Technology, and on Education, both of which helped to create a vision for the new
focus on research in the sector.14 The Science and Technology policy, in particular,
gave prominence to the development of a National System of Innovation (NSI),
while the Education policy emphasised the centrality of academic scholarship.
Through later policy developments, diverse funding strategies came into place.
From the then Department of Education (DoE) came a new funding formula with
Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (DACST) and its successor,
the DST,15 came the establishment of a new general funding agency by bringing
together the former Centre for Science Development (CSD) focused on the
humanities and social sciences and the Foundation for Research Development
(FRD) focused on the natural and related sciences, into the new National Research
Foundation (NRF).16 The NRF subsequently developed a number of initiatives to
support knowledge production, post-graduate development, and research and
innovation at universities. The setting up of a single grant-making agency created
a national asset that has provided systematic funding for higher education
researchers and their postgraduate students.
2.3 The knowledge economy
These national policy developments arose in the context of the notion of a
knowledge economy which had gained international prominence as mentioned
above. Knowledge (understood as ‘knowing what’s behind phenomena’ and
‘knowing how to do things in a better way’) has become a currency of the new
global market, along with traditional commodities and resources. It is widely held
that the most successful societies in the future will be those that optimise the
12 Ibid., p. 69.
13 Ibid., p. 56.
14 DACST (1996) White Paper on Science and Technology. Preparing for the 21st Century; DoE (1997)
White Paper 3: A programme for the transformation of higher education.
15 In August 2002 the DACST was divided into the Department of Arts and Culture and the Department
of Science and Technology.
16 The NRF is a statutory body established in terms of the National Research Foundation Act, No. 23 of
1998.
Research 197
creation, distribution, and utilisation of knowledge or information.17 Lillejord, for
example, has argued that the wealth and prosperity of nations will increasingly
be dependent on information, knowledge, and creativity.18 According to Jacob,
with the growing importance of knowledge and information, higher education
should play a vital role in both the production and distribution of knowledge and,
therefore, help drive economies.19
Gibbons suggested that universities in most countries will be expected both to
share innovative ideas to advance their national competitive advantage, and to train
economy.20 Castells has argued further that, “if knowledge is the electricity of the
new informational international economy, then institutions of higher learning
are the power sources on which a new development process must rely”, not only
because they are the main institutions of knowledge transfer, but because they are
also among the main producers of new knowledge through research.21
The concept of a knowledge economy is thus understood to have two aspects:
the complete essentiality of the development or recruitment of skills and
knowledge; and the application of information to improve productivity and to
seek competitive advantage through innovation.22 The university is an integral
part of both conceptions.
It has been argued that the global economy has changed dramatically in
recent years.23 Mature, high-wage economies have moved away from traditional
manufacturing towards high-value, innovation-intensive products and high-value
services. Increasingly, at-the-frontier research has become the source of the
knowledge that gives the greatest competitive advantage. As a result, research
expectations of policy-makers, politicians, funding agencies and industrialists
that the people they fund and support should produce a particular kind of
knowledge.24 Lillejord argued that the practical aspects of knowledge are at
knowledge into immediate practical use and value.25 An understanding of the
17 L. Rhodes (1999) Connecting knowledge to management: The case of academic research.
18 S. Lillejord (2005) ‘Knowledge production and higher education in the 21st century’ in South
African Journal of Higher Education, Special issue, pp. 1315-1320.
19 M. Jacob (2000) ‘Imagining the future university’ in M. Jacob & T. Hellström (eds.) The future of
knowledge production in the academy.
20 M. Gibbons (2000) ‘Universities and the new production of knowledge: Some policy implications for
government’ in A. Kraak (ed.) Changing modes: New knowledge production and its implications for
higher education in South Africa.
21 Castells quoted in NCHE (1996) A framework for transformation.
22 D. Foray (2004) The economics of knowledge; R. Llorah (2006) ‘The dilemma of the HBUs in South
Africa’ in South African Journal of Higher Education, 20(3); C. Winberg (2006) ‘Undisciplining
knowledge production: Development driven higher education in South Africa’ in Higher Education,
51, pp. 159-172.
23 LERU (2005) ‘Competitiveness, research and the concept of a European Institute of Technology’ in
Opinion of the League of European Research Universities.
24 G. Biesta (2005) ‘Knowledge production and democracy in educational research: The case of
evidence-based education’ in South African Journal of Higher Education, 19, pp. 1334-1349.
25 Lillejord (2005) ‘Knowledge production and higher education in the 21st century’ in South African
Journal of Higher Education, Special issue, pp. 1315-1320.
198 Higher education reviewed
has thus developed rapidly in the major research universities.
2.4 The implications for research funding
The ways in which funding for research and innovation is allocated in post-
knowledge economy outlined above. While this concept has led to an increased
state focus on research funding, the priority accorded to higher education to boost
economic development has been undermined by limited budgets. Vossensteyn
26 Greenaway & Haynes believe that
owing to increased competition for public funds from many sectors.27 Generally,
system of higher education will be able to contribute to the economy because of
stagnation (if not reduction) of knowledge production. It is evident that selective
term; for example, the funding of a select group of universities in China resulted
in a dramatic increase in total knowledge generation over the last decade.
The factors that determine the productivity of individual higher education
institutions are not fully established, although it is known that the culture
28 Pollitt
& Bouckaert have posited that most Western countries have experienced an
increased requirement for new and different types of audit, evaluation and
reporting systems that can measure outputs and outcomes of research activity
in public sector organisations.29 The allocation of funding has followed such
investments in education, many governments have increased accountability and
transparency measures, which form part of the new ‘managerialism’ or ‘New
Public Management’.30
In South Africa, the belief that higher education is a basic right and that
education is a public good, is reinforced by Article 29 of the Constitution of
, which appears to support the thesis that
education should primarily be publicly funded.31 In line with global trends,
South Africa has moved towards increased accountability regarding the use
of public funds, as seen in the restructuring of higher education since 1997,
26NASFAA
Journal of Student Financial Aid, 34(1), p. 39-55.
27 D. Greenaway & M. Haynes (2004) ‘Funding higher education in the UK: The role of fees and loans’
in The Economic Journal, 113, pp. 150-166.
28 J. Beath, J. Poyago-Theotoky & D. Ulph (2005) ‘University funding systems and their impact on
evidence-based education’ in South African Journal of Higher Education, 19, pp. 1334-1349.
29 C. Pollitt & G. Bouckaert (2000) Public management reform: A comparative analysis.
30 P. de Villiers & L. Nieuwoudt (2005) ‘Shifting trends in higher education’ (conference paper); M.
Power (2005) ‘The theory of the audit explosion’ in E. Ferlie, L. Lyn & C. Pollitt (eds.)
handbook of public management.
31 G. Steyn & P. de Villiers (2006) ‘The impact of changing funding sources on higher education
institutions in South Africa’ in Higher Education Monitor, 4.
Research 199
together with changes in the higher education funding formula.32 The means
and levels of funding for the research system as a whole are critical if higher
education is to achieve what is expected of it by government and society. Issues
of state and business funding, as well as directed research funding, are explored
in more detail below, while the funding for the sector as a whole is discussed in
a separate chapter of this review.
2.5 University research in relation to industry and society
A second international trend related to the concept of a knowledge economy
is shifting relationships between institutions, industry, governments and
society. The work of Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff in the 1990s established the
concept of the ‘triple-helix’ research relationship of higher education, industry
and government.33
government relationship of the industrial age, to a new relationship (or three-
way partnership) which also involves higher education. The concept further
brings out the central role played by universities in society as the main producers
of new knowledge and the people with the appropriate skills to manage it. The
triple-helix concept explores how innovation and economic development can be
strengthened through a more prominent role for universities in their relationship
with industry, to allow for new ways of production, transfer and application of
knowledge. Triple-helix based theory has developed over the last two decades,
impacting on governments’ science policies and industry partnerships, and
exploring ways for better supporting innovation at all levels of the system.
The triple-helix concept is interpreted differently in different countries,
resulting in varying roles for each of the three players. Irrespective of the model,
higher education plays a more direct and prominent role in the innovation sector
as an actor in its own right. The notion of an entrepreneurial university is central
to the triple-helix concept, and sees higher education putting knowledge into use,
and creating further academic knowledge.
As part of their function of community and societal involvement, an increasing
number of higher education institutions worldwide have established business
centres where they work on commercialising their own innovative projects. Such
32Perspectives in Education, 21(2), pp. 129-135; S.M. Madue
(2006) ‘The measurement of research output of public higher education institutions in South
and the implementation of policies on the measurement of research output’ in Journal of Public
Administration, 42(3), pp. 163-178; J.C. Mubangizi (2005) ‘Government funding of universities in
South African Journal
of Higher Education, 19(6), pp. 120-131; A.G.W. Steyn & P.J. Vermeulen (1998) ‘Perspectives on the
Journal of Human Sciences, 37, pp. 248-263.
33 The concept of the triple helix of university-industry-government relationships initiated in the
1990s by Etzkowitz (1993) and Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (1995), encompassing elements of
precursor works by Lowe (1982) and Sábato and Mackenzi (1982), interprets the shift from
a dominating industry-government relationship in the industrial society to a growing triadic
relationship between university-industry-government in the knowledge society (H. Etzkowitz &
Leydesdorff (eds.) (1997)
Government Relations; H. Etzkowitz (2003) ‘Innovation in innovation: The triple helix of university-
industry-government relations’ in Social Science Information, 42(3)).
200 Higher education reviewed
developments have also recently become evident in South Africa.34 A number
(TTOs) as a result of the Technology Innovation Agency Act and the Intellectual
Property from Publicly Financed Research Act.35 Research Councils have
also taken steps towards developing collaborative partnerships of this sort.36
Entrepreneurial activity also changes the traditional role of universities within a
region or community, as they become more integrated into the general economic
activity of the community.37 The implication is that higher education institutions
can become less reliant on state funding and student fees as sources of income, as
has been the trend in South Africa.38 While progress in South Africa in this respect
differs considerably from one institution to another (this is especially dependent
on the research focus of the institution), there has clearly been some systemic
development in this direction.
More recently, the notion of the triple-helix has been expanded to one of a
’quadruple-helix’, adding civil society as the fourth actor. Cooper discussed this
from a South African perspective, explaining how, especially in the developing
world, the important role of civil society organisations in innovation cannot be
ignored.39 These include trade and labour unions, women’s movements, and
community movements. He argues that by including this sector, the partnership
discussion moves from economic development to a broader framework that
includes social and community development. It allows for innovative products to
be developed not only on the basis of the more traditional STEM disciplines, but
also from the social sciences and the humanities, thus expanding the fundamental
view of an innovating society. The innovations concerned could include new
and more sustainable forms of transport or housing, or new modes of city
planning; but could also include innovations in terms of work organisation and
employment creation. Proponents of the quadruple-helix call for a more inclusive
or holistic form of technological development that is responsive to society as a
whole and which makes use of broader research and scholarship, rather than only
34 For instance, the Durban University of Technology (DUT) has formed an Enterprise Development
Unit (EDU) to engage the community and collaborate in order to improve facilities, expand
partnerships, and create opportunities to generate third-stream income. Similarly, the University
of the Western Cape (UWC) has developed a Business Innovation Centre (BIC) to manage its third-
stream income strategy and to consolidate existing initiatives; the BIC promotes, facilitates and
supports innovation and business opportunities to increase third-stream income and protect the
commercialisation of UWC-owned intellectual property rights.
35 Technology Innovation Agency Act, No. 26 of 2008; Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly
Financed Research Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research Act, No. 51 of 2008.
36 An example is the Strategic Health Innovation Partnerships (SHIPs) of the Medical Research Council.
37 For instance, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Surrey (UK) reported that British universities
now receive less than 50% of their income from the state – which includes money for new
undergraduate fees, research grants and direct funding (C. Snowden (2014) ‘An outdated idea about
higher education’ in The Telegraph, 18 May).
38 The 2013 DHET higher education Funding Review showed that in South Africa in 2010, across all
institutions, 30% of income came from private funds, compared with 27% in 2000, with maxima
of 32% in both 2006 and 2008. Private income includes money earned through research contracts
and commercial activities, as well as donations, investments, rents, etc. (DHET (2013) Report of the
Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities, p. 44).
39 D. Cooper (2011) The University in Development: Case Studies of Use-Oriented Research.
Research 201
some disciplines. Such understandings are discussed further in the community
engagement chapter.
2.6 The National System of Innovation
all activities that can contribute to innovations of any kind can be organised into
a coherent system, the total number of innovation outputs will be dramatically
increased when compared with an otherwise equivalent but inchoate laissez faire
system. The concept was adopted in the White Paper on Science and Technology
40 Universities and science
councils are major components of the NSI, which extends to other institutions and
organisations in the private sector, as well as government and non-governmental
organisations which are engaged directly or indirectly with formal research or
innovative activities. The relationships within the NSI are similar to the triple-
helix notion discussed above.
In South Africa, the DST, once it had been separated from the DACST, built on
the foundations for the NSI laid down in the 1996 White Paper, and elaborated
the concept in the National Research and Technology Foresight and the National
Research and Development Strategy.41 The latter emphasised the need to
strengthen the place of research and development in the economy, and proposed
an investment target of a minimum of one percent of gross expenditure on
research and development (GERD) as a percentage of gross domestic product
0.92 percent. The 2013 National Development Plan (NDP) proposed a target for
gross expenditure on research and development of 1.5% by 2019, although a
similar target had been set for 2014 that was not met.42
Assessments of the South African NSI have indicated that in order for it to
achieve the national research priorities set by the cabinet, there needs to be a much
greater clarity of roles, structural arrangements and mandated responsibilities.43
Development (OECD) review in 2007 were that:
based economy to a knowledge economy;
the NSI;
• The concept of an NSI had only gained limited currency;
• The notion of innovation had remained misunderstood, particularly on the
demand side;
40 DACST (1996) White Paper on Science and Technology. Preparing for the 21st century.
41 DACST (1999) National Research and Technology Foresight; DST (2002) National Research and
Development Strategy.
42 DST (2011)
; NPC (2011) National Development Plan: 2030. Our future – make it work.
43 DST (2012) Ministerial Review Committee on the Science, Technology and Innovation Landscape in
South Africa; OECD (2007) Review of South Africa’s innovation policy.
202 Higher education reviewed
• The functioning of the NSI had been hampered by a lack of high-level skills.
The report recommended that in order to reach the levels of innovation
required by the country, considerable expansion of higher education research
would be needed. In addition, more research-capable people would need to be
supplied by higher education, and high-end skills attracted from outside South
Africa’s borders.
In July 2010, the Minister of Science and Technology commissioned a
second, local review of the NSI which was to take into account the 2007 OECD
review.44 The review committee stressed the need for a differentiated system of
universities with both research-led institutions and those focused on applied
science, technology, and skills development. The committee commented on the
academics occupying established posts; the low postgraduate graduation rates;
and the uneven and inadequate expansion of the post-doctoral sector. The review
committee supported the proposal for a national journal licence (discussed below).
Recommendations included the revitalisation and enlargement of the college
sector; the declaration of teaching at all levels as an essential service; the reform
of the curriculum in favour of planned coherence and breadth; the expansion of
SciELO-SA (discussed later); and an increase in the value and number of public
research grants. The committee proposed the addition of a further category of
nationally-funded research institutes with multiple principal investigators to
the already existing and successful categories of DST/NRF Research Chairs and
Centres of Excellence.
The Ministerial Committee found that South Africa had maintained impressive
growth in total research and development (R&D) expenditure, from about R4
billion in 1997/8 to R21 billion in 2008/9, and R22.2 billion in 2011/12. Spending
as a percentage of GDP had not increased steadily, however, so that despite the
desire to move to a GERD target of 1% of GDP, this had not been reached, and in
fact the percentage had dropped from a high of 0.95% of GDP in 2006/7 to 0.92%
in 2008/9 and 0.76% in 2010/11. In the following year, spending at 0.76% of GDP
was maintained, leading to a prediction that the bottom had been reached and that
a period of increased investment in R&D would begin.45 As indicated above, the
NDP called for greater investment in research and development, which prompted
the government to target 1.5% of GDP by 2019. To put the South African targets
in context, the OECD average in 2004 was 2.3% of GDP.46 The Ministerial Review
Committee recommended that the public resourcing of R&D at universities should
encouraged to increase its spending on research. The importance of attracting
foreign research investment was also highlighted.
44 DST (2012) Ministerial Review Committee on the Science, Technology and Innovation Landscape in
South Africa.
45 CeSTii (2014)
report 2011/12; South Africa info (2014) ‘South Africa ‘turning the corner’ on R&D spending’, 10
April.
46 OECD (2008) OECD science, technology and industry outlook 2008: South Africa.
Research 203
The analysis conducted by the review committee suggested that South Africa
still had some way to go in developing a coherent, well-functioning NSI. It was
doubtful that without such a system, the country would be able to develop into a
knowledge economy in the way desired. The continuing lack of a unitary public
‘Research and Innovation Vote’, by means of which the funding of the research
The failure to achieve the R&D target of 1% of GDP suggests that neither business
competitive in the globalised economy.
3. Government interventions in the last ten
years
Taking into account the policy directions laid out by the South African
government as well as international developments, South Africa has witnessed a
changing research environment over the past decade or two. Most of this change
has been directed by two government departments – namely that of Education
(more recently Higher Education and Training), and Science and Technology –
together with their various agencies. Some of these developments are considered
below.
3.1 DHET’s research incentives
of the higher education subsidy budget to awards based on research outputs
and research development. At the same time, the value of the formula-generated
‘research output unit’ increased threefold from its previous level, making the
universities. The percentage of the state university budget allocated to research
annually in the Ministerial Statement on University Funding. The research
portion of the entire (DHET) allocation to universities amounts to approximately
relatively constant. Despite an increased state focus on research, this proportion
of the budget is a small percentage of the total allocation, with the majority of
funding going to teaching activities (input, output and development grants), as
shown in Table 1.47
The research budget is divided between research outputs and research
development based on output targets for each university type. These targets
were initially set at 1.25 research output units per permanent academic staff
member at a traditional university, and 0.5 units for universities of technology;
unique targets were established for each comprehensive university aligned with
output and the number of academic staff in the system, a system output target
was calculated annually. Research development grants were calculated from the
47 DHET (2013)
204 Higher education reviewed
surplus (i.e. the shortfall between the target and the actual achievement), and
were only allocated to those institutions that had not met their target that year.
Targets for the 2010 research outputs were increased by 13% before new targets
were based not on institutional type, but on past performance. This meant that
most institutions now had the chance of accessing research development funds
(whereas previously the more research-intensive universities were producing
outputs above their targets and so could not qualify).
implemented the Policy and Procedures for Measurement of Research Output of
Budget Category
Budget total for the university sector
(R’000)
Increase in budget from previous nancial
year
2012/13
R
2013/14
R
2014/15
R
2015/16
R
2012/13
%
2013/14
%
2014/15
%
2015/16
%
Block grants 17 433 861 18 438 584 19 561 234 20 947 875 6.4 5.8 6.1 7.1
Teaching inputs 11 658 601 12 478 219 12 713 266 13 140 290 6.9 4.2 4.7 3.4
Instuonal factors 1 011 575 1 054 055 1 103 392 1 170 372 6.9 4.2 7.4 6.1
New disadvantaged factor 410 743
Actual teaching outputs 2 537 108 2 712 979 2 974 475 3 213 301 10.0 6.9 9.6 8.0
Actual research outputs 2 226 579 2 523 331 2 770 101 3 013 169 0.1 13.3 9.8 8.8
Earmarked grants 6 846 900 7 643 478 8 508 752 9 390 330 22.0 11.6 11.3 10.4
NSFAS 3 377 902 3 693 295 3 914 893 4 094 978 27.7 9.3 6.0 4.6
Infrastructure & output
eciencies
1 800 000 2 000 000 220 000 2 301 200 10.2 11.1 10.0 4.6
Capital funds for 2 new
universies
150 000 500 000 1 000 000 233.3 100.0
Establishment funds for 2
new universies
100 000 150 000 159 000 166 314 100.0 50.0 6.0 4.6
Naonal instutes in 2
provinces
43 050 R45 418 48 418 50 358 5.0 5.5 6.0 4.6
Research development 176 820 176 820 176 820 200 000 2497.2 0.0 6.0 6.7
Teaching development 499 000 575 000 575 000 620 000 18.8 15.2 6.0 1.7
Foundaon provision 194 033 204 705 204 705 306 000 9.7 5.5 15.6 29.4
Clinical training of health
professionals
367 290 387 491 387 491 429 635 5.0 5.5 6.0 4.6
Veterinary sciences 121 800 128 500 128 500 142 476 5.0 5.5 6.0 4.6
Instute for human and
social sciences
23 829
Merger mul-campuses 148 000 188 400 118 400 44 864 0.0 -20.0 -20.0 -52.6
Interest & redempon
on loans
14 605 9 255 9 255 5 676 -25.6 -36.6 -27.0 -16.0
African instute for
mathemacal studies
4 400 4 694 4 594 5 000 10.0 4.4 1.5 4.2
Total 24 280 762 26 082 062 26 082 062 30 338 208 10.4 7.4 7.6 8.1
Source: DHET (2013)
Research 205
Public Higher Education Institutions in 2004.48 The policy replaced separate
policies for universities and technikons and its purpose was “to encourage
research productivity by rewarding quality research output at public higher
education institutions… the policy is not intended to measure all output, but to
enhance productivity by recognising the major types of research output produced
by higher education institutions and further use appropriate proxies to determine
the quality of such outputs”.49
Apart from the funding based on the number of research- masters and doctoral
graduates, other research output types that are recognised for subsidy purposes
are publications in accredited journals, approved scholarly books or book chapters
and conference proceedings. Guidelines were established for the recognition of
outputs in each of these areas with the main proxy for quality being the criterion
of a pre-publication peer review process. In terms of journals, accredited journals
Information (ISI) Web of Science indices; the ProQuest International Bibliography
of Social Sciences (IBSS) index; and the Approved South African Journals list
maintained by the DHET.
Books and conference proceedings are annually assessed by a research
outputs evaluation panel to ensure that they meet the policy’s criteria. In terms
of subsidy, a single-authored accredited journal article receives one unit (with
no differentiation based on the accredited list where the journal appears), a
conference proceeding half a unit, and a book or book chapter a proportion of
publications share the units between the authors’ institutions. The policy has
rather than quality.50 Despite the peer review requirement, publications of very
different quality are subsidised at the same level, and, owing to the large monetary
incentive (per unit), the policy has led inter alia to cases of so-called salami-slicing
(where reporting on completed research is reduced to several small publishable
units in order to yield multiple publications), double publishing of the same
research in different forms, and the emergence of journals of questionable quality.
An unintended consequence of the policy is a strategy used by some institutions
to appoint international research fellows who have little link with the institution
The policy has also been criticised for not incentivising collaborative research
and the level of subsidy for conference proceedings has also been much debated.51
Based on some of the criticisms, suggested improvements to the policy were
gazetted for public comment in 2013. These included additional journal indices
48 DoE (2003) Policy and Procedures for the Measurement of Research Output of Public Higher
Education Institutions.
49 Ibid., p. 3.
50 ASSAf (2006) Report on a strategic approach to research publishing in South Africa; DHET (2011)
Ministerial report on the evaluation of the 2010 institutional research publications outputs.
51 ASSAf (2006) Report on a strategic approach to research publishing in South Africa; ASSAf (2009)
Scholarly books: Their production, use and evaluation in South Africa today.
206 Higher education reviewed
and the introduction of conference proceedings indices and increased funding
for scholarly books to bring the unit value up to a level commensurate with the
work required, as recommended in Scholarly Books: their production, use and
evaluation in South Africa today.52 The issue of quality and research integrity is
left to the insistence on peer review and to the integrity of individual academics
and institutions, although the possibility of introducing discipline-based review
panels and punitive measures has been raised. In order to improve the quality of
local accredited journals, the DHET has established a working relationship with
ASSAf to assist with reviewing new applications, and ASSAf has set up various
peer review panels to evaluate journals, books and conference proceedings by
consensus peer review. In 2009, in line with the policy, the DHET began periodic
reviews of all DHET journals.
In terms of the impact of the DHET policy, a clear increase in research outputs
period which saw stagnation.53
the combined effect of the policies of the DST (and NRF) and those of the DHET.54
3.2 Investments in the research system from the DST
The DST is the custodian of the NSI and is broadly responsible for across-the-
system policy regarding the desired movement of the country towards a fuller role
and utilisation of knowledge in the economy and society.55 A number of research-
focused bodies fall under the DST in terms of parliamentary accountability and
budgeting.56 The DST also works closely with universities, although the majority
of the research funding takes place through the NRF. A number of innovation-
linked agencies are also run by and for the DST, although funding sometimes
originates in other government departments.57 The DST has also been responsible
for much of the recent policy work relating to intellectual property.
One of the biggest research achievements of the DST in recent years has been the
awarding, after a decade of groundwork, of the giant Square Kilometer Array (SKA)
radio-telescope jointly to South Africa and Australia. This was announced in May
of international researchers and technical knowledge. Another area of important
work, undertaken by the HSRC on behalf of the DST, is the annual Research and
Development (R&D) Survey.58 According to the latest report, the government
52 ASSAf (2009) Scholarly books.
53 DHET (2014) Ministerial report on the evaluation of the 2012 universities’ research publication
outputs.
54 Graphs indicating the changes in output level are presented after the discussion of the DST and NRF
initiatives.
55 The Ten Year Innovation Plan released by the DST marked the government’s clear aspiration
to achieve a shift to a knowledge economy in South Africa (DST (2008) Innovation towards a
).
56
Research Council (HSRC), the NRF with its national research facilities, the Technology Innovation
Agency (TIA), and the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf).
57 For example, the Technology and Human Resource for Industry Programme (THRIP) and the
Innovation Fund (IF).
Research 207
has become the country’s biggest funder of R&D, directly investing R9.5 billion
(43.1% of the total) in R&D in 2011/12, compared with business funding of R8.6
billion (39%). The government has established R&D tax incentives to encourage
increased business R&D expenditure within South Africa. The survey also found
that the number of people working in R&D in South Africa grew to 59 487 in
2011/12, an increase of only 7% (or 3 956 additional people) since 2010. This
highlights the fact that the research sector is still too small in terms of human
capacity to achieve the goals set for it.
3.3 The National Research Foundation
As previously mentioned, the NRF was formed in 1998 by integrating the Centre
for Science Development (CSD) of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC)
and the Foundation for Research Development (FRD) into one National Research
Foundation. The mandate of the NRF, (NRF Act, No. 23 of 1998) is to, “Promote
and support research through funding, human resource development and the
provision of the necessary research facilities in order to facilitate the creation of
including indigenous knowledge and thereby to contribute to the improvement of
the quality of life of all the people of the Republic”. The NRF executes its mandate
primarily through universities, science councils and museums. In this section
only a few of the most prominent NRF initiatives will be highlighted.
In supporting human capacity development, the NRF offers a number of grants in
the form of bursaries, scholarships and fellowships, aimed at the next generation
to focus its support on postgraduate and postdoctoral students. The two main
categories of student support are free-standing scholarships (for which students
apply directly to the NRF) and grantholder-linked bursaries (where a research
grantholder is awarded a number of bursaries and selects candidates). Most free-
standing scholarships are for South African citizens or permanent residents only,
except for postdoctoral fellowships (which must be utilised in South Africa) and
innovation scholarships. In awarding all scholarships, equity and transformation
are considered. NRF scholarship opportunities include (but are not limited to):
• Prestigious and Equity Scholarships for full time study from Honours/BTech
level to postdoctoral level in South Africa;
• Scarce Skills Development Fund Scholarships aimed at key areas in the
information technology and computer sciences, engineering, demography
and tourism;
• Innovation Scholarships for postgraduate study in SET or the social sciences
and humanities at Honours, Masters and doctoral level in South Africa or
abroad; and
• Renewable and Sustainable Energy Scholarships for Masters and doctoral
58 CeSTii (2014)
208 Higher education reviewed
Aside from scholarships for postgraduate students, the NRF also offers
other human capacity development grants aimed at supporting emerging and
established researchers. Those for emerging researchers are aimed at supporting
graduates working on developing their research portfolios; and at post-doctoral
fellows who may want to develop their careers in academia.59 In order to support
knowledge production and international research competitiveness, the NRF
also provides funding directed towards areas of national strategic focus and
geographic advantage, such as astronomy, biodiversity, earth systems science,
indigenous knowledge systems, marine sciences and paleaosciences.60
The NRF balances the above support with funding through direct parliamentary
vote. Between 2001 and 2007, the NRF organised its support in terms of ten
nationally relevant focus areas. Following a review in 2007, it adopted a more
hybrid system with funding instruments for different categories of established
researchers.61 The NRF, together with the DST, has established two strategic
funding initiatives, namely Centres of Excellence and the South African Research
Chairs Initiative (SARChI). The Centres of Excellence, which can be virtual or
physical, encourage research collaboration across disciplines and institutions on
locally-relevant issues with a long-term focus. The original seven centres launched
62 The SARChI was established in 2006
in the hope of attracting and retaining research excellence at universities. Funding
for each Chair, which is awarded to a university in collaboration with another
annum. The programme aims to develop high quality research and innovation, to
produce quality postgraduate students, and to attract and retain research talent
from abroad or industry.63
The NRF rating system for individual researchers is primarily based on peer
review (by both local and international peers) of the quality and impact of an
individual’s research outputs over the previous eight years. Between 1984 and
59 Examples of these funding programmes are the Thuthuka Programme and Research Career
Advancement Fellowships.
60 Some of these include the African Coelacanth Ecosystem Programme; African Origins Platform
(Palaeoscience Strategy); Global Change, Society and Sustainability Research Programme;
Indigenous Knowledge Systems; the Community University Partnership Programme and the South
African Antarctica National Programme (SANAP).
61 These include Blue Skies Research; Community Engagement Programme; Competitive Programme
for Rated Researchers; Competitive Support for Unrated Researchers; and Education Research. The
programme for rated researchers is restricted to established researchers with a current NRF rating.
62 These are in the following areas: Mineral and Energy Resource Analysis; Human Development;
Food Security; Scientometrics and STI Policy; Mathematical and Statistical Sciences; Palaeosciences;
Theoretical Physics; Epidemiology Modelling and Analysis; Climate and Earth Systems Science; Tree
Health Biotechnology; Biomedical Tuberculosis Research; Catalysis; Birds as Key to Biodiversity
Conservation; Strong Materials; and Invasion Biology.
63 In 2014 there were 150 SARChi Chairs as follows: CPUT (2); DUT (1), UFH (1); NMMU (6); NWU (5);
RU (10), SU (18); TUT (6); UCT (33); UFS (3); UJ (7); UKZN (10), UL (1); UNISA (2); UP (11); UV (1);
UWC (10); UZ (1); WITS (21); and WSU (1).
Research 209
2001 only researchers within the natural sciences and engineering participated
64 In 2014,
there were just fewer than 3 000 rated academics. The NRF also provides research
equipment support and is responsible for a number of national research facilities.
Individuals or institutions can apply for medium to large equipment that can be
used in one institution or shared within the region. National Research Facilities
65
3.4 The Academy of Science (ASSAf)
Given that the NSI lacked a broadly accepted national science academy to
mobilise expertise across the full range of empirical disciplines, the Academy of
Science of South Africa (ASSAf) was inaugurated in 1996.66 In the early 1990s, the
Foundation for Research and Development had invited the three organisations
aspiring to be national science academies to discuss the establishment of a fully
representative science academy,67
Academy of Science of South Africa Act.68
ASSAf was established with a dual mandate to honour distinguished scholars
national challenges from a variety of perspectives. Some of ASSAf’s aims are
to recognise and reward excellence; promote innovation, scholarly activity
and enquiry-based education; provide effective, evidence-based advice; and
promote national, regional and international collaboration. Its 425 members
are drawn from the full spectrum of disciplines. The Academy is funded through
a Parliamentary grant managed through the DST, complemented by donor or
project funding. ASSAf has produced various studies, including those on scholarly
publishing, the PhD degree, and the Humanities, which are referred to in this
chapter.
3.5 Current data on research performance
The data below indicates the changes in the sector with regard to research
output, research graduates and NRF-rated researchers. It emphasises the
64
internationally acclaimed researcher (B); established researcher (C); prestigious award (P); or
the sixth year or the rating lapses.
65 The national research facilities are the iThemba Laboratory for Accelerator Based Sciences (LABS);
the National Zoological Gardens; the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO);
the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO); the South African Environmental Observation
Network (SAEON); South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB) and the Square
Kilometre Array Project (SKA).
66 For details, see http://www.assaf.co.za/; See also Gevers in CHE (2016)
university leaders, 1981-2014.
67 These were the Royal Society of South Africa (RSSAf), representing mostly English-speaking white
scientists; the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie van Wetenskap en Kuns (SAAWK), representing the
interests of Afrikaans-speaking white scientists which functioned during the apartheid era as the
de facto national academy; and the Science and the Engineering Academy of South Africa (SEASA),
which was created in 1986 to address educational and professionalisation issues confronting black
scientists in the natural sciences and engineering.
68
210 Higher education reviewed
increased focus on research as well as the limited gains in terms of research
graduates. The majority of the data (unless otherwise indicated) can be found in
VitalStats 2012.69
4. Local and international developments
during the past ten years
The research environment over the last decade has changed in a number of
69 CHE (2014) VitalStats.
14 000
12 000
10 000
8 000
6 000
4 000
2 000
02007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Journals 7163.25 7638.17 8256.61 8603.36 9890.86 11 035.72
Books 266.12 266.43 376.71 401.68 412.51 580.80
Conference proceedings 321.59 448.76 476.02 742.76 887.63 747.29
Total 7 750.96 8 353.36 9 109.34 9 747.80 11 191.00 12 363.81
Source: Annual Ministerial Research Output Reports and HEMIS 2005-2013, extracted annually
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
02010 2011 2012
B&C 5% 7% 8%
Edu 6% 6% 7%
Hum 34% 30% 31%
SET 55% 57% 54%
Source: Annual Ministerial Research Output Reports and HEMIS 2005-2013, extracted annually
Research 211
70 The CESM categories are as follows: CESM 01: Agriculture, Agricultural Operations and Related
Sciences; CESM 02: Architecture and the Built Environment; CESM 03: Visual and Performing Arts;
CESM 04: Business, Economics and Management Studies; CESM 05: Communication, Journalism
and Related Studies; CESM 06: Computer and Information Sciences; CESM 07: Education; CESM 08:
Engineering; CESM 09: Health Professions and Related Clinical Sciences; CESM 10: Family Ecology
and Consumer Sciences; CESM 11: Languages, Linguistics and Literature; CESM 12: Law; CESM 13:
Life Sciences; CESM 14: Physical Sciences; CESM 15: Mathematics and Statistics; CESM 16: Military
Sciences; CESM 17: Philosophy, Religion and Theology; CESM 18: Psychology; CESM 19: Public
Management and Services; CESM 20: Social Sciences.
70
16%
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0134567891011 12 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
8% 8% 8% 8%
1% 1% 1% 1%
2% 2%
7% 7%
15%
0% 0%
5%
6%6%
9%
3%
50 000
45 000
40 000
35 000
30 000
25 000
20 000
15 000
10 000
5 000
0African Coloured Indian White Total African Coloured Indian White Total
2007 2012
PG up to Hons 9 885 1 417 1 578 9 161 22 112 18 140 2 344 2 081 10 310 33 385
Masters 2 743 367 683 3 685 7 516 4 443 596 840 4 212 10 334
Doctoral 405 71 104 691 1 274 804 98 141 817 1 878
Total 13 033 1 855 2 365 13 537 30 902 23 387 3 038 3 062 15 339 45 597
212 Higher education reviewed
ways, some intended and some unintended. The policy developments were aimed
to steer the sector in a certain direction, and while certain policy goals have been
achieved, others have been tempered by counter-trends. In many cases, these
have resulted from institutions responding in unexpected ways, although the
continuously changing national and international context has also impacted on
the outcomes of policy interventions.
In this section, some of the major developments of the past decade are
institutional mergers on research and debates on differentiation. This is followed
by international developments affecting the research sector, such as the Open
Access movement and the ranking of universities. Finally, national areas of
concern, and the initiatives that have been introduced in response to these, are
discussed.
The purpose and process of institutional mergers are discussed elsewhere in
this review, but what is important for this chapter is the impact that the mergers
have had on the research environment. Prior to the mergers, the higher education
landscape was divided between technikons and universities. The technikons, on
the one hand, focused on technical training and diplomas and developed close links
much a requirement as industry experience. The universities, on the other hand,
provided a spectrum from research-focused to mainly teaching institutions. In
general, as noted earlier, they produced the vast majority of research and research
graduates. With the mergers implemented from 2002 onwards, the landscape
changed and three new institutional types emerged – traditional universities,
_
Natural Sciences
and Engineering (NSE) and Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH)
3 500
3 000
2 500
2 000
1 500
1 000
500
0NSE SSH NSE SSH NSE SSH NSE SSH NSE SSH NSE SSH NSE SSH NSE SSH NSE SSH NSE SSH NSE SSH NSE SSH
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Source – NRF
A B C P Y L Total Grand Total
Research 213
comprehensive universities and universities of technology (UoT). With the name
‘university’ now applied across the sector, the nature of these institutions also
changed and all, although to varying degrees, were now expected to engage in
were given a lower target than traditional universities, it was high considering
their history.
institutional types continue.71 UoTs produced 5% of research publications,
the comprehensives 17%, and the traditional universities 78%. With regard to
publication output per academic staff member, the continued disparity is even
historically white institutions that had been less impacted upon by mergers,
namely SU, UCT, RU, UP and Wits; the per capita outputs at these institutions
ranged from 1.04 units per capita to 1.36. The next group of institutions was more
varied: traditional universities – historically black or white, and merged or not –
such as UKZN, NWU, UFS, UWC and UFH; and some comprehensives, distance- or
contact-mode (such as UJ, UNISA and NMMU) with per capita outputs ranging
to 0.39 units, includes all UoTs and some historically black universities, some of
which had been through a merger process.
Despite this continued disparity, there has been a substantial increase in research
output at many of the UoTs and historically black institutions. For instance, when
considering weighted research output per capita for 2012 (including research
graduates), UFH and UWC are at the top of the second cluster of institutions with
1.53 and 1.51 units per capita respectively.72 This places them seventh and eighth
UoT target of 0.5 units per capita, it is evident that TUT has exceeded this target,
reaching 0.58 units, and CPUT is close to target with 0.46 units per capita.73 These
institutions ten years ago.
focus on research at institutions which had not previously been geared for
research, and where staff members had earlier neither been required to focus
shown in the following table.
71 DHET (2014) Ministerial report on the evaluation of the 2012 universities’ research publication
outputs.
72 Weighted output includes units allocated to institutions for the number of students graduating with
a masters or doctoral degree.
73 DHET (2014) Ministerial report on the evaluation of the 2012 universities’ research publication outputs.
214 Higher education reviewed
Instuon
Sta with Masters as highest qualicaon Sta with Doctorate as highest qualicaon
2005 2012 2005 2012
Headcount %Headcount %Headcount %Headcount %
TUT 454 20% 306 36% 202 9% 178 21%
CPUT 276 19% 341 45% 90 6% 124 16%
DUT 232 17% 279 47% 59 4% 88 15%
VUT 167 20% 150 42% 55 7% 44 13%
CUT 50 6% 114 42% 39 4% 72 26%
MUT 56 31% 79 44% 13 7% 16 9%
Source: HEMIS data
which needed to consolidate and integrate very different collections, catalogue
databases, subscriptions, policies, budgets and human resources.74 This was
e-resources. Issues of equity, redress, quality development and new national
policies had to be taken into consideration at the same time. It is here that the
library consortia (discussed later) played an important role. Despite the merger
process, library resources (including electronic resources) continue to differ
vastly within the sector, with a few research-intensive libraries maintaining
well-stocked collections, while others lack the basic resources and ICT needed
by staff and students. The situation is made harder by the new e-resource tax
implemented in 2014 which will, in effect, reduce the already inadequate library
resources by a further 14%.75 When this is combined with the impact of the
declining Rand, libraries argue that resources could have been cut in real terms
by as much as 40%.
4.2 Differentiation of institutional types
Throughout the last twenty years, discussions concerning differentiation of
the institutional landscape have been contentious. This is largely as a result of
South Africa’s past with its divided system based on race, as well as traditional
debates on more subtle kinds of differentiation began after the release by the CHE
of its task team report on the Size and Shape of Higher Education.76 The task team’s
recommendations on a new vertical differentiation of universities between broadly
research-active and so-called ‘bedrock’ institutions with a few niche areas of
research were not widely accepted by the sector, and instead it was agreed to accept a
74 G. Thomas (2007) ‘Academic libraries in the second decade of democracy: Critical issues and
challenges’ in T. Bothma, P. Underwood & P. Ngulube (eds.) Libraries for the future: Progress and
development of South African libraries.
75 LIASA (2014) ‘VAT on digital media will contribute to South African higher education libraries
losing over 40% of their purchasing power’ (joint press statement).
76 CHE (2000) Towards a new higher education landscape: Meeting the equity, quality and social
development imperatives of South Africa in the 21st century.
Research 215
universities of technology, based on the past reality, rather than the determination
of new missions and visions. The differentiation debate has continued but nothing
substantive has been agreed. Some general principles that have been aired are:
that differentiated funding would be needed for a differentiated system (unlike
the current funding formula); that universities should be able to determine and
change their own mission statements as necessary; and that differentiation should
be horizontal and not vertical, with institutions of a different type being accorded
The 2013 White Paper for Post School Education and Training also emphasised the
need for differentiation in a purposeful way, although the precise form it should take
was not articulated.77 The White Paper acknowledged the need for differentiation both
in the context of the entire post-school system and in the university sector itself. It
recognised that much of the current differentiation was the result of historical legacy
rather than being policy-driven and, as a result, had led to unacceptable inequality
and inadequate resourcing. The White Paper supported the continued use of the
categorisation into traditional and comprehensive universities and UoTs, but talked
of a “continuum [of institutions which] would range from largely undergraduate
institutions to specialised, research-intensive universities which offer teaching
programmes from undergraduate to doctoral level”.78 Within this framework, it
stressed that all institutions “must offer high-quality undergraduate education” and
address the “imperatives of equity and social justice”.79 Furthermore it highlighted that
all universities must engage in some level and type of research, although this could
vary between institutions based on individual mandates. The important link between
teaching and research has been recognised and discussions on differentiation now
highlight the importance of all institutions engaging in all three core mandates
(including social engagement) and linking these to enhance each other.
institutions. In an analysis of the HEQC’s audit reports carried out by the Centre
for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST), the following
• High-level leadership and commitment to research;
• Sophisticated research management information system;
• Sustained high levels of research outputs;
• A research strategy focused on areas of research strength;
• A sizable population of academics with doctorates, NRF-rated scientists, and
postgraduate students.80
CHET has based their categorisation of institutions on the following factors:
research productivity; number of staff with doctorates; masters and doctoral
enrolments as well as graduations; and masters and doctoral enrolments
77 DHET (2013)
and integrated post-school system.
78 Ibid., p. 29-30.
79 Ibid., p. 29-30.
80 CREST (2009) ‘Meta-analysis of audit reports: Research’ (unpublished report).
216 Higher education reviewed
relative to staff numbers. This led them to place institutions into three clusters
of high, medium and low research productivity.81 A critique of such clusters is
that historical legacy is not taken into account and that, therefore, no UoTs are
A strong view emanating from the Research Task Team of this review is that
both teaching and research should be undertaken at all universities and that they
directly inform one another. However, the areas of research and teaching and the
focus of the institution will differ. Sensible differentiation, with the necessary
funding, is needed if the country is going to compete globally in terms of research
and innovation and if the skills needed by the country are to be generated.
With the growing focus on the integrity of research in the literature internationally
and in South Africa, and with the increased use of publication metrics in determining
all forms of research funding and performance assessment, the responsible conduct
of research has become an important topic. This is of particular importance in the
wake of revelations internationally of fraud or inappropriate behaviour in the
research and publishing context. Furthermore, the increasingly global research
environment requires a shared understanding of relevant principles and values in
the conduct of research. According to Rossouw et al:
The notion of ‘responsible conduct of research’ is distinguishable from both ‘research
integrity’ and ‘research ethics’. ‘Research ethics’ usually includes the processes in terms
of which the proposed research study is scrutinised to assess compliance with the desired
values and principles that are part of ethical research. ‘Research integrity’, on the other
hand, has a broader meaning and may be understood to also incorporate implementation
of the research processes and the conduct of the researchers. ‘Responsible conduct of
research’ is an umbrella term that includes notions like authorship, plagiarism, research
interest, research ethics and other training. The distinction drawn between ‘research
integrity’ and ‘responsible conduct of research’ is increasingly fading in practice. 82
The 2010 Singapore Statement on Research Integrity places the onus of correct
conduct on the researcher, not the institution. In South Africa, there are few cases
of research misconduct which have become publicly known – in general these
tend to be dealt with quietly. There is no national oversight body and no national
code of conduct, only institutional guidelines, although some institutions have
endorsed the Singapore Statement.83
International studies into the prevalence of research misconduct indicate that it
researchers per annum, or about 2% of all scientists. A larger number of cases of
81 CHET (2010) ‘Higher Education Summit, March 2010: Institutional differentiation’ (presentation);
CHET (2011) ‘Differentiation: Reasons and purposes, systems and methodologies’ (presentation).
82 T.M. Rossouw, C. van Zyl & A. Pope (2014) ‘Responsible conduct of research: Global trends, local
opportunities’ in South African Journal of Science, 110(1/2).
83 Ibid.
Research 217
what are called ‘questionable research practices’ have been experienced – 33.7%
of respondents admitted to this in one questionnaire – and an even greater number
of academics suspect their colleagues of such practices (72% in one study). The
impact of research misconduct can be serious. In a UK example, healthcare policy
84 Research
has been undertaken to determine the reasons for the apparent recent increase
in research misconduct, and the main reason appears to be the pressure for high
research outputs in the climate of international rankings (see below) and funding
and recognition based on output. This has also resulted in increased plagiarism
and the practice of salami-slicing noted above. Another factor may be a lack of
clarity on what constitutes misconduct.85
While there has been a move internationally towards national frameworks
or guidelines on research misconduct, the issue of research ethics is much
better structured and monitored (also in South Africa). Interest in the ethics
of research (as it impacts on humans) began to increase in the post-World
War Two era after the outcry regarding the experiments carried out by Nazi
Germany. This led to a focus on medical ethics, with the relationship between
the ethics of medical research and medical practice closely linked.86 Guidelines
Medical Research Council (MRC) in 1979, and these have been updated regularly,
most recently in 2002. Looked at more broadly, the ethical conduct of research
is a key element in the establishment of research excellence. The reputational
risks arise primarily from the activities of individuals, but also affect the
institutions to which they are attached. In order to safeguard the reputations of
both individuals and institutions, a set of structures needs to be put in place in
institutions and at a national level.
In South Africa, universities have generally developed senate committees to
deal with research ethics and integrity, although the authority of such committees
may be delegated to faculty committees. Given the seriousness of ethical lapses,
it is nevertheless desirable to have institutional level committees that deal
with these matters through so-called institutional review boards (IRBs). The
committees are generally constituted to ensure appropriate expertise. In the case
of human and animal subjects of research, there is national legislation regarding
the composition of the committees.87 These committees also give attention to:
preservation of research data; adjudicating cases of plagiarism; investigating
questions of authorship.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid.
86 S.R. Benatar & W.A. Landman (2006) ‘Bioethics in South Africa’ in Cambridge Quarterly of
Healthcare Ethics, (15), pp. 239-247; S.R. Benatar & C.R. Vaughan (2008) ‘Global & local forces
shaping the research agenda & the governance of research ethics’ in South African Journal of Science,
(104), pp. 439-442.
87 The following are examples of such committees:
• Involvement of human subjects in the Health Sciences, including Psychology: This committee
will generally be based in a faculty of Health Sciences and deal with all clinically-related research
involving human subjects. In the early 2000s, an Interim National Health Research Ethics
218 Higher education reviewed
Despite these developments, research ethics protocols are still perceived to
be less thorough in South Africa than in some other parts of the world, and this,
coupled with the lower cost of clinical and research trials in developing countries,
has led to an increase in such international clinical trials conducted in South Africa.
In 2008, it was estimated that about $150 million was spent on clinical research in
South Africa annually. The concern is that this research is often externally-driven
such that there has been a need for an increasing focus on ensuring that research
is in line with local needs and priorities.88
scholarship agreements
It is well recognised in the current economic climate that collaboration and
the sharing of resources are of fundamental importance for the maximum
development of the research sector. As an expression of the need to collaborate,
the mid-1990s and early 2000s saw the development of a number of regional
consortia designed to bring together the universities in a particular region.89
As part of these consortia, subordinate library consortia were also developed
with the assistance of grant funding, such as that from the Andrew W Mellon
and Carnegie Foundations. While the consortia themselves proved to be short-
lived, with the exception of the Cape Higher Education Consortium (CHEC), the
Coalition of South African Library Consortia (COSALC), formed in 2004, continues
to operate as SANLiC to negotiate licencing agreements for electronic resources
87 (continued)
Committee (INHREC) was established which produced national guidelines for medical research
and for the accreditation of all Research Ethics Committees (RECs) in South Africa. The 2003
Health Act included the formation of a statutory body – the National Health Research Ethics
Council (NHREC) (http://www.nhrec.org.za/). This body determines guidelines for health RECs,
registers and audits these committees and sets norms and standards for conducting research on
humans and animals and for clinical trials. The body also deals with complaints. Developments
in terms of research ethics were also made as a result of increasing international collaboration
Landman (2006) ‘Bioethics in South Africa’ in Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 15, pp.
239-247).
• Involvement of human subjects in the Humanities and Social Sciences, excluding Psychology: This
committee oversees studies with human subjects based on observations of behaviour, oral and
written material, and surveys.
• Animal Use and Care: This committee overseas all research that is conducted on vertebrate
animals and on some categories of invertebrate animals. The committee’s responsibility is to see
that animals are housed and used appropriately (and will oversee all animal-holding facilities).
The experimental work should have been carefully designed to minimise the numbers used and
distress.
committee needs to ensure that the institution’s facilities and research on GMOs comply with
appropriate legislation. Furthermore, research activities that could potentially have adverse
environmental impact must be reviewed by the committee.
88 Benatar & Landman (2006) ‘Bioethics in South Africa’ in Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics,
15, pp. 239-247.
89 G. Thomas & I. Fourie (2006) ‘Academic library consortia in South Africa: Where we come from and
where we are heading’ in The Journal of academic librarianship, 32(4), pp. 432-438.
Research 219
for the higher education library sector.90
In terms of research publications, collaboration is increasing as is evident
from a growing number of South African-authored publications with at least
one author from another country. The majority of this collaboration is with
developed countries; most frequently with the USA and UK. In Africa, South Africa
collaborates most with Nigerian authors. Collaboration with the BRICS countries,
most notably China, is also increasing.91
The importance of collaboration is also evident in the way in which some funding
programmes are structured. As an example, the European Union-funded Erasmus
Mundus programme, a cooperation and mobility programme that aims to enhance
the quality of scholarship and to promote dialogue and understanding between
people and cultures, requires partnerships both between local institutions and
to 2013 at a total cost of €2.4 million, and the programme is continuing.
the last two decades has been the way in which researchers obtain access to
scholarly journals and research data.92 In the past, libraries could only afford
to subscribe to a few printed commercial journals, thus limiting the access
academics had to the relevant literature. This system has been transformed into a
more user-friendly, but still very expensive, practice of aggregated subscriptions
based on institutional e-licences. The new model has practical advantages, but
overall access is still limited by cost and the squeezing out of smaller publishers
through the bundling system. In this environment, there is increasing support for
the development of open access publishing. At present, between a quarter and
half of the new literature produced every year is free online to users worldwide,
while access to the older literature is patchy, and mostly pay-to-read.
The open access movement
In South Africa, the cost of subscriptions is affected by the assessment of the
country as a medium per capita income economy, the weakness of the Rand and
the absence of exemptions from duty and VAT on academic books and journals.
These developments began to have an impact on research productivity and in
this context, local support for the international open access movement gathered
momentum, despite inertia among academics and policy-makers who tended to
believe in the long-term dominance of commercial journals.
The open access movement has espoused two main forms of online
dissemination: the promotion of (mostly sponsored or subsidised) free-online
open access e-journals (often called the Gold Route), and the promotion of
90 Thomas (2007) ‘Academic libraries in the second decade of democracy: Critical issues and
challenges’ in Bothma et al. (eds.) Libraries for the future.
91 NACI (2015) South African science and technology innovation indicators, 2014.
92 W. Gevers (2013) ‘Access to the published scholarly literature in South Africa – A massive but still
incomplete transformation over two decades’ (unpublished paper); W. Gevers (2013) ‘Hidden
levers of science are set to become more accessible to all’ in Mail & Guardian, 5 August.
220 Higher education reviewed
(pre-prints) are placed once the pay-to-read version has been published (usually
espousing a variant of the older page charges model, which requires the payment
of substantial article processing charges by authors to cover costs of free online
aspect of open access publishing is a focus on article impact factor, rather than on
in the USA.
There are now debates in most developed countries about the Green, Gold and
commercial Gold routes. Article processing charges could eventually replace
subscriptions in a systemic commercial Gold Route publishing system that would
still be very costly. Other possibilities include an expanded Green Route which
forces publishers to match the value they add to the voluntary work of authors
and peer reviewers, or better regulation of the journal-publishing industry (which
could include abandoning journal impact factors in favour of article-level metrics)
and limiting the funding of publishing costs to the lowest available rates in a given
There were a number of conferences to promote open access modes in South
Africa in the mid-2000s.93 Investigations into open access possibilities also
began at ASSAf with a study into research publishing in South Africa.94 The study
the key barrier to the enhancement of the quantity and quality of local research.
The report recommended that the DST take responsibility for ensuring that
open access initiatives be promoted in order to enhance the visibility of South
African research. It recommended that online, open access (Gold route) versions
of South African research journals should be funded through a per-article charge
system and that institutional repositories should be established (Green Route)
and augmented by a central repository for those institutions that were unable
to run a sustainable repository. Both the DST and the then-DoE supported the
recommendations in principle, and ASSAf was charged (with DST funding) with
overseeing the implementation of the ten recommendations. ASSAf established
a National Scholarly (Journal) Editors Forum (NSEF), published best-practice
guidelines for editing and peer review, and carried out a study on scholarly book
publishing in South Africa.95
One of ASSAf’s major initiatives was the establishment of SciELO SA – an open
access searchable, full-text and fully indexed journal database that covers a
quality-assured collection of peer reviewed scholarly journals. The project was
93 One, entitled ‘Open Access Scholarly Communications’, took place in July 2004. An initiative of
the conference was Sivulile (We are Open in isiXhosa), an informal group constituted in 2005 to
2005 and it provided participants with an understanding of technical and policy issues concerning
institutional repositories. The third key event was an Open Access Workshop for Southern Africa
(2006) which focused on open access journals, institutional repositories, advocacy and the role of
funding agencies.
94 ASSAf (2006) Report on a strategic approach to research publishing in South Africa.
95 ASSAf (2009) Scholarly books.
Research 221
the SciELO portal, which had its origins in Brazil. There are now 51 journal titles
in the collection and all were subject to rigorous peer review prior to inclusion.
The SciELO SA collection was initially managed by ASSAf as a pilot project in
the collection, and the number of visits to the site.
May month Total visits Daily visits Countries Cies Arcles Issues Titles
2010 24 764 825 170 3 292 1 584 91 17
2011 29 544 953 172 3 154 2 904 166 22 **
2012 49 984 1 612 182 4 269 4 650 211 23 **
2013 56 808 1 833 193 3 854 6 560 277 35
2014 72 987 2354 206 5 467 12 816 831 51
2015 145 722 4701 205 6 149 13 942 941 53
Source: ASSAf
** Due to delays in the peer review processes
Barriers to the adoption of open access
Despite international momentum in which a growing number of countries are
demanding that research conducted with public funds must be available through
open access channels, open access is still only used by a small minority of South
African researchers and research administrators. In the absence of a national
policy framework recognising the public right to access taxpayer-funded research,
the majority of researchers have chosen to take a conservative approach while
the nature of publication is evolving. Many are unconvinced of the feasibility of
an open access system and some have expressed concerns about quality. There
is also no systematic collection of data on open access publications in South
Africa as part of any of the research assessment exercises, although between a
quarter and a third of the country’s DHET-accredited journals are now free online
publications. In general, few researchers post in institutional repositories and
open access practices are not always rewarded. One possible explanation for the
lack of policy is the emphasis given, in the interest of enhanced innovation, to
intellectual property (IP) exploitation. Open access is perceived as undermining
IP protection, even though this need not be the case. Another factor may be the
limited funding for research, which restricts the inclusion in the award of grants
of additional (publishing) costs.96
Despite South Africa not keeping pace with international developments in this
area, initiatives in relation to open access do exist. At institutional level there
are 26 South African repositories in the international Directory of Open Access
96 The South African Medical Research Council as a funding agency does allow use of its grants to
cover article processing charges.
222 Higher education reviewed
Repositories (OpenDOAR) and 67 journals are registered in the Directory of Open
Access Journals.97 In 2012, a number of South African institutions signed the
Berlin Declaration of Open Access. The NRF has set up a national portal for South
African theses and dissertations in collaboration with the Committee of Higher
Education Librarians of South Africa (CHELSA). The Southern African Regional
Universities’ Association, representing 64 universities in sub-Saharan Africa, has
also released a research report on Opening Access to Knowledge in Southern Africa,
which recommended open access as strategy for the region.
Given the prohibitive cost of accessing a range of commercial (subscription)
journals, ASSAf was mandated by the Minister of Science and Technology to
conduct an investigation into the electronic information needs of academic staff,
students and researchers, and to advise on a possible way forward.98
The current system in South Africa is that universities and research councils
subscribe to some full-text electronic databases via SANLiC, which negotiates
the best possible rates for institutions and charges a service fee (see library
consortia, above). This is different from other models such as the Brazilian where
a government-supported national agency negotiates national access at the best
possible rates to international journal platforms (bundled subscriptions) on
behalf of a large number of qualifying public universities.
universities as not only would total system costs be decreased, but access would
be equitable across the system. Various factors appear to impact on the cost of
journal packages, but the seniority of the negotiating group plays a particularly
important role. ASSAf recommended that the management of the proposed
national licensing system should be embedded in a National Digital Library
project, run by the DHET with support from the DST and proposed a consultation
process through a task team which was to consider all aspects pertaining to
implementation, a process which is still ongoing.
4.7 International rankings and South Africa’s standing
The ranking of universities was started in 1983 in the United States with the
publication of a ranking system by U.S. News and World Report as a marketing
device, but rapidly came to be seen by the public as a means for differentiating
between institutions and making choices about which institution to attend.99 A
variety of other ranking systems soon emerged with differing methodologies and
criteria. The ranking systems discussed in this section mainly consider research
countries (not institutions). The various ranking systems are not equivalent and
prioritise different aspects of institutional functioning.
Between 2004 and 2009, The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES)
97 See https://doaj.org/.
98 ASSAf (2011) ‘Improved access to commercial electronic knowledge resources for researchers in
South Africa’ (unpublished paper).
99 Institute for Higher Education Policy (2007) College and university ranking systems – Global
perspectives and challenges; see http://www.usnews.com/.
Research 223
jointly with Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), ran an annual ranking system based on a
set of six factors, the data for which was sourced and analysed by QS. The system
rankings beyond these. The appearance of a number of South Africa universities
in this ranking system can be attributed to these being institutions with a strong
reviewed journals. UCT appeared in the top 200 of this ranking, while Wits, UP
and UKZN were also ranked.
In 2010, the THES developed a new ranking system in collaboration with
Thomson Reuters that makes use of thirteen performance indicators based on
their indexing system.100 These rankings are more restrictive in scope, but the
most research-intensive universities still appear. They list UCT, SU, Wits and
UKZN in the top 400 (depending on the year). The THES with Thomson Reuters
also produces specialist rankings for regions or groupings of countries, such as
the top 100 universities in BRICS & Emerging Economy Countries, which gives an
indication of the state of development of the sector in eighteen emerging market
countries. The results are encouraging for South Africa as despite being the
100.
When the collaboration between QS and the THES came to an end in 2009,
QS launched its own independent ranking system.101 The data for components
of their analysis are sourced from an Elsevier index (Scopus) and the ranking
encompasses approximately 700 universities. South African university rankings
in this table are generally quite consistent with the THES rankings. The number
years to include Rhodes and UJ, suggesting that research development initiatives
may be bearing fruit. In 2013, QS also introduced a ranking of the universities in
BRICS counties. In this system, there are eight South African universities in the
top 100, with half in the top 50. Institutions and policy-makers are thus becoming
increasingly focused on tracking rankings as a means of evaluating research
productivity.
South African institutions are performing well. For instance, the 2013 QS rankings
considered 2 000 universities based on global academic and employer surveys
and Scopus research metrics. The indicators are: academic reputation (40%) and
employer reputation (10%) both from surveys; citations (20%) from Scopus; and
data indicators – student to staff ratio (20%), proportion of international faculty
or staff (5%) and international students (5%). The four South African institutions
ranked in the top 500 fared as below:
100 See http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/.
101 See http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings.
224 Higher education reviewed
Instuon 2013
(overall)
Academic
reputaon
Employer
reputaon
Student:
sta
Internaonal
faculty
Internaonal
students
Citaons
UCT 145 142 170 401+* 194 220 137
Wits 313 262 349 401+ 131 401+ 360
SU 387 287 354 401+ 381 401+ 372
UP 471-80 305 311 401+ 401+ 401+ 401+
*did not fall in the top 400 ranked
What is immediately evident is that South African institutions rank poorly
when it comes to student to staff ratios. In fact, even within the BRICS ranking,
no South African institutions featured in the top 100 when this ratio was selected
as an indicator. Ironically, it seems to be teaching and learning factors, especially
in terms of the size of the academic staff complement (as discussed in the
ranking systems. It is also clear that for South African institutions, reputation and
research are generally the stronger elements in such tables. Similarly, when the
BRICS ranking is ordered by citations, the number of South African institutions
in the top 100 increases from eight to ten, and UCT moves to position number
2 (from 11), with Wits at number 5 (from 31). The QS 2013 table can also be
Humanities and Social Sciences & Management. It is also evident that Engineering
& Technology is the weakest, and is ranked only for UCT. Natural Sciences is the
mind during the later discussion of the state of humanities in South Africa.
Instuon 2013
(overall)
Arts &
Humanies
Engineering &
Technology
Life Sciences &
Medicine Natural Sciences Social Science &
Management
UCT 145 108 282 142 254 112
Wits 313 144 - 274 391 210
SU 387 231 - 320 345 271
UP 471-80 292 - - - 270
In 2003, the Shanghai Jaio Tong University established the Academic Ranking
of World Universities (ARWU) in order to gauge the standing of Chinese
universities globally using a set of six measures.102 Criteria include publication
in the journals Nature and Science, and the number of publications indexed in
the Science Citation Indices of Thomson Reuters. This means that more than
1 000 institutions are eligible, and the top 500 are ranked. Seven South African
universities are considered for this ranking, and three have managed to remain
within the top 500.
While the majority of systems rank individual universities, Universitas21
102 See http://www.shanghairanking.com/.
Research 225
Ranking is the only one to assess national higher education systems.103 These
rankings at system level are intended to be used by both governments and
universities, and attempt to highlight the importance of a strong higher education
environment for economic and cultural development. The 2014 ranking is the
and separately based on four factors (resources, environment, connectivity
and output). In 2014, Universitas21 also took each country’s level of economic
development into account to create a second set of ranking results. Overall, the top
ten ranked systems in 2014 were (in order): the USA; Sweden; Canada; Denmark;
Finland; Switzerland; the Netherlands; the UK; Australia and Singapore. There
has been little change in the top ten since 2013, although the order has changed.
The most notable changes were China’s move up by eight places. In the second
set, countries are scored on how they perform on each of 24 measures, relative
to countries at similar stages of economic development as measured by GDP per
capita. This approach produced very different results, with the top ten ranked
countries being (in order): Sweden; Finland; Denmark; Serbia; New Zealand;
the UK; Canada; Portugal; China and the Netherlands. When taking economic
development measures into account, the biggest change was seen in the countries
ranked both highest and lowest in the overall ranking. Serbia, South Africa, India
and China all improved their positions by 25 places. By taking context into
account, the publishers of these rankings believe they have overcome some of the
common criticisms of rankings. South Africa was ranked 45th overall. It performed
well in respect of connectivity. An important comparison for the local research
sector was South Africa’s rank at 41 for publications per head and higher, at 24,
for their average impact. When economic context was taken into account, South
Africa was ranked 17th.
The ranking of universities has led to a great deal of debate and controversy.104
Much of the criticism has hinged on accusations regarding the bias in favour of
the natural sciences (for instance a university with a medical school is likely
English-language publications. The ranking agencies have attempted to address
these criticisms by adjusting the indicators to be more inclusive of the humanities
and social sciences, and to consider work published in languages other than
practical nor desired; that some ranking systems change criteria annually, making
longitudinal comparison almost impossible; and that rankings fail to take context
into account. Added to these is the excessive or exclusive focus on research,
despite the fact that undergraduate students use the rankings as a way to select
their institutions, which has resulted in criticism from those concerned with
teaching and learning who feel that this aspect is undervalued. Academic staff
members at many institutions are placed under great pressure to improve their
university’s rank. Data reliability has also been questioned. Despite these issues,
103 See http://www.universitas21.com/.
104 See, for example, J.C. Shin, R. Kevin & U. Teichler (2011) University rankings: Theoretical basis,
methodology and impacts on global higher education; G. Federkeil (2002) ‘Some aspects of ranking
Higher Education in Europe, 27(4).
226 Higher education reviewed
rankings have gained general acceptance internationally in the news media and
with the public, and are, most likely, here to stay. 105
4.8 Doctoral graduations
The PhD degree has become an international benchmark for starting competence
as an independent researcher and is also widely used as a proxy for the health
of a higher education system. While registration, supervision and examination
practices and requirements vary, it is generally accepted that a doctoral graduate
must have undertaken independent research to address unresolved problems in
has placed doctoral degrees at the highest level (10) and it has become common
practice that only a doctorate-holder can supervise study for a doctoral degree. 106
The number of research graduates in South Africa is low which affects academic
107 While there is little empirical evidence
suggesting a direct link between the ratio of doctoral graduates per capita and
economic performance of the country, the National Development Plan (NDP) has set
a target of over 5 000 doctoral graduates per year by 2030 (up from 1 878 in 2012),
with at least 25% of all enrolments at postgraduate level.108 The plan also expects that
over 75% of staff members should have a doctorate by 2030, which is ambitious given
that in 2012 only 39% of permanent academic staff were known to hold one.
An ASSAf study on doctorates found that PhD graduates in South Africa were
still predominantly white and male, and were working mainly in the humanities
and social sciences.109
economics and management sciences, and religion. The study noted generally slow
affect completion rates. Some of these included that many students undertaking
a PhD were of an age where they had family and other commitments; there were
also inadequate socialisation experiences with other postgraduate students,
leading to isolation; and in many cases a poor relationship with the supervisor.
with both their supervisors and their personal progress.110
Finally, and as expected, funding for PhD studies has a major impact on
completion rates and also on the number and demographic of students who
pursue postgraduate studies. The SAYAS study found that the majority of those
enrolled in doctoral studies planned an academic career. Both reports made a
number of key recommendations for improving the number of doctoral graduates
in South Africa: the need for full-time study at this level, and the necessary levels
of funding to support this; the need for a dual system of supervisors and mentors
to assist with the different issues faced by postgraduate students; and the need
for institutional differentiation. In addition, the ASSAf study pointed out that
105 B. Wildavsky (2010) The great brain race: How global universities are reshaping the world.
106 DHET (2008)
107 See Figure 4 and ASSAf (2010) The PhD Study.
108 NPC (2011) National Development Plan.
109 ASSAf (2010) The PhD Study.
110 SAYAS (2013)
Research 227
the then exclusive use of the supervisor-student model was constraining in the
light of the limited supervision capacity in the system. It therefore encouraged
different formats for the PhD, for instance by peer reviewed journal articles or
via a cohort of students who follow classes and embark on research in a more
structured environment.
framework for higher education, the types of doctoral study were expanded to
include the possibility of a professional doctorate undertaken on a cohort basis,
and the NRF introduced its PhD project, which aims to provide a hub for peer
and mentor support for PhD candidates, increase the number and diversity of
mentors, and develop partnerships with the private sector.
4.9 The role of the humanities
With the South African government’s focus on technological innovation and
the economic impact of research-based knowledge, there has been much concern
in its own community that the so-called broad humanities (the traditional arts
of the BA and MA degrees and the social sciences) might be declining within an
NSI more pre-occupied with the STEM subjects – (natural) science, technology,
engineering and mathematics. This concern has led to the publication of two very
different reports on the status of the broad humanities and its research base in
South Africa, and more recently, to the establishment of a National Institute for
the Humanities and the Social Sciences (NIHSS).
111
The study was conducted by a twelve-person study panel drawn entirely from
methodology and was based on an extensive investigation into the humanities
as currently situated in higher education and within the NSI as a whole. The
study covered four broad areas, namely: the way ‘innovation’ and ‘research’ are
interpreted in government policy; the number of humanities enrolments and
graduates; research outputs; and graduate employment. The report concluded
that the humanities were ‘in crisis’, and made a set of varied recommendations.
The second report (or Charter) was commissioned by the Minister of Higher
Education and Training in 2010 and was completed the following year.112 This task
team consisted of two people, who were assisted by a researcher and a coordinator,
as well as both national and international reference groups. The Charter team
reiterated that there was a ‘crisis’, and made recommendations for correcting the
for the humanities over and above the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC).
First, regarding funding for humanities research. The ASSAf report argued
negatively on funding opportunities. While it is the case that funding for the
111 ASSAf (2011) Consensus study on the state of the humanities in South Africa: Status, prospects and
strategies.
112 DHET (2011) Report Commissioned by the Minister of Higher Education and Training for the Charter
for Humanities and Social Sciences.
228 Higher education reviewed
natural sciences is higher, NRF funding through its Research and Innovation
Support and Advancement (RISA) programme for 2012/13 for the Humanities
and Social Sciences totaled R129 million (or 14% of the RISA budget) and 29% of
the researchers supported were in the broad humanities.113
Second, considering the quantity of humanities research output. The scale of
outputs (as measured by the DHET) does not necessarily support the view that the
humanities are in crisis. The ASSAf study found that the humanities have continued
to produce approximately 37% of all research outputs in accredited journals over
the last twenty years. Considering the fact that the research outputs in total have
generally, kept pace with other areas, although a slight decline in this regard has
particular concern regarding research output is the low number of book publications
(5% of all publications in 2011), but 80% of these were in the humanities (86% if
grouped with education).114 In order to stimulate book publication, changes to the
research output policy have been made to increase subsidy for books.
Thirdly, regarding the quality of research output. The ASSAf report commented
that many humanities publications are accredited on the DHET’s list of locally
published journals rather than on the international indices. However, the vast
majority of research output units are generated by internationally indexed titles
(about 70%), of which about 10% are in journals on the humanities-focused
ProQuest IBSS index, suggesting that a good proportion of humanities research is
published internationally. Furthermore, the recent increase in the number of local
journals indexed internationally by Thomson Reuters suggests that many local
peer review groups constituted by ASSAf to consider the quality of local journals.
The main conclusion after more than a hundred reviews carried out so far has been
that local journals are generally of good quality but too small in article numbers
115
Furthermore, as discussed in the section on rankings, South African research in the
Finally, considering the production of PhDs, the ASSAf report on doctorates
points out that the production of PhDs in the humanities is high compared with
Returning to the two reports, it appears that while there are concerns about the
humanities, their present situation is not a crisis. That said, some of the reports’
recommendations could assist in strengthening the humanities in South Africa.
For instance, the ASSAf report recommended that ASSAf introduce a second high-
quality journal, in addition to the South African Journal of Science, to cater for
113 NRF (2013) National Research Foundation: Annual performance report for 2012/13.
114 DHET (2013) Ministerial report on the evaluation of the 2011 institutional research publications outputs.
115 ASSAf (2013)
Research 229
sciences and arts in these reports (and in this discussion) highlights the need
reports could assist in strengthening the humanities (and the higher education
sector), the need for the Charter’s recommended national institute of humanities
is unclear, given other bodies in the sector with similar or overlapping roles, and
it may lead to confusion and resources more thinly spread.116
5. The next ten years: re-imagining the future
In this chapter, there have been various pointers to possible improvements
that could be made in higher education research. In concluding the chapter, some
trends and strategies are discussed together with ideas on how the research
sector could become more productive in the next ten to twenty years. The chapter
closes with a list of areas where urgent development is needed in order to position
South African universities as preferred research destinations. Globalisation
as research destinations have put in place plans to develop knowledge and
convert it into competitive technologies. South Africa boasts relatively modern
infrastructure and is the highest producer of knowledge in Africa, but it needs to
improve its position internationally.
Over the past two decades there have been many technological changes that
point towards a radically different higher education system in the not too distant
future, both in unexpected as well as expected ways. The way in which scholars
maintain collegial relations with other scholars has already changed considerably
as a result of emails and other forms of cyber-communication. Collaboration has
increased partly because it is so easy. Currently, experiments can be done in real
time across continental divides through high-performance computing built into
connected-up analytical instrumentation. Furthermore, research articles can
be jointly authored as though several people were in a room together and not
thousands of kilometres apart.
and, ultimately, for answers to societal challenges to be found. Open Science
envisages optimal sharing of research results and tools: publications, data,
software, and educational resources. It relies on powerful digital technologies
and e-infrastructures that enable online research collaboration and information
unleashed through further collaboration across institutional, disciplinary, sectoral
116 DHET (2011) Report Commissioned by the Minister of Higher Education and Training for the Charter
for Humanities and Social Sciences; see http://www.hssi.org.za/.
230 Higher education reviewed
and national boundaries.117
In this chapter, the issue of open access to the published literature was discussed
in some detail, but there are also other changes to academic publishing such as
to peer review (probably in the direction of open crowd review); to altmetric
to measures to better protect the integrity of the published record (such as
universal plagiarism checks, routine replication requirements, and open peer
review); and to the fragmentation of the conventional single-version research
article into several versions (the to-be-read-by-all stripped-down version, the
data of each study, and blogged comments and reviews).
Postgraduate study and supervision could also undergo substantial change as
students can enrol for individual massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered
project. In this way, something similar to the qualifying courses of the American
with improved knowledge and insight. In this increasingly connected world, some
of the old standard ideas and practices will adapt or disappear. For instance, will
individual supervision of doctoral students remain the same when the latter can
Will institutional procedures for registration, monitoring and examination of
South Africa will not be immune to these coming changes, and both the
government and the sector will need to respond appropriately to support
the research sector. One requirement, despite the good performance thus far
of university collaboration to provide high-speed connectivity, is improved
broadband infrastructure to support the country’s higher education researchers.118
5.2 Access to scholarly resources
Despite the access that improved technology promises, resources such as
scholarly books and journals as a basic requirement for teaching, learning and
research remain inaccessible for many students, academics and researchers at
institutions across South Africa. This is an area for policy intervention. Taxes on
books and resources and education material need to be reduced or eliminated
to expand access across all sectors. A digital library and general journal licence
access to at least a limited amount of fundamental education material. ScieLo-SA
needs to be funded and expanded as a national resource.
5.3 Competition versus cooperation
The now prevalent and growing practice of ranking institutions discussed
above has already elicited a variety of responses, some of them not in the best
interests of the sector as a whole. Such behaviour may, in the future, threaten
117 UNESCO (2014) ‘Open science for the 21st century: Declaration of all European academies’
(declaration).
118 See http://www.tenet.ac.za/ for more details.
Research 231
the present culture of increasing collaboration and cooperation in research
endeavours between individuals, groups and institutions. A healthy balance
between competitive effort and destructive competition is required. Government
funding policies need to support and encourage collaboration, be it through
shared supervision, collective research centres, shared lectures, DHET output
subsidies or in a multitude of other ways.
Similarly, the important role of the different branches of the sciences needs
to be recognised, as has been highlighted in the two reports on the state of the
humanities discussed above. It is important that an approach in which the only
valid social science research is that which supplements natural science projects or
investigates the impact of technological change is avoided. Just as collaboration is
best done between equals, so inter-, trans- and multi-disciplinary studies require
intellectual respect on all sides. This will be an agenda for the future.
5.4 Transformation remains critically important
Higher education data indicate that the demographic transformation of the
undergraduate student body at South African universities is proceeding well.
However, the critically important follow-through into postgraduate study is still
not happening at the desired rate. One reason for this is the need for fundamental
curriculum reform to ensure higher undergraduate throughput rates. A convincing
case for an extended curriculum was put forward by a task team of the CHE, as is
discussed in more detail in the teaching and learning chapter, but it has not as yet
led to coordinated action by universities and government.
It would be useful to learn from past successful initiatives when developing
research centres of excellence at previously disadvantaged universities. It is
important to build active groups around strong individuals and to put in place
or options.
5.5 The role of national disciplinary associations
Discussions on the state of the NSI generally omit the national associations for
most individual (or grouped) disciplines. The NRF, as a body of the International
Council for Science (ICSU), used to maintain national committees for each of the
local discipline groups that corresponded to one of the international unions.
There was also a joint council in place for the national scholarly associations.
These committees no longer have the academic stature they once did and their
focus is now on organising conferences, awarding prizes, and publishing journals.
However, such national associations could play an important academic role
in developing disciplines, ensuring quality and improving research ability. For
instance the Institute of Physics (on invitation from the DST) reviewed physics
teaching for school learners, for undergraduates at different kinds of universities,
and for honours courses, as well as physics research in South Africa, and other
relevant matters. This self-review had a positive impact on the reform and
renewal of a once-struggling discipline.
Harnessing the capacity of the national associations to produce critically
232 Higher education reviewed
necessary rejuvenations and enhanced teamwork is an important agenda for the
future of the higher education research sector. Furthermore, it is important to
re-focus South Africa’s interaction with scholars and scientists in the ICU and its
5.6 Improving the innovation system
One of the issues raised by each review of the NSI has been the lack of both
vertical and horizontal coordination within the national system. The decision in
1994 to transfer responsibility for the research councils to their respective line
departments resulted in the unintended fragmentation of the country’s science
system and uncoordinated implementation of the policy instruments for stimulating
and steering public sector R&D growth. For instance, the Medical and Agricultural
initiatives for major equipment, research chairs and centres of excellence, leading
to unbalanced distributions of these investments. This issue must be addressed in
order to make national investments work for the whole system.
Furthermore, the recommendation of the Ministerial Review Committee for the
introduction of sectoral funds outside the NRF’s grant-making model, but with
joint industry-government funding and similarly joint award-making, has not
been implemented. This proposal would increase the total public sector funding
Paolo in Brazil). The challenge for higher education is to exploit the opportunity
of joining up with the considerable knowledge resources of industry to deepen
the multi-helical nature of enterprise.
South Africa is fortunate to have a national science academy that was established
recently enough for it to be more modern in its approach; such as a broad focus
inclusive of all empirical disciplines and a mission of serving the nation rather than
its members. However, despites its achievements since its foundation, it still lacks
true stature as a science academy. For instance, when institutions list their research
achievements, few include a list of academics who have been elected as ASSAf
members. Such achievements would be celebrated in many other countries. ASSAf
NSI and society broadly if it does not have the appropriate recognition in the sector.
Research policy and development is not limited to one Department but is shared
between the DHET and DST. While the Departments may have different foci, it is
imperative that they coordinate their activities in order to ensure that the same
message is sent to universities and the public regarding research development.
These Departments (and their agencies) need to work together and with the
universities to ensure effective policy development and implementation.
5.7 Research management to support academics
The South African Research and Innovation Management Association (SARIMA)
has existed for some years and has the support of many of the people who work in
the sound administration of grant applications and grant funds is of enormous
Research 233
importance to the scientists and scholars of an institutions, while evaluation
and reporting are key. Developing and maintaining research centres requires
dedicated research leadership and management capacity. Research management
cannot afford to act on ad hoc institutional or national decisions taken without
deep analysis of presented data and decision-making from a well-informed
position. For the purposes of effective planning and decision-making, institutions
need to develop their capacity to conduct institutional research about their own
policies, their response to government priorities, commercialisation, pressures
to compete and collaborate, teaching and learning and community engagement.
However, it is important to limit the unnecessary expansion of the university
bureaucracy, especially when this comes at the cost of increasing the number
of academics. Furthermore, universities must ensure that research, human
academics rather than make further demands on an academic’s time.
Institutions of higher learning need to apply government policies taking
discipline differences into account so as to ensure the successful development of
all disciplines. For instance, policies on research output cannot be applied in the
same way in Faculties of Commerce, Humanities and Medicine as the nature and
publication priorities of these different faculties impact on the time to complete
research projects and different publication types. Universities must, therefore,
develop their own institutional policies. Furthermore, in allocating research
funds, universities must develop an institutional development plan and use
money accordingly in a way that does not necessarily mirror the national funding
formula. Money should not be allocated to individuals unless its use is directed
towards research priorities.
South Africa lacks a vehicle for the systematic recognition of discoveries, as
opposed to research articles or other publications. In many disciplines, research
research to the next level. What is needed is a reliable way of assessing published
outputs or registered patents in terms of widely accepted criteria that would
accord discovery status to certain work. This would allow for the true recognition
of the contribution that higher education research is making to the nation.
5.9 Strengthening key research platforms
South Africa’s unique geographical position offers it competitive advantages in
certain disciplines. Research areas such as astronomy, paleontology, oceanography,
maritime studies and biodiversity are some areas that can locate South Africa as
a preferred research destination. However, research in some of these areas is not
fully explored (such as maritime studies) and in other areas, universities have not
aligned their focus and resources according to the same priorities as government
(such as astronomy).
234 Higher education reviewed
5.10 Human capital development
Studies of success rates and throughput rates at South African universities
not have the capacity to address the chronic shortages of critical skills. It takes
the supply of knowledge workers and the need to transform the demography of
researchers in terms of race, gender and age. The great shortage of university
if South Africa is to unlock its potential as a research destination. The country
skills needed to drive research and innovation. For example, Brazil has prioritised
sending 10 000 doctoral students abroad to be trained at select institutions. South
Africa lacks such bold national strategies to address critical shortages.
5.11 Doctoral programmes
The current approach to the training of doctoral candidates may not be the
knowledge workers. In particular, graduate schools are needed where students
level needs to be encouraged; more mentoring could be utilised; and the teaching
of cohorts of doctoral students on the same programme should be explored.
5.12 A policy environment conducive to knowledge production
Globally, the countries that move forward quickest will be those that appreciate
the value of a knowledge worker. Such appreciation can be demonstrated through
reward policies, immigration laws and the general appreciation of such specialists
in the country. Since 1994, knowledge as a special commodity has not been
nationally promoted. For example, many top scholars choose to join industry
rather than pursue a research career since ‘research does not pay’. We need to
rethink how we promote knowledge and knowledge producers in the nation. The
fundamental question should be, ‘how do we get the brightest in the nation to
be entrusted with producing knowledge (and passing this knowledge on through
policy needs to be reconsidered in order to attract those with the necessary skills
into the country.
5.13 Investment in research
In a country where there is growing poverty and unemployment, the most
popular approach is to focus on short-term strategies at the exclusion of long-
term investment in research and innovation. For many years, South Africa
has undertaken to invest at least 1% of GDP in research, but investment as a
for research funding are not the most appropriate ones in order to reach the 1.5%
target. A tax-based research fund is a possibility to explore.
Research 235
5.14 Focused institutions are needed
In order for our higher education sector to meet the varied needs of society
we need a diverse and differentiated system. Currently, institutions are expected
to focus on and excel in providing undergraduate teaching, research, and
postgraduate teaching while also meeting the needs of the economy, producing
teachers and lecturers (for schools and colleges) and meeting other social and
5.15 Funding
The funding cycle of government does not coincide with the universities’
academic year. This causes problems at institutional level, especially when it
comes to research and student funding. Ways need to be found to ensure that
funding for annual activities is provided timeously and in line with the university
calendar.
In conclusion, the task team proposes that a national dialogue between
universities, science councils, government, private sector researchers and
sector to make South Africa a preferred knowledge destination in the world. In
order for research and scholarship to be developed at our universities we need
to work together to reimagine South Africa as a competitive global knowledge
producer.
236 Higher education reviewed
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(Oxford University Press: New York).
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(eds.), (Oxford University Press: Oxford).
240 Higher education reviewed
Rhodes, L. (1999) Connecting knowledge to management: The case of academic
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The relationship between higher education and the community presents
both opportunities as well as challenges for national, regional and local
development. While the notion of serving the public good has long been
part of the national and international higher education landscape, that
of community engagement as a mechanism for contributing to the public good is
much newer and is open to multiple interpretations.
Despite the South African government’s articulated desire to see higher
education institutions play a more active role in addressing the development
strategies for enhancing the developmental role of universities. This neglect is of
particular concern given the South African context of high levels of poverty and
inequality, and the continued effects of the legacy of apartheid which constrain
access to quality services and education and militate against building a common
South African identity that transcends fragmented racial identities.
The limited focus on the role of higher education as a major development driver
in most national policies has contributed to the marginalisation of community
engagement within the system, and a reliance on the interests and values of
individual academics and units to drive developmental activities within their
universities.1 This marginalisation has, arguably, been exacerbated by the rise of
international rankings which, according to Habib, “privilege one reality of higher
education and impose indicators related to that reality across multiple global
2 As a result, global higher
education recognition systems tend to steer academics towards knowledge-
generation activities that are perceived to be of international relevance in order to
enhance opportunities for publishing in internationally recognised journals, thus
reinforcing hegemonic notions of scholarship. Simultaneously, academics move
away from devoting time to building knowledge networks that could address
social and economic development challenges.3
Given this context, this chapter argues that universities in South Africa have
particular challenges and responsibilities with respect to contributing to
Community engagement
Writers and editors: Judy Favish with Genevieve Simpson
Task team leader: Brian O’Connell
Members/contributors: Samuel Fongwa, Glenda Kruss, Sonwabo Ngcelwane,
Jerome Slamat & Jayshree Thakrar
CHE research assistant: Neo Ramoupi
6
1 N. Cloete, T. Bailey, P. Pillay, I. Bunting & P. Maassen (2011) Universities and economic development in
2 M. Walker & M. McLean (2013) Professional education, capabilities and the public good: The role of
universities in promoting human development, p. 15.
3 P.M.L. Anderson, M. Brown-Luthango, M. Cartwright, I. Farouk & W. Smit (2013) ‘Brokering
programme in Cities, 32, pp. 1-10.
242 Higher education reviewed
developing future community leaders with the capacity and commitment to
engage with these societal issues, and to ensure that engagement with national
and global challenges informs the research conducted within our universities.
responsibilities as citizens and scholars with regard to engaging with communities
in generating and sharing knowledge. This in turn will contribute to empowering
communities to be active agents, with government and other stakeholders, in
generating sustainable solutions to socio-economic and political developmental
challenges.
Despite these challenges, there have been major advances in engaged scholarship
at institutional level in South Africa, thereby challenging the notion of a dichotomy
between high quality scholarly endeavours and engagement. We argue that
while enhancing the academic project, through enabling access to information
and drawing on different ecologies of knowledge. Furthermore, new models for
collaborative engagement around development challenges are generated through
such engagement. The organisation and monitoring of community-based engaged
projects for students provides opportunities for nurturing critical and democratic
citizenship, and helps build a commitment to shaping an equitable social order by
South African society. In this chapter, examples of diverse modes of engagement
and the range of socio-economic and political developmental challenges that can
be addressed are provided together with recommendations for enhancing and
expanding university-community engagement.
engagement
University-community engagement is not something new, but it has taken
different forms depending on the national and institutional context. In South
Africa in the 1980s, the focus tended to be on service and outreach into the
community. However, by the 2000s the focus had shifted towards engaging
engagement integral to the core functions of the university.4
has been characterised by a lack of conceptual clarity about the term ‘community
engagement’.5 South Africa is not unique in this respect. Internationally, the
with terms or concepts like outreach, community service, regional engagement,
public service, community engagement, civic engagement, public engagement,
knowledge exchange, third mission, triple-helix and social innovation being the
most common. The terms ‘engaged scholarship’ and ‘the engaged university’ have
4 G. Bender (2008) ‘Exploring conceptual models for community engagement at higher education
institutions in South Africa’ in Perspectives in Education, 26(1), pp. 81-95.
5 CHE (2010) ‘Community education in South African higher education’ in Kagisano, 6.
Community engagement 243
gained prominence.6 In this chapter, the term ‘community engagement’ is used as
an umbrella term covering these multiple terms or concepts.
role and responsibility of the university as an institution. While the various
approaches impact on the implementation of community engagement, there are
or purposes of higher education.7
of higher education – namely teaching, research and community engagement –
are pursued independently of each other. In this model, community engagement
is seen as an add-on activity and not part of the core academic project. It tends
to make community engagement voluntary and service focused. This is the
traditional notion of community engagement, but it is losing favour.
The second is an intersecting model where the university is still seen to have three
separate roles, but these have points where they intersect. In this model, service-
learning and community-based research takes place at the points of intersection
with teaching and learning and research respectively, but volunteerism and
service continue where there is no intersection. This interpretation views the
university as already engaging without the need for a radical shift in the way it
conceptualises its activities.
as having only two core roles – namely teaching and research. Community
engagement is understood as a fundamental concept which should be integrated
into these core activities. This model is closely linked to the engaged scholarship
approach discussed below and leads to the so-called community-engaged
university.8 While these models are fundamentally different, all can be useful
in different contexts. Therefore, rather than selecting a best practice model, in
this chapter the argument is that institutions should be left to select the model
vision.
The more recent approach is that scholarship is at the core of the purpose of the
university and community engagement should, therefore, be about knowledge
and knowledge resources. Kruss explains that:
It is not an activity that academics engage in as citizens, but is core to their disciplinary
commitments and reputational identity. Nor is it an ‘add-on’ to ‘normal’ academic
6 J. Goddard (1997) ‘Managing the university/regional interface’ in Higher Education Management,
9(3); OECD (1999) The response of higher education institutions to regional needs; G. Subotzky
(1999) ‘Alternatives to the entrepreneurial university: New modes of knowledge production in
community service programmes’ in Higher Education, 38, pp. 401-440; C. Duke (2000) ‘Regional
partnerships – Building the learning region’ (unpublished paper); D.J. Maurrasse (2001) Beyond the
campus: How colleges and universities form partnerships with their communities; D. Cooper (2010)
‘The UCT idea of ‘SR’: ‘Engaged scholarship’ must be at its conceptual core for academic staff’ in
Social Responsiveness Report; J.J. Duderstad (1999/2000) ‘New roles for the 21st century university’
in Issues in Science and Technology’, 16(2) p. 37; D. Watson, R. Hollister, S. Stroud & E. Babcock
(2011) The engaged university: International perspectives on civic engagement.
7 Bender (2008) ‘Exploring conceptual models for community engagement at higher education
institutions in South Africa’ in Perspectives in Education, 26(1), 81-95.
8 Ibid.
244 Higher education reviewed
work, in that it ‘cuts across’ teaching, research and services in an integrated manner.
It is also not driven solely by external demand, whether from markets or government
or communities. The notion that engaged scholarship should be related to the mission
of the unit or university, to substantive growth, is important for analytical purposes. It
introduces a nuance to the normative dimension which is typical to the South African
debate, in that it highlights the possible differentiation and segmentation between
9
In this review, the national developments are located within the continuum of
changing theoretical understandings of community engagement in South Africa
that mirror changing international concepts. The foregrounding of engagement
and integration with scholarship is the more recent outcome of a long series of
In the South African context, early post-1994 higher education government
policy does not refer explicitly to community engagement in relation to the
responsiveness of universities. The 1997 White Paper and the National Plan refer
in raising the social awareness of students.10 As such, it is largely conceptualised as
involving activities that fall outside of the formal university curriculum. However,
the policies do indicate that interaction with the community is part of the core
business of the South African public university, along with teaching and research,
community engagement within their individual contexts.11
In the absence of a clear national conceptualisation, South African institutions
have drawn on one or more international approaches in developing their own
conceptual frameworks for guiding community engagement activities. The
dominant approaches include those used in land grant universities, academic
entrepreneurialism, community engagement, regional development and engaged
scholarship.12
of the mission and role of universities in response to a variety of demands placed
on them.
Land grant universities in America, for example, were developed in order to
how some South African universities have understood their developmental role.
Academic entrepreneurialism, as another form of engagement emphasises the
need to enhance national economic competitiveness within a global knowledge-
9 G. Kruss (2012) ‘Reconceptualising engagement: A conceptual framework for analysing university
interaction with external social partners’ in South African Review of Sociology, 43(2), p. 19.
10 DoE (1997) White Paper 3: A programme for the transformation of higher education.
11 A.M. Thomson, A.R. Smith-Tolken, A.V. Naidoo & R.G. Bringle (2011) ‘Service learning and
community engagement: A comparison of three national contexts’ in Voluntas, 22, pp. 214-237.
12 Cooper (2010) ‘The UCT idea of ‘SR’: ‘Engaged Scholarship’ must be at its conceptual core for
academic staff’ in Social Responsiveness Report; J. Favish (2005) ‘Developing a framework for
monitoring and enhancing higher education’s contribution to social and economic development as
part of a quality assurance system’ in The decade ahead. Challenges for quality assurance in South
African higher education; S. Fongwa, L. Marais & D. Atkinson (2013) ‘Universities and regional
engagement: Lessons from the OECD regional assessment of the Free State’ (unpublished paper).
Community engagement 245
driven economy.13
approach and ready to adapt and change. Universities need to respond to the
multiple new demands from government, industry and society without losing
their role as knowledge-based institutions.14 The community engagement model
emerged in the USA in the early 1990s as a reaction to urban decay caused by
large-scale unemployment, and called for a recommitment of higher education to
its civic purpose. This model is associated with a strong emphasis on partnerships
between universities and local communities, and providing opportunities for
students to engage directly with communities through service learning.15 A
regional development model associated with the OECD has argued that strong
regions need strong universities that, “engage with others in their regions,
provide opportunities for lifelong learning and contribute to the development of
and remain in their communities”.16 Finally, there are models that are built on
the notion of the ‘scholarship of engagement’, noted above, which differs from
traditional notions of scholarship in that cues for questions and choices for
instruction are driven by, and answers are produced through, contact with
persons and places outside of the academy rather than only by the development
of theory within academic disciplines.17
3. The value of the engaged university
actual process of knowledge generation and dissemination and a broader notion
of scholarship. It is closely associated with Michigan State University, which
“It involves generating, transmitting, applying and preserving knowledge for the
and unit missions.18 The key feature of this approach is that engagement draws
on scholarship and can involve engaged research, engaged teaching and engaged
reciprocal relationships between university and society.19
13 Walker & McLean (2013) Professional education, capabilities and the public good.
14 Kruss (2012) ‘Reconceptualising engagement: A conceptual framework for analysing university
interaction with external social partners’ in South African Review of Sociology, 43(2).
15 Favish (2005) ‘Developing a framework for monitoring and enhancing higher education’s
contribution to social and economic development as part of a quality assurance system’ in The
decade ahead.
16 OECD (1999) The response of higher education institutions to regional needs; OECD (2007)
Globalisation and regional economies: Can OECD regions compete in global industries?
17 D. Cox (2006) ‘The how and why of the scholarship of engagement’ in S. Percy, N. Zimpher and
M. Brukardt (eds.) Creating a new kind of university: Institutionalising community-university
engagement.
18 Michigan State University (2009) ‘University outreach at Michigan State University: Extending
knowledge to serve society’ (report).
19 Cooper (2010) ‘The UCT idea of ‘SR’: ‘Engaged scholarship’ must be at its conceptual core for
academic staff’ in Social Responsiveness Report.
246 Higher education reviewed
Gibbons has posited the notion of the ‘agora’ which “refers collectively to the
public space in which ‘science meets the public’, and in which the public ‘speaks
back’ to science… It is populated not only by arrays of competing ‘experts’ and the
organisations and institutions through which knowledge is generated and traded
but also variously jostling ‘publics’, by academics and other ‘publics’ in which
all partners bring something that can be exchanged or negotiated… where the
success of these exchanges depends upon each participant bringing something
that is considered valuable by someone else – whatever that value might be.”20
Underpinning this approach is the belief that “recognising and valuing different
knowledges should be seen as having a positive impact because new knowledge
can build on the strengths of academic research and indigenous knowledge.
Further, the recognition of differences can help strengthen the interface between
them”.21
In theorising how the relationships that universities build with society impact
on their developmental role, Swartz argues that social engagement is a critical
vehicle for producing academic citizens, provided that:
The university does not speak at society from above (and that) it engages with societal
actors as equal partners in a discursive and democratic set of social relations. In these
relationships, universities bring their considerable knowledge assets to the table,
which, together with the indigenous knowledge of communities, social networks and
resources in society, provide building blocks for different forms of development.22
This emergent approach to engagement illustrates the potential of partnerships
between universities and various social partners or communities to yield
‘transformative knowledge’ which links the values of democracy, respect and
action to knowledge utilisation.23
Engaged research can be in collaboration with a number of partners – including
business, state and civil society – and can focus on a range of concerns. In the
South African context, while some universities and academics frequently engage
with business and the innovation sector, as encouraged by the initiatives of the
Department of Science and Technology (DST), others have reacted against what
they interpret as the marketisation of higher education and have instead turned
towards engagement with the marginalised in an attempt to bring about social
transformation for public good. Increasingly, there is a focus on ‘development
research’ around topics which impact on society as a whole.24
partnership with business, the state, civil society or local communities, is central
20 M. Gibbons (2006) ‘Engagement as a core value in a mode 2 society’ (conference presentation).
21 A. Bawa & J. Favish (2007) Community engagement through research: Community engagement in
higher education (conference proceedings).
22 D. Swartz (2006) ‘New pathways to sustainability: African universities in a globalising world’ in M.
Nkomo, D. Swartz & B. Maja Within the realm of possibility: From disadvantage to development at the
University of Fort Hare and the University of the North.
23 GUNi (2014) Higher education in the world 5: Knowledge, engagement and higher education:
Contributing to social change.
24 G. Kruss, M. Visser, M. Aphhane & G. Haupt (2013) Academic interaction with social partners:
Investigating the contribution of universities to economic and social development.
Community engagement 247
to the value of such research projects. For the state and business, the focus is
often on applied rather than basic research. In this view, universities need to
ensure that they remain independent in selecting research projects to maintain
a suitable balance between types of research.25 Similarly, when entering into
research contracts with civil society and local communities, it would be important
understanding of the ethical and moral responsibility towards the community
involved.26
4. National policy environment
The various approaches to community engagement discussed above help
to explain why much energy has been spent on unpacking what community
engagement means within the South African context. The notion of making the
responsiveness of higher education part of policy was initially expressed in
the National Council on Higher Education (NCHE) report in 1996. The report
highlighted the social role of the university as one of the four main purposes of
higher education. It noted that “…society depends on higher education for the
socialisation of enlightened, responsible and critically constructive citizens.”27
This concept was elaborated further in the report’s discussion of a new framework
for higher education where it emphasised the need for “greater responsiveness”.
It described this as a “shift of higher education to a more open and interactive
system, responding to the social, cultural, political and economic needs of its
environment, and adapting itself to the changes in this environment.”28 Along
with this call, the NCHE noted that there should also be “enough room for the
kind of freedom that will ensure autonomous academic inputs and discretion, so
that those longer term objectives of higher education which the market and the
immediate social environment do not, and cannot, register can be attended to”.29
The 1997 White Paper laid the foundation for encouraging institutions to
grapple with their role in relation to advancing reconstruction and development.
The policy refers to a key mandate of higher education being to address diverse
continental levels through teaching, learning and research programmes, and to
support the development of democracy, and a culture of human rights, through
education programmes and practices conducive to critical discourse and creative
thinking.30 The White Paper criticised the higher education sector for failing to
25 G. de Lange (2012) ‘Developing a university-community engagement conceptual framework and
typology. A case study of a South African comprehensive university’ in Africa Insight, 42(2), pp.
94-111.
26 V.O. Netshandama (2010) ‘Community development as an approach to community engagement
in rural-based higher education institutions in South Africa’ in South African Journal of Higher
Education, 24(3), pp. 342-356; V.O Netshandama (2010) ‘Quality partnerships. The community
stakeholders’ view’ in Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, 3,
pp. 70-87.
27 NCHE (1996) A framework for transformation, p. 69.
28 Ibid., p. 79.
29 Ibid., p. 80.
30 DoE (1997) White Paper 3.
248 Higher education reviewed
respond adequately to the needs of society and for insular teaching and research
practices. At institutional level, the White Paper encouraged institutions “to
promote and develop social responsibility and awareness amongst students
of the role of higher education in social and economic development through
community service programmes”.31 Institutions were also called on to partner with
government and civil society in addressing the challenges facing the country.32
While not explicit about the developmental role of universities, the National
Plan of 2001 provided a compelling case for positioning universities as key players
in efforts to advance social justice in South Africa and to address global challenges
in partnership with other sectors of society, particularly the most vulnerable
sections of society.33 The National Plan highlighted the key role of the universities
as knowledge producers and transmitters and, as a result, the important position
they hold in promoting and developing policies, plans, values and capacities that
support sustainable growth, human development and equity and in educating
people in a way that is orientated towards poverty reduction and improving the
living standards of all people.34
The Higher Education Act of 1997 (and its subsequent amendments), which
regulates higher education, and the funding formula, are silent about the
role of higher education in community development and the funding formula
does not incentivise community engagement.35 This has had an impact on the
development of community engagement at institutions and it has been suggested
that the reference to community service and enhanced social responsiveness of
universities in the White Paper was largely symbolic.
The White Paper for Post School Education and Training of 2013 acknowledges
that, “Community Engagement in its various forms – socially responsive research,
partnerships with civil society organisations, formal learning programmes that
engage students in community work as a formal part of their academic programmes
and many other formal and informal aspects of academic work has become a part
of the work of universities in South Africa”.36 While the acknowledgement of the
strategies for strengthening or expanding this part of the work of universities, or
provide any recommendations for funding to expand or strengthen community
engagement. It merely suggests that, should funding be allocated, it would need
to be connected to research and teaching.
The absence of detailed strategies for strengthening the role of community
engagement as a vehicle for development is also evident in the focus of the
Departments of Science and Technology (DST), Trade and Industry (DTI) and
Economic Affairs (DEA) on the role of universities in producing high-level skills
and promoting innovation to enhance the competitiveness of particular sectors of
31 Ibid., p.14
32 H. Perold & R. Omar (1997) ‘Community service in higher education’ (unpublished paper).
33 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education.
34 Walker & McLean (2013) Professional education, capabilities and the public good.
35 The funding formula (2003) determines how public funding is allocated to universities and is
discussed in more detail in the funding chapter in this review.
36 DHET (2013) White Paper for Post-school Education and Training, p. 39.
Community engagement 249
the South African economy.37 These Departments tend to highlight the relationship
between the universities and business (the triple-helix), with an emphasis on
technological output and applied research, as well as the role of the university as
supplier of skilled graduates in line with the immediate needs of business. There
is, however, evidence of a growing interest on the part of the DST in community
engagement as DST policy has begun to “promote the notion of innovation for
inclusive development, in which universities and science councils are assigned
key roles as knowledge producers, to partner with communities, particularly to
38
The DST’s ten-year innovation plan (2008-2018) aims “… to help drive South
Africa’s transformation towards a knowledge economy, in which the production
of human endeavour”.39 This aim indirectly highlights the need for universities
and other higher education institutions to engage in diverse ways with various
sectors of the economy and society in the production and dissemination of
knowledge. Though the focus of the policy is on economic transformation with
little emphasis on the social, human and cultural dimensions, there is a clear
indication of the need for engagement between knowledge-producing institutions
and knowledge-applying sectors for this plan to be achieved. However, as was the
case with previous policies, the implementation of this knowledge interaction has
not been coordinated centrally, resulting in limited coordinated effort directed at
sustained engagement and an ad hoc approach to university engagement.
A policy document that has emphasised the role of higher education and
universities in development is the National Development Plan.40 According to the
diagnostic report of the National Planning Commission released in June 2011,
inequality. Millions of people remain unemployed, spatial and structural patterns
exclude the poor from the fruits of development, infrastructure is poorly located,
disease burden, public services are uneven and often of poor quality, and South
Africa remains a divided society. The diagnostic report argues that successful
development needs to be measured by the “degree to which the lives and
opportunities of the poorest South Africans are transformed in a sustainable
manner”.41
This brief summary of the national policy environment in relation to higher
education illustrates that while there has been rhetorical commitment to
university engagement with communities for development, this has not been
37 DST & HRSC (2013) ‘Linking knowledge producers and marginalised communities’ (conference
paper); DPLG (2006) Stimulating and developing sustainable local economies: National framework
for local economic development (LED) in South Africa.
38 DST & HRSC (2013) ‘Linking knowledge producers and marginalised communities’ (conference
paper), p. 3.
39 DST (2007) Innovation towards a knowledge economy: Ten year plan for South Africa (2008-2018),
p. iv.
40 NPC (2011) The National Development Plan.
41 Ibid., p. 3.
250 Higher education reviewed
university engagement. While the situation is better than in some other countries
as community engagement is mandated in policy and the university’s role in
economic and community development is well recognised, there has been a lack
of attention to developing an enabling policy environment to institutionalise,
expand and strengthen community engagement and the broader developmental
role of universities beyond high-level skills development and investments in
building research capacity in key areas.
to 2014
Since the 1997 White Paper highlighted the community service role of higher
despite the policy vacuum discussed above. National efforts to advance community
engagement have gone through different phases, with distinct institutions as drivers.
In this section, the two phases, one which lasted roughly until 2009, and the other
from 2009 on, will be discussed, together with the different foci and outcomes of these
phases. The phases are not absolutely discrete and certain developments overlap.
2009: Grappling with conceptual frameworks
by the work of the Council of Higher Education (CHE), through its standing
committee for quality assurance, the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC)
and the Community-Higher Education-Service Partnerships (CHESP) project of
the Joint Education Trust (JET). These projects began before 2004 but continued
to dominate activity into the second decade. From 1997, JET played an important
role in commissioning research into community engagement in South Africa, and
in 1999 it launched the CHESP project. The aim of CHESP was to promote service
learning to provide opportunities for students to learn how to apply the theories
they were learning at university, primarily in social contexts characterised by
been described earlier as the community engagement model, with a strong bias
towards service learning. With CHESP driving the community engagement focus
during this period, service learning dominated national discussions.
A report written by Perold and Omar, with the assistance of a number of advisors,
understand community engagement or service in South Africa. The report was
Programmes linked to higher education that involve participants in activities designed
to work jointly towards achieving the common goal.42
42 Perold & Omar (1997) ‘Community service in higher education’ (unpublished paper).
Community engagement 251
either youth or adults, but was mainly focused on students. The approaches to
community engagement discussed in that report laid a basis for further work on
conceptualising community engagement within the South African context.
The work of JET was underlined by the activities of the CHE and HEQC. The
mandate of the HEQC is to promote quality assurance within the higher education
phase, albeit through a transformative and developmental lens. Already in 2001,
the Founding Document
service” as one of the three foci for higher education – together with teaching and
learning, and research. Singh, the then Executive Director of the HEQC, explained
that the original intention behind including a focus on community engagement
in the programme accreditation and institutional audit criteria was to further its
potential of “giving content to the transformation agenda in higher education,
through new partnerships and relationships between higher education and its
multiple communities”.43
audits (2004-2012), the HEQC organised a number of events and activities in
collaboration with CHESP, with a view to contributing to the development of
policies and systems that would provide an enabling environment for community
engagement. The intention of this collaboration was to ensure that the pilot
initiatives supported by CHESP were strategically positioned to inform national
policies, with the expectation that community engagement activities would
proliferate once such policies were put in place. An average of two national
workshops per annum were organised by CHESP to assist universities with the
planning and implementation of community engagement activities, as well as
with the development of service learning opportunities. In the period from 2002
to 2008, CHESP supported the conceptualisation, implementation, monitoring,
evaluation and research of 256 accredited academic courses. This gave support to
service learning programmes at twelve universities, across 39 different academic
students to masters-level students.44
CHESP and the HEQC also collaborated around reports to parliament and around
the production of several good practice guides for developing service learning
opportunities in higher education. In 2006, they organised an international
conference to explore the potential impact of community engagement on
research and teaching and learning, including the curriculum. The conference
of the developmental role of universities. Hence the conference represented
engagement beyond service learning to embrace the various elements of
community engagement as discussed above.45
43 CHE/CHESP (2007) ‘Community engagement in higher education’ (conference proceedings).
44 J. Lazarus, M. Erasmus, D. Hendricks, J. Nduna & J. Slamat (2008) ‘Embedding community engagement
in South African higher education’ in Education, Citizenship and social Justice, 3(1), pp. 57-83.
45 CHE/CHESP (2007) ‘Community engagement in higher education’ (conference proceedings).
252 Higher education reviewed
In March 2009, a follow-up colloquium was convened by the CHE and the
papers presented and responses to these were published in Kagisano.46 In a
paper based on analysis of the HEQC’s quality audit reports on higher education
institutions, Hall suggested that, “the root problem with community engagement,
accounting for more than a decade of lacklustre progress in giving substance to
key purpose of public higher education in South Africa. Thus the very act of
differentiation, intended to give emphasis and prompt priority has served to set
community engagement apart from the long-understood processes of teaching
and research”. 47 For that reason, he proposed an overarching alternative approach
to understanding community engagement related to:
… the critical third sector located between the family, the state and the market. This
empowering them for a world ever more demanding in personal skills and
in the private, market sector (innovation and knowledge transfer to industry,
professional and vocational education), and also in enabling the work of the state
(labour force development, public policy innovations, partnerships for enhancing
can, and do, contribute through service learning, volunteerism, learning through
rendering service, community participation in engaged and responsive research, and
social enterprises.48
However, this proposal was not accepted by other contributors to this edition of
Kagisano. Several contributors questioned the wisdom of trying to develop a single
conceptual framework for the system. It was suggested that it would be more
appropriate to adopt a grounded approach that develops contextually relevant
frameworks based on efforts to theorise and understand actual practices.49 This
community engagement activity. Analysis of the recommendations in the audit
reports of ten private and 22 public universities revealed a remarkable degree
of homogeneity in the recommendations made to institutions with regard to
community engagement, and very few commendations were made. Almost all
institutions were enjoined to develop clearer conceptual or policy frameworks
and organisational arrangements for the management and monitoring of
community engagement at their institutions.50
Aside from the CHE and JET activity in this period, the DST also provided
some funding to promote partnerships between universities and the private
sector around the use of research and technology to stimulate economic growth
46 CHE (2010)
47 M. Hall (2010) ‘Community engagement in South African higher education’ in Kagisano, 6, p. 43-44.
48 Ibid., p. 44.
49 J. Slamat (2010) ‘Community engagement as scholarship: a response to Hall’ in Kagisano, 6; L.
Nongxa (2010) ‘An (engaged) response to Hall’s paper: Community engagement in South African
higher education’ in Kagisano, 6.
50 See www.che.ac.za.
Community engagement 253
and enhance productivity. At this time, the DST focus was predominantly on
industry and government, rather than on research partnerships with the broader
community, but it assisted in laying the groundwork for moving community
engagement beyond service learning.
Notwithstanding the narrow focus on compliance with the requirement
to develop policies, and on service learning, the inclusion of a criterion in the
audit process on community engagement, and the activities organised by the
CHE and JET during the period certainly helped to put community engagement
on institutional agendas, albeit somewhat unevenly. The next phase of activity
would see a greater focus on action and a broader interpretation of community
engagement.
In the second phase of activity, starting roughly in 2009, the shift away from
trying to reach consensus at a national level on conceptual frameworks continued,
was characterised by strengthening and expanding initiatives on the ground;
creating enabling institutional environments; and promoting the scholarship
of community engagement. There was also a shift towards higher education
institutions taking on the role of the main drivers of development and innovation
in community engagement, while previously this was at national level. We trace
these developments in this section.
5.2.1. The development of community engagement at university level
It is hard to ascertain the exact level of activity with regard to community
engagement at institutional level, as institutions are not required to provide
comprehensive reports on community engagement as part of any national
information system. For this reason, there is no accurate picture of the scale and
nature of engaged scholarship across the system. In the absence of comprehensive
institutional reports, illustrative examples of different forms of community
engagement can be gleaned from other sources. For the purposes of this chapter,
some examples have been extracted from a report published by Higher Education
South Africa (HESA) in 2009 on contributions of universities to the government’s
anti-poverty strategy and from case studies of ‘Knowledge Engagement and
Higher Education in Africa’ published in the Global University Network for
Innovation (GUNi) Report.51 These initiatives are outlined below in abstracts from
last two are from the GUNi report.
51 HESA (2009) Making a difference – Universities’ contribution to the anti-poverty strategy; GUNi
(2014) Higher education in the world 5.
254 Higher education reviewed
University of Limpopo
The Department of Icthyology and Fisheries Science is involved in a wide ranging national
programme with the Water Research Commission and the Department of Agriculture
and Land Affairs to promote aquaculture for the purposes of commercial and rural
development. It works in collaboration with emerging black farmers in rural areas to
supplies [drawing on research conducted within the university]. In the process sustainable
livelihoods are being built and jobs created in impoverished rural areas.
&
The Centre for Rural Communities Empowerment Project provides training to the Makgofe
Trust established through the Land Redistribution Programme for landless people to
become successful farmers in two areas: vegetable and poultry production.
University of South Africa
The Food Security Project aims to empower food security facilitators to work with rural
subsistence farmers to become food secure and contribute to rural development. A short
learning programme in Household Food Security has been developed with the Southern
African Institute of Distance Education and Kellogg Foundation aimed at individuals
from rural and peri-urban areas working as assistants to community nutritionists, health
workers or agricultural extension advisors from NGOs or government departments.
University of Cape Town
As part of the CityLab project in Phillippi, academics across the university involved in
research on pollution, food security, housing delivery and climate change adaptation are
engaged in primary research in collaboration with the City of Cape Town. Using a case
based methodology and an interdisciplinary dialogue with multiple social partners the
Lab seeks to foster a nuanced understanding of complex problems and the development
of appropriate solutions [drawing on different knowledge sources].
The UNIVEN-WK Kellogg Foundation ‘Amplifying Community Voices’ project, in the Makhado
Municipality, aims to nurture social and economic transformation of the communities
through promoting the development of strategic partnerships within the University of Venda
and the communities in a manner that mobilises and organises all segments of society to
play meaningful roles in their own development through sustainable collective action.
&
Over the last two years, a multidisciplinary collection of staff and students from the University
of Venda and the University of Virginia have worked with an all-female Cooperative to
construct a Ceramic Water Filter Factory. The university participants represent subject
areas across anthropology, architecture, biology, business, engineering and public health, all
exchanging knowledge, teaching skill sets and sharing resources within the collaboration.
writing a book on ‘Sustainable Stellenbosch: Opening Dialogues’. The book addresses
the most pressing problems of the town and offers conceptual frameworks to start
thinking about possible solutions. The book is intended for use in public discussions
about clusters of themes that are important for the future of the town and will eventually
inform public policy directions.
Community engagement 255
These examples illustrate how universities have engaged with communities
and how the engagement:
• provides universities with new research opportunities;
• enables academics involved in community engagement to develop
interdisciplinary competencies and broaden their perspectives on problems
through drawing on different knowledge sources; and
• helps to educate students to adapt to working in different social contexts.
5.2.2. Community engagement research during the second phase of activity
During the second phase of activity there was a substantial amount of research
into community engagement, including research into community engagement
practices at institutions and on developing a better understanding of what
community engagement means within a South African context.
The most extensive research on the scale and forms of interaction of universities
with external social partners was conducted by the HSRC in 2010.52 The research
aimed to understand engagement and the changing role of the university in
building a national system of innovation in South Africa. It was funded by
the National Research Foundation (NRF) to inform its work on community
education institutions representing distinct institutional types: two research
universities, one comprehensive university, one university of technology and
engagement in institutional strategic missions, structures and mechanisms, as the
context for interpreting academic practices. A total of 2 159 academics responded
to a telephonic survey and an overall valid response rate of 62% was achieved.
The majority of academics interviewed in the HSRC study, 81%, reported
that they interact with external social partners in some way, with engagement
activities reported most frequently at research universities and least frequently
at the single university of technology. However, in the case of the research
universities, this engagement was mainly with other academic partners, and
related to broad academic relationships and core academic roles which many
argue should not fall within the ambit of community engagement. Engaged
research was more common at the research university than engaged teaching,
informing the activities of academics. This highlights the complexity of patterns
of engagement in a differentiated higher education system as conceptualisations
of community engagement tend to be related to universities’ values, missions and
strategic plans.
While the most frequently reported community engagement outputs were
traditional academic outputs (such as articles in scholarly journals), other
types of outputs such as reports, policy documents, popular publications, new
52 Kruss et al. (2013) Academic interaction with social partners.
256 Higher education reviewed
or improved products and processes, community infrastructure and facilities,
53 These types of
output highlight the value of community engagement for both the university and
community involved.
The types of activities reported involved engagement with communities, big
and small NGOs, various levels of government, student societies, museums,
galleries, trade unions, schools, regional and national development agencies,
community empowerment, community based campaigns, public awareness and
advocacy, improved quality of life for individuals and communities and policy
interventions.
universities were competing priorities on time, too few academic staff, limited
These trends suggest that the universities are strongly committed to
partnerships with the community and to new national goals, but are struggling to
develop policies, structures and organisational forms that will enhance interactive
capabilities. One of the problems encountered was that an institutional strategic
policy framework that provides a broad and encompassing core organising
concept to guide substantive policy and procedure was not always present.
Furthermore, a lack of conceptual clarity sometimes led to contestation and the
institutional audits regarding the need for institutional policy guidelines. A
number of creative mechanisms were initiated for advocacy and dissemination
through the university in order to encourage academics to shift their practices.
These relied on stimulating and championing greater involvement, but the
core academic reward systems remained unchanged. Many universities have
introduced as incentives a community engagement Open Day, an annual award,
a showcase of publications or website to promote greater academic involvement,
but the key academic incentive mechanisms of promotion typically do not value
is discussed later in this chapter.
Another research project undertaken at the University of Cape Town (UCT)
drawing on a number of case studies.54 While these case studies are derived
from a single institution, they illustrate how engagement enriches knowledge
generation and exchange processes. Academics reported how their direct
engagement in policy processes provided access to contemporary questions
and, in turn, strengthened their understanding of issues. The direct engagement
enabled access to the views of multiple stakeholders. The insights gained also
helped to inform policy courses taught at universities. The academics explained
how the use of participative methodologies to co-determine the research agenda
53 Ibid.
54 J. Favish & J. McMillan (2009) ‘The university and social responsiveness in the curriculum: A new
London Review of Education, 7(2), pp. 169-179.
Community engagement 257
and build collective ownership of the outputs, or the formation of reference or
advisory groups with representation from the parties involved in the research to
co-shape the research, enriched the process, as it drew on different insights and
parties involved.
The case study of the African Religious Health Assets Programme (ARHAP)
describes the use of transactional spaces involving multiple stakeholders. It
highlights how, “various etymologies or explanations of disease appeared to be
at work and differing constructs of bodies, health and illness [were] involved,
many of them imbued with religious images, symbols and understandings of the
world”.55 ARHAP’s approach is located in the body of work known as asset-based
community development, or capability-focused approaches, which recognises the
need to take seriously the assets that people on the ground have and build on
traditional research. As Cochrane says:
It is the collaboration between researchers, practitioners and local communities that
generates the necessary set of new and different perspectives to create new knowledge
and generate innovative solutions to problems.56
A second case study focused on the Health and Human Rights Project which has
run a ‘train the trainer’ course since 1998 for staff who teach health professionals
at South African universities. As Favish and McMillan explain:
which the department of public health and family medicine has initiated on human
rights issues affecting vulnerable groups. Initial research on the Patients’ Rights
Charter, developed by the government, showed that human rights will not be real until
people become agents of their own rights. On the basis of the lessons from this research,
several staff members in the department joined the people’s health movement as
activists. The knowledge gained from their involvement in the movement with
multiple stakeholders helped inform the design of the health educators’ curriculum
which in turn helped to inject new approaches to health care and empower the health
movement.57
These extracts illustrate the different ways in which academics engage with
communities, and the value of engagement with multiple social partners in
seeking solutions to development challenges facing South Africa. It is also clear
of the intervention.
55 Ibid., pp. 174-175.
56 Ibid., pp. 174-175.
57 Ibid., p. 177.
258 Higher education reviewed
Growing the body of knowledge about practices of engagement has been an
important mechanism of elevating the status of community engagement in
institutions. During the second phase of community engagement activity, various
initiatives were launched to facilitate the ongoing national conversations about
the practices of community engagement and to build networks among universities
to enable sharing of information about practices.
One of the important developments in this regard was the formation of the South
African Higher Education Community Engagement Forum (SAHECEF). The Forum
was launched late in 2009 and all public universities (and some private higher
education institutions) are represented in SAHECEF. The objectives of the Forum are:
• Advocating, promoting, supporting, monitoring, and strengthening
community engagement at South African higher education institutions;
• Furthering community engagement at higher education institutions in
partnership with all stakeholders with a sustainable social and economic
impact on South African society; and
• Fostering an understanding of community engagement as integral to the core
business of higher education.58
SAHECEF has played an important role in facilitating discussions on community
engagement at a national level, both among institutions and between institutions
and national bodies.
Another important milestone in furthering community engagement was a
conference in 2011, organised collaboratively by the University of Fort Hare,
Rhodes University, SAHECEF, the NRF and the HSRC under the title Community
Engagement: The Changing Role of South African Universities in Development.
international participants.59 The conference themes illustrate the orientation of
the second phase of community engagement activity in that the overwhelming
majority focused on the practices of community engagement and contributions
relation to each theme is presented in brackets:
• Philosophies, conceptions and theories (17)
• Processes of institutionalisation and formalisation of community engagement (9)
• Community engagement in practice (21)
• Promoting community engagement as scholarship (11)
• Community partners and partnerships (9)
A sample of abstracts is presented below to provide an indication of the nature of
the questions being explored in relation to the practices of community engagement
58 See http://www.uwc.ac.za/CE/Pages/SAHECEF.aspx.
59 The conference had 255 delegates with 67 papers and 34 poster presentations; G. Minkley (2011)
’Community university partnership programme quarter 3 report’.
Community engagement 259
and its links with wider developmental purposes of universities, particularly with
respect to nurturing the development of graduates with a commitment to engaged
provided pointers to efforts being made to develop more strategic approaches
to community engagement that move it from the margins of universities into the
mainstream, and towards more coordinated institutional approaches, as opposed
to a reliance on individual champions. These abstracts assist in highlighting the
focus of community engagement discussions in this second phase of activity.60
of the study highlight the ‘need’ to deepen university-community partnerships for
associated with community engagement, paradoxically, undermine the developmental
In this presentation it will be argued that in order to deliver a well-rounded law graduate,
community engagement should be integrated in the teaching of all procedural law subjects
in the LL.B curriculum. Community engagement provides an ideal breeding ground for
the instilling of basic trial advocacy skills. We will then conclude that undergraduate law
students are part of an access to justice approach and the humanitarian ethos in which
procedural law subjects should be taught. (I. Bezuidenhout, A.P. Frewen)
I shall argue that (1) ‘engagement’ has to be understood as a dual process, in which
students’ whole being is engaged, and through which they come to engage with the
experiences opened to them; and (2) in a global age, ‘community’ has to be understood
as a potentiality of the world, such that students are embarked on a process of becoming
world citizens. We then reach the further proposition (3): that students’ understanding
of themselves as global citizens embraces the student’s capacities for action and her
total becoming as a human being. This student comes to identify with the world; the
world is no longer exterior to the student but is now part of the student’s interior being.
(R. Barnett)
This paper examines the ‘Engaged Scholarship’ (ES) idea in American university
discourses since 1990. It explores concepts of ‘outreach’ and ‘scholarship’ in a Report
(1993) of Michigan State University (MSU)... It is argued most South African discussants
have an underdeveloped idea of ES in their discourses about CE. Will/can this win
over our academics to the mission of strengthening university-civil society linkages for
Recently an Interdisciplinary Health Promotion course at the University of the Western
had not changed and have not been effectively addressed. The Faculty of Community and
Health Sciences responded by organizing a stakeholder dialogue to explore partnerships,
sustainability, and the social responsiveness of health promotion projects with schools
and surrounding communities. This paper will describe the process undertaken to
address these three recommendations and present the outcomes. (F. Waggie)
60 UFH, RU, HSRC, NRF & SAHECEF (2011) ‘2011 Conference on Community Engagement Programme’
(programme).
260 Higher education reviewed
During the second phase of activity there has also been growth in the
establishment of international publications dedicated to community engagement.
Some examples include the Journal for Higher Education and Community Outreach
and Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement.61
Several South Africans have contributed articles on community engagement to
these and other international journals and South Africans have presented at
international conferences on community engagement. One example is the Global
University Network for Innovation (GUNi) International Conference which was
held in Barcelona in 2013 where six South Africans made presentations and
three others were asked to chair sessions.62 The conference was organised in
partnership with 19 other international networks and South African perspectives
are featured in the GUNi report Higher Education in the World 5 - Knowledge,
Engagement and Higher Education: Rethinking Social Responsibility that was
published early in 2014.
One area for development is with regard to accredited journals on community
engagement. Currently no journals focused on university-community engagement
have been included on the DHET list of accredited publications and this impacts
negatively on local efforts to stimulate the scholarship of engagement. There are
currently efforts underway, led by the University of Limpopo in collaboration
with the SAHECEF Research Working Group, to launch an accredited journal. The
proposal is for the journal to be called ‘Africa Engaged’ with a focus on community
engagement in higher education.
5.2.4. Promoting the scholarship of engagement and the role of community
engagement in the Knowledge generation process
One of SAHECEF‘s major initiatives during this second phase was to persuade
the NRF to launch a fund to promote community engagement at institutions. Their
community engagement programme was established to support research and
activities aimed at improving understanding of the full spectrum of community
engagement and the suite of activities that this implies. It was hoped that through
the exchange of knowledge about the practices of engagement, the status of
community engagement would be elevated at institutions. An inaugural call for
proposals for funding over three years was made in 2010. The focus of the call was
61 J. Thakrar; D. Kenn & G. Minkley (2014) ‘Across the continents: Engaging and questioning
community’ in Comparative Sociology, 13, pp. 1-20; W. Akpan, G. Minkley & J. Thakrar (2012) ‘In
search for a developmental university: Community engagement in theory and practice’ in South
African Review of Sociology, 43(2), pp. 1-4; M. Maistry & J. Thakrar (2012) ‘Educating students for
effective community engagement: Student perspectives on curriculum imperatives for universities
in South Africa’ in South African Review of Sociology, 43(2), pp. 58-75; Favish & McMillan (2009)
London
Review of Education, 7(2), pp. 169-179; J. Favish & S. Ngcelwane (2009) ‘Understanding social
responsiveness: Portraits of practice at the University of Cape Town’ in Gateways: International
Journal of Community Research and Engagement, 2; Netshandama (2010) ‘Quality partnerships.
The community stakeholders’ view’ in Gateways: International Journal of Community Research
and Engagement, 3, pp. 70-87; de Lange (2012) ‘Developing a university-community engagement
conceptual framework and typology. A case study of a South African comprehensive university’ in
Africa Insight, 42(2).
62 GUNi (2013) ‘Programme for 6th International Conference’ (programme).
Community engagement 261
on proposals that would contribute to scholarship about community engagement
and knowledge generation processes through community engagement.
million. The following two charts show the NRF monies awarded for the 2011 to
2013 and the 2013 to 2015 cohorts of grant recipients respectively.63
63 N.L. Ramoupi & J. Thakrar (2013), ‘Funded NRF community engagement projects’ (unpublished
background paper for task team); The NRF provided a database of all community engagement
proposals received (including those not approved for funding) for analysis purposes. Note that the
2014 and 2015 awards are subject to change.
Figure 1: NRF award for 2011 - 2013 cohort
R7 091 981
R281 850
R101 418
R3 749 291
R160 000
R195 000
Running costs
Student bursaries
Postdoctoral
Sabbatical/Study visit
Staff development
Research equipment
Total award: R11 579 540
Figure 2: NRF award for 2013 - 2015 cohort
R11 682 738
R6 304 000
R720 000
R225 000
Running costs
Student bursaries
Postdoctoral
Staff development
Total award: R18 931 738
262 Higher education reviewed
have been allocated for part-time and full-time bursaries to support 45 honours,
107 masters and 48 doctoral students. The NRF funding has, therefore, played
an important role in producing new community engagement scholars and in
strengthening practices of community engagement in South Africa.
bias towards urban initiatives in the humanities and health sciences, a poor spread
of research across the country and a preponderance of white women researchers.
The majority of applicants utilised the funds to undertake community engagement
activities (13 out of the 17), while the remaining four undertook research on
community engagement. In terms of research output from the grants, during the
period 2010 to 2012, grantees made 25 national conference presentations and
17 international conference presentations, while 34 papers were published in
accredited journals.
The second cohort of successful applicants came from a wider pool of
institutions, but despite a greater spread of projects across the urban and rural
in the health sciences or education. Two proposals named international co-
most of the initiatives originated from the university rather than in response to,
or with, a community.
engagement projects are accessible and so it is hard to comment on exactly
what has been achieved beyond the number of publications emanating from
the research, the number of student bursaries and the extent of conference
attendance. However, the awards suggest that the bulk of the funding has been
of community engagement itself. The limited spread of institutions and the race
value of this initiative in deepening an understanding of community engagement
within a South African context should not be downplayed. It is especially
important because of the way in which the practice of community engagement,
through activity and research about the nature of community engagement, are
intertwined.
5.2.5. Institutionalisation of community engagement
In an attempt to glean a national picture of the current extent to which
community engagement has become embedded in institutional functions, the
task team preparing this report for the CHE conducted a survey of public higher
education institutions in 2013.64 The questionnaire, prepared by two researchers
at the UCT Institutional Planning Department, was distributed to the public
higher educations via the institutional representatives on the SAHECEF Board.
After initial distribution of the survey, the chair of the task team sent a letter to
64 J. Favish & S. Ngcelwane (2013) ‘Survey of community engagement practices at universities’
(unpublished background survey for task team).
Community engagement 263
vice-chancellors requesting all institutions to complete it. The survey aimed to
of which had indicated that institutions had integrated community engagement
work into the fabric of their institutions in very uneven ways, suggesting that
The survey response rate was 83% (19 of the 23 institutions responded),
Beere et al. for institutionalising public engagement.65 The framework includes
elements related to:
• The extent to which institutional strategic plans, budgets, reporting, and
performance management systems address community engagement; and
• The extent to which institutions have developed policies that help to create an
enabling environment for engaged scholarship, e.g. whether: particular forms
of reward and recognition are given; staff are provided with opportunities
to develop their capacity to build partnerships with community partners;
senate committees have been established to develop ways of enhancing and
expanding community engagement; the university provides opportunities
and there are visible mechanisms for communities to access the intellectual
resources of the university.
In addition, institutions were invited to share their perceptions of the national
policy environment, their achievements, and barriers or obstacles to the
expansion of community engagement. Analysis of the responses suggests that
the greatest progress has been made in areas related to the HEQC’s criteria for
institutional audits. Eighteen institutions reported that their strategic plans
contain objectives related to community engagement or social responsiveness;
sixteen prepare annual reports on activities associated with engaged scholarship
and have dedicated staff to help support and promote engagement; and eleven
have established mechanisms for community organisations to connect with
academics and students on campus.
the status of community engagement within the institution, and with regard to
integrating it into mainstream recognition systems. This is noteworthy, as while
it is fairly easy to include references to notions of service to communities in
activities from the periphery of higher education to the core.66 On the basis of
engagement to a greater extent than others. They responded positively to at least
four of the key criteria referred to below:
65 C. Beere; J. Votruba & G. Wells (2011). Becoming an engaged campus – A practical guide for
institutionalising public engagement.
66 Slamat (2010) ‘Community engagement as scholarship: A response to Hall’ in Kagisano, 6.
264 Higher education reviewed
• 5 institutions (26%) consider commitment to, and experience with,
community engagement in the criteria for hiring academic staff;
• 9 institutions (57%) have integrated criteria related to community
engagement into performance review systems for academic staff;
• 8 (42%) and 9 (47%) institutions provide awards to recognise outstanding
contributions to community engagement for staff and students respectively;
• 6 institutions (31%) have established initiatives aimed at building the
capacity of staff in relation to community engagement; and
• 9 (47%) institutions periodically organise institutional colloquia to promote
awareness about community engagement within the institution.
with regard to the lack of national policies to provide an enabling environment for
expanding and recognising community engagement across the sector.
Several institutions reported on community engagement activities that
focus areas, the establishment of forums for building ongoing relationships with
various external social partners, and the allocation of dedicated resources for
stimulating new activities to address institutional and regional priorities. Some
engagement;
• Lack of funding;
• Competing priorities impacting on academic workloads;
particularly with respect to its interconnections with teaching and research;
and
• A lack of genuine executive support and understanding of the community
engagement mandate and its potential.67
The survey responses reveal the continued use of very different conceptual
frameworks that guide community engagement at institutional levels. However,
consensus is emerging on a number of common elements that institutions believe
• Community engagement involves universities and multiple social partners,
but excludes interaction with other academic constituencies;
• The interactions between universities and social partners should be
• Community engagement is a key mechanism for building civic consciousness
among students and plays a role in building their commitment and capacity
for critical citizenship;
67 J. Favish & S. Ngcelwane (2013) ‘Survey of community engagement practices at universities’
(unpublished background survey for task team).
Community engagement 265
• Engagement can take multiple forms, including research-oriented forms (such
as participatory action research and community-based research); teaching-
oriented forms (including service learning, clinical service, continuing
education courses, and the collaborative production of popular educational
materials); and can operate at multiple levels (local, regional, national,
sectoral, etc.); and
part of the broader notion of the social responsiveness of universities.
This approach to conceptualising the role of higher education is in line with
education in contributing to democracy and inclusive societies.68
Despite consensus on the above points, it is clear that across the sector there
are different, and at times contradictory, interpretations of what constitutes
developmental paradigms and values and focus on different types of development:
social, economic, political and environmental. The focus of the interpretations
tends to be divided between those that emphasise notions of social justice and
human rights, and those that emphasise economic growth and competitiveness,
entrepreneurship, and individual empowerment.69 It is important for any
national policy or national conceptualisation of community engagement to
take into account and support these different interpretations. However, while
acknowledging the validity of different paradigms and emphases, given the
pervasive nature of poverty and inequality in South Africa, public universities
development and a more equitable and just social order. As Odora-Hoppers has
argued, theorising the university’s role with regard to critical citizenship should
include an examination of the ‘reconstructive development function’ of higher
education and the production of students who are able to promote social justice
and construct empowering relationships with disadvantaged communities.70
These relationships should avoid ‘the negation of others’ in line with the spirit
of Ubuntu, a central tenet of African life philosophy.71 In this regard, it is relevant
for the sector to question what ethics and values are transmitted to students
through current educational practices and not just to assume that engagement
68 P.R. Trowler (1998) Academics responding to change. New higher education frameworks and
academic cultures; D. Charles (2006) ‘Universities as key knowledge infrastructure in regional
innovation systems’ in Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 19(1), pp. 117-
130; T.K. Stanton (ed.) (2007) ‘New times demand new scholarship. Research universities and civic
engagement: Opportunities and challenges’ (conference report); GUNi (2013) ‘Programme for 6th
International Conference’ (programme).
69 CHE (2010) ; Nongxa
(2010) ‘An (engaged) response to Hall’s paper: Community engagement in South African higher
education’ in Kagisano, 6; Slamat (2010) ‘Community engagement as scholarship: a response to
Hall’ in Kagisano, 6; Favish & Ngcelwane (2013) ‘Survey of community engagement practices at
universities’ (unpublished background survey for task team).
70 C. Odora-Hoppers (2006) ‘Constructing a conceptual framework for HBUs in a developmental
paradigm’ in Nkomo et al. Within the realm of possibility.
71 Nkomo et al. (2006) Within the realm of possibility.
266 Higher education reviewed
with external constituencies in and of itself results in explicit engagement with
ethical choices and the criteria used for making these choices.
During the second phase of activity (2009 to 2014), much has been achieved.
First, community engagement is now understood in much broader terms and the
the university and the community and is a longer-term project. Secondly, in this
phase, institutions have come to play a much more central role. Initially, it was
national bodies (in particular the CHE and JET through CHESP) that were driving the
community engagement process. Now institutions have taken over this role which has
institutionalising community engagement, although this has not yet been achieved at
the majority of institutions. An important university initiative in this regard was the
formation of SAHECEF. Finally, this phase has seen growth in community engagement
research. This is no longer limited to conceptualising community engagement, but
includes research on community engagement activities. Important developments in
this regard include the NRF awards, new journals founded and conferences.
6. Future innovation and opportunities
regarding community engagement
discussed above, it has not yet been institutionalised at system level. This lack of
institutionalisation has been compounded by the absence of national funding for
community engagement and the passive approach to the integration of it in funding
and promotion policies at system and institutional levels. However, as a concept
and practice it has clearly gained prominence in the higher education discourse in
South Africa and South Africans have contributed to the growing body of knowledge
about engaged scholarship. Taking this into account, the task team has developed
a number of recommendations to support the development of community
engagement over the next decade. These have been organised around two prongs:
• Strengthening efforts to institutionalise community engagement; and
• Locating efforts to strengthen community engagement within a national
developmental paradigm.
6.1. Strengthening efforts to institutionalise community
engagement
6.1.1. Linking community engagement with different forms of scholarship
The task team believes that efforts to reach consensus about a single conceptual
framework for community engagement across the sector are unlikely to be fruitful.
the contexts of South African universities differ, so too will the conceptualisation.
However, there should be recognition of the common elements of community
engagement around which there is consensus and the links with scholarship.
Community engagement 267
These elements are listed above. In the next phase, efforts should be concentrated
on the development of more strategic approaches to institutionalising community
engagement and improving the quality and impact of practices of engagement. This
entails harnessing the resources of the university in support of key initiatives in
line with the university’s mission and in line with the core focus on teaching and
research. Universities should re-imagine how community engagement can help
invigorate, enhance, deepen, contextualise and enrich pedagogy, including teaching,
learning, curriculum and assessment. They must also examine how community
engagement can help to contribute to relevant research and should consider the
usefulness of different types of knowledge outside of academic knowledge, and
how it can revitalise the universities’ knowledge project.72 The notion of engaged
scholarship offers a method of research and inquiry that advances academic
disciplines while responding to important contemporary questions or issues.
Furthermore, opportunities for enriching learning in preparation for careers and
active citizenship are embraced.73 Engaged scholarship offers a continuum of
activities where teaching, research and service intersect as in the diagram below.74
72 Slamat (2010) ‘Community engagement as scholarship: A response to Hall’ in Kagisano, 6.
73 B. Holland (2013) ‘Presentations at pre-conference morning workshop on leadership, planning
and change management for community engagement’ in 5th International Symposium on Service
Learning (conference proceedings).
74 C.R. Glass & H.E. Fitzgerald (2010) ‘Engaged scholarship: Historical roots, contemporary challenges’
in E. Fitzgerald-Hiram, C. Burack & S. Seifer (eds.) Handbook of engaged scholarship. Contemporary
landscapes, future directions, volume 1: Institutional change.
Source: Glass et al
TEACHING RESEARCH
SERVICE
Community-based
learning
Civic education
Public information networks
K-12/Pre college programmes
Short courses, seminars
or workshops
Distance
education
Knowledge transfer
and research
Corporate funded
research
Trade association
funded research
Goverment funded
research
Non-prot funded
research
Applied
research
Action
research
Practise-based
research
Participatory
action research
Community-based
research
Community-campus
partnerships
Service
learning
Academically based
community service
Media
interviews
Managed
learning
environments
Performnaces,
public events
and lectures
Policy
analysis
Consulting
Expert
testimony
Technical
assistance Needs
assessments/
evaluation
Community engagement
268 Higher education reviewed
6.1.2. Developing mechanisms for assessing the quality of community
engagement
Responses to the HSRC study (2010) and the task team survey (2013) reveal that
many academics perceive the biggest challenge to the expansion of community
engagement to stem from the lack of integration of community engagement into
performance criteria or academic workloads. The absence of recognition of the wide
range of scholarly outputs associated with community engagement compounds the
problem. Similar concerns dominate international discourse. Given the global nature
of higher education, these challenges cannot be addressed at the level of a single
rankings of universities. For this reason the task team recommends that SAHECEF
consider best practice within South Africa and highlight these strategies, while also
forging links with international networks and organisations already working on this,
to collaborate with them around the development of strategies for assessing and
recognising engaged scholarship.
Lack of funding for community projects, especially over the longer term, has impacted
negatively on growth in community engagement and led to the haphazard nature of
some engagement. Internationally, there are numerous examples of how governments
have helped to create a more enabling environment for promoting the responsiveness
of universities.75 Some strategies include the establishment of earmarked funds that
engagement, the provision of national awards, and the widening of criteria used for
measuring the quality of research to include consideration of the impact of research,
where applicable, on wider society.76 Other examples of support mechanisms include
and teaching between higher education institutions, business and government; and
the allocation of funds to address particular skills shortages that impact on regional
economic growth. Opportunities for funding should also be explored with provincial
and local governments. In this regard, the objective-driven national teaching and
research development grants and the special fund established in the Western Cape,
with funding from the Western Cape Government, may provide useful models.77
75 For example the Higher Education Funding Council in England, the Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development’s Regional Engagement Project, and the National Review Board for
Scholarship of Engagement in the United States of America.
76 For example, in the USA major federal research funding agencies, such the National Science
Foundation (NSF)—have adopted additional criteria for proposals that address aspects of
collaborative methods and the public impact or potential application of research. NSF criteria now
require that grant applications submitted for its consideration address the broader social impacts
of the proposed research on public understanding; policy and/or practice; educational strategies.
77 In 2013 the Western Cape Government allocated funds through the Cape Higher Education
Consortium (CHEC) for projects focused on enhancing social and economic development. The
criteria used for disbursing grants include: Demonstrating broad alignment with the themes of a
joint Plan of Action drawn up by the universities and the provincial government; Planned utilisation
of the scholarly expertise of academics and/ or students, with an intentional public purpose or
constituencies; and A focus on working with marginalised or very poor communities (CHEC (2013)
‘Call for proposals for grants for engaged scholarship initiatives’).
Community engagement 269
In light of the above, it is recommended that a task team be established to
investigate options for incentivising the scholarship of engagement through the
provision of DHET funds for community engagement. While NRF funding has
been an important catalyst in stimulating new community engagement initiatives
and the scholarship of engagement, it is further suggested that such a task team
review the impact of the funding provided and generate focus areas for future
NRF funding.
6.1.4. Strengthening the policy environment
The 2013 White Paper acknowledges that, “Community Engagement in its various
forms – socially responsive research, partnerships with civil society organisations,
formal learning programmes that engage students in community work as a formal
part of their academic programmes and many other formal and informal aspects
of academic work has become a part of the work of universities in South Africa”,
and that the concept of community engagement must be distinguished from a
national graduate service programme.78 While the acknowledgement of the role
of community engagement is important, the White Paper does not contain any
strategies for strengthening this part of the work of universities. The only policy
recommendations refer to the likelihood that future funding of such initiatives in
universities will be restricted to programmes that are linked to their teaching and
research functions. It does not address the critique, raised in this chapter, of the
national policy environment or the need for incentivising university leadership
and academics to take community engagement more seriously. Implementation of
any of the funding options outlined above would go a long way towards enabling
universities to enhance their social responsiveness.
The task team recommends that revised reporting requirements for universities
should include a focus on community engagement as a way of signalling the
importance of holding universities and the national department accountable
for reporting on the responsiveness of universities to multidimensional
transformation. Therefore, a small unit should be established to help promote the
institutionalisation of community engagement within the fabric of the universities
and develop strategic focus areas across the system. This unit should also be
charged with facilitating engagement with national, provincial and targeted local
authorities about building structured relationships with universities. Institutions
should be encouraged to form regional consortia and develop agreements with
various levels of government in support of regional development needs.
The brief summaries of national policies earlier in this chapter suggest that there
are opportunities for partnerships with the DST, the Department of Economic
Development, the National Planning Commission, and the DTI in addition to the
ongoing collaboration with the NRF and the CHE. It is important though, that
universities should not be viewed as delivery arms of the state. Critical engagement
with government is vital. Universities need to use the opportunities presented
by the NDP, and the recognition of major challenges facing the globe, to position
engagement scholarship as a key strategy for strengthening the contribution of
universities to addressing national and global challenges.
78 DHET (2013) White Paper for Post-school Education and Training, p. 39.
270 Higher education reviewed
7. Conclusion
This chapter has raised a number of complexities associated with the
concept of community engagement internationally and in South Africa. Various
community engagement approaches and models have been discussed together
with descriptions of the way in which it has been understood in the South African
context over the last two decades. As a result of work done by key institutions
such as JET, and the HEQC of the CHE, it appears that community engagement is
certainly on the agenda of public universities in South Africa.
The paper has also outlined the multiple ways in which universities are currently
engaging with development challenges drawing on elements of different models
for university engagement, and has argued that these engagements have brought
the notion of engaged scholarship offers a method of research and inquiry that
advances academic disciplines while responding to important contemporary
questions or issues.
As Badat has argued, it is necessary to examine how community engagement
translate these into concrete deeds and action. In this way, universities can
give expression to the great promise of higher education to be, “a process of
expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy” and can “embrace the ethics
of social accountability and an expansive humanism” by being “guided by the
developmentalist and democratizing demands of global ‘public good’”. 79
We argue that, given the scale of the grand challenges facing South Africa, and
the potential of the universities to enhance their contributions to multidimensional
development, it would be fruitful to move away from efforts to reach consensus on a
uniform approach to conceptualising community engagement in favour of focusing
all institutions, building partnerships with various levels of government and other
social partners, and promoting scholarship of engagement. This could enable the
further development of a body of knowledge on the kinds of practices, models and
spaces that best enable universities to work together with other social partners
within an inclusive developmental approach. As Badat notes:
Through community engagement staff and students can become active agents for
social change, contributing to widening educational and social opportunities and
improvements in the quality of life of individuals and communities, to local economic
and social development, and advancing the public good. It enables scholars, students
and universities to take on practically the responsibility of re-thinking and re-making
our world and our societies on the basis of other principles and logics than the ones
that have dominated in recent decades: putting human development, people’s needs,
social justice and human rights at the centre of all our action.80
79 S. Badat (2013) ‘Eleven theses on community engagement at universities. The social responsibility
of universities: Community and civic engagement - Context and Big Picture’ (conference
presentation), p. 7.
80 Ibid., p. 8.
Community engagement 271
The NDP suggests that the potential and capacity of South Africa to address
its pressing needs will depend on adopting an approach that, “systematically
includes the socially and economically excluded, where people are active
champions of their own development, and where government works effectively
to develop people’s capabilities to lead the lives they desire”.81 Implicit in the
notion of inclusive development is the need for collaboration between different
the roles of different partners. Given the desire to adopt an inclusive approach to
development, community engagement as a way of doing teaching and learning,
and research that involves working with those outside the academy who have
expertise, wisdom, insights and lived experience that equips them to contribute to
the quality of scholarship, while addressing development needs has the potential
to enhance higher education’s contribution to the goals of the NDP.82
South African universities should work together to build a system of higher
education that advances the public good and ensures that the intellectual
resources within the sector are harnessed to enable the country to generate
solutions to the problems facing the country and to transform the social and
political context. Collaboration between universities can enhance the impact of
scholarship on policy development and implementation.
The above approach to community engagement resonates with recent calls
by international community networks promoting engaged scholarship. This
is explored in the GUNi in which Hall suggests that, “it is core that the sharing
of knowledge across and through the boundaries of the community and the
university plays a central role in the re-imagining and self-renewal of society”.83
In arguing why university-community engagement is critical, Razak suggests that
a new approach to human development largely depends on universities being
able to produce graduates with the necessary capacities to help build a just and
sustainable social order. He challenged universities to think about the kind of
transformation that would be needed in their governance structures, curricula,
extra-curricular activities and research to enhance their responsiveness to
addressing ‘global grand challenges’.84 The global grand challenges he is referring
which include: poverty; gender inequality and other forms of discrimination;
climate change; energy; global health and healthy ageing; and agriculture and
food security.85
and systemic nature of the grand challenges necessitate the involvement of
many different stakeholders in developing solutions. An inclusive approach is
needed to build communities with the intellectual and organisational capacity
81 NPC (2011) National Development Plan, p. 3.
82 Holland (2013) ‘Leadership, planning and change management for community engagement’
(presentation).
83 GUNi (2014) Higher education in the world 5, p. 39
84 D. Razak & E. Afendras (2014) ‘Engagement beyond the third mission: The experience of Albukhary
International University’ in GUNi (2014) Higher education in the world 5.
85 GUNi (2014) Higher education in the world 5.
272 Higher education reviewed
to take ownership of the generation and implementation of solutions to societal
problems. At the GUNi conference it was argued that:
Higher Education should help to create problem awareness and promote systemic
thinking, thus empowering people to participate in and shape the transformation
process. Research and Higher Education Institutions must be held accountable
for equitable partnerships with community-based organizations through clearly
articulated memoranda of understanding that describe the principles and a plan for
how these will be monitored and evaluated.86
Locating community engagement in a developmental paradigm would highlight
the role that community engagement can play as a method for promoting
collaboration between the universities and different social partners for mutually
political needs.
86 GUNi (2013) ‘Big Tent IV: The grand global challenges and the transformation to sustainable
Community engagement 273
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This chapter offers a critical survey of some of the key policy issues
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years. At the centre of these stands a multi-dimensional attempt at
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intervention mingle and clash. First, there is the local pull of democratisation, as
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so deep that twenty years of progressive policy have barely been able to shift
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with respect to what many regard as an undue narrowing down of the social
purposes of higher education.1
Sometimes pulling together, and sometimes pulling apart, the different elements
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higher education system. In this chapter, we note and underline the increasing
awareness, in both policy and practice, that the demands made on academic
is, the nature and substance of the academic profession as a determining element
in the higher education system is better understood, particularly in relation to
‘external’ demands for performance placed on it. For this reason, our account is
noting frictions and unintended consequences of policy and practice; and 2) the
changing demands on and the nature of the academic profession.
This chapter begins with a cautionary note on nomenclature, as vocabulary
can rarely be regarded as a neutral element in argument and analysis. The term
academic functions of higher education, may tend to obscure certain aspects of
Writers and editors: Denyse Webbstock with Chika Sehoole
Task team leader: John Higgins
Members/contributors: Raphael de Kadt, Thandi Lewin, Sean Muller & Chris
Winberg
CHE research assistant: Mosa Phadi
7
1
‘Reform’ policy. J.P. Olsen & P. Maassen (2007) ‘European debates on the knowledge institution: The
modernization of the university at the European level’ in P. Maassen & J.P. Olsen, University dynamics
and European integration.
280 Higher education reviewed
puts it, “at the heart of the university”.2 Indeed, he notes further that “no
motivated, and effective professoriate. Yet, too often the academics are forgotten
in discussions of the problems of universities – or sometimes demonized as
3
generally understood to comprise three broad constituencies – academic staff,
administrative staff, and ancillary and support staff – with some cross-over
functions between them (various senior management and administrative staff
may also perform or have performed academic functions, for instance), this
chapter focuses on academic staff, and suggests that a key feature of discussions
should be the conditions for the formation of academic staff, in terms of
profession in South Africa, we have used the term ‘academic staff’ as the central
object of our analysis. The chapter does not evaluate the quality of academic
for further research in this area.
2. The policy environment and other
contextual factors
We have distinguished four main dimensions in which the push and pull
pressures for transformation of the higher education system in South Africa have
policy goals. These four main dimensions are interrelated and have points of
overlap, but for the purposes of argument and analysis we distinguish them as:
and the higher education landscape.
2.1 Equity
2.1.1. Legislation
A major pull factor related to democratisation was the need to change the
as the primary vehicles to bring this about. A key feature of South African labour
legislation in general in the last twenty years has been the attempt to redress the
and expectations built into general labour policy, however, do not address the
calls for a better understanding of its dynamics. Hiring and retention patterns still
appear to perpetuate largely racialised and gender-biased patterns, despite some
2 P.G. Altbach, G. Androushchak, Y. Kuzminov, M. Yudkevich & L. Reisburg (eds.) (2013) The global
future of higher education and the academic profession, p.21.
3 Ibid.
281
improvements. Thaver notes that, “While much current thinking is at the macro-
level and focused on narrow human resource aspects related to ‘getting the
numbers right’, there is limited research on what happens in the daily experiences
of faculty”.4 Indeed, much of the policy activity focused on academics as human
resources has shaped the context within which that daily experience takes place.
In the labour domain, in the early post-apartheid period, a framework of labour
legislation was developed through the passing of successive laws (the Labour Relations
Act of 1994, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act of 1997, the Skills Development
Act of 1998, and the Employment Equity Act of 1998) that aimed to delineate and
enforce human rights and obligations in the sphere of employment. One effect of
these laws was that they brought all workers, including academic staff, within one
domain of employee relations. Whereas academics had previously been organised
in loose staff associations that had no legal rights, they were now entitled to form
trade unions and collectively bargain for sector-wide rights and conditions of service.
Although it is not evident that academic staff have effectively become unionised in
the twenty-year period under review, despite some attempts in that respect, what is
primarily by the employment contract, which in turn was governed by the general
provisions of the Labour Relations Act no. 66 of 1995.5 The status of academic staff
as general employees was given further impetus through the Employment Equity
Act of 1998, which required all institutions to undertake an organisational analysis
to determine under-represented staff categories and barriers to equity. Universities
were to submit to the Department of Labour an annual equity plan, setting out equity
targets, measures, strategies and monitoring mechanisms, and to account for any
lack of progress towards achieving equity goals.6 All universities became ‘designated
black people and people with disabilities, who form part of so-called ‘designated
groups’. An implication of the labour legislation was the need for institutions to
to higher education legislation which carried with it reporting requirements to
the Department of Education, and later, Higher Education and Training, in relation
to meeting transformational goals. The need to transform post-apartheid higher
education into a single coordinated system and the respective policies that were
adopted to achieve that goal, as well as the impact of these policies in general, have
been addressed in a number of policy analyses and studies as well as elsewhere in this
review.7 Of particular interest to this chapter are the effects and impact of these policies
4 B. Thaver (2010) ‘The transition to equity in South African higher education: Governance, fairness,
and trust in everyday academic practice’ in International Journal of Politics, Culture & Society, 23, p.43.
5 E. Webster & S. Mosoetsa (2001) At the chalk face: Managerialism and the changing academic
workplace, 1995-2001.
6 C. Howell & G. Subotzky (2002) Obstacles and strategies in pursuing staff equity: A regional study of
7 CHE (2004) ; CHE (2007) Review of
higher education in South Africa: Selected themes; CHE (2009) ‘The State of higher education report’
in Higher Education Monitor, 8.
282 Higher education reviewed
capacity development measures to facilitate a more representative staff complement.8
As one of the state steering mechanisms for the sector, it required universities to
submit to the national education department institutional three-year rolling plans
that included human resource development strategies to achieve equity goals. The
latter were to outline staff recruitment and promotion policies and practices, staff
development arrangements, remuneration and conditions of service, reward systems,
the transformation of institutional cultures and mechanisms to support diversity.
Steering the system through planning was a government response to addressing
key challenges that were considered unlikely to improve without deliberate
enrolment growth that was unrelated to available funding resources, and that
was detached from the available institutional, physical and personnel resources,
as one of the troubling features of the higher education sector that required a
planning response.9 The unplanned growth that had been a response to pressures
to increase student access to achieve greater equity, was seen as unsustainable,
and government attempted to bring about change through planning that was
to institutions. An interpretation of this development is that, in the trade-off
between meeting the aspirational goals of the system and the realities of funding
constraints, the discourse of participation shifted to one of resource adequacy.10
of an academy appointed into established posts, to human resources required for
particular cost centres within the corporation of the university.
These changes were consistent with the growth of managerialism in academia
experienced globally, which arguably changed the nature of academic work
through greater levels of reporting, accountability and administration. They were
at the same time, however, motivated by concerns for equity and redress, which
underlies the trend towards managerialism.11
The effects of the new policy environment, alongside policies and strategies
that came to be adopted later such as institutional mergers (2002) and the new
to be heralding a changing role for the state and, in particular, expanding state
intervention in higher education, yet the equity imperative was the social good that
forms of professorial power, occurring simultaneously with the incursion of market-
type forces into the academy”.12 A new facet of the tension surfaced, one that pitted
8 DoE (1997) White Paper 3: A programme for the transformation of higher education.
9 DoE (2005) Student enrolment planning in public higher education.
10 J. Jansen, C. Herman, R. Morake, V. Pillay, C. Sehoole & E. Weber (2007) ‘Tracing and explaining
change in higher education: The South African case’ in CHE (2007) Review of higher education in
South Africa.
11 Webster & Mosoetsa (2001) At the chalk face.
12 Thaver (2010) ‘The transition to equity in South African higher education: Governance, fairness, and
trust in everyday academic practice’ in International Journal of Politics, Culture & Society, 23, p. 23.
283
historical struggles for autonomy against the new language of accountability. Under
the banner of autonomy, universities argued – as they had under apartheid – that
the right to decide on academic policy matters was sacrosanct; under accountability,
the state argued that – under democracy – it had a vested interest in how the
heavily-funded public universities used public funds.13 Thaver writes that, “Given
the statutory nature of the reform, the central oversight level (which is charged
with carrying out the policy mandate) tends to clash with traditionally autonomous
forms of professorial power and scholarly freedom [such that] the boundary
between the executive or managerial and the professorial levels is transgressed
or blurred… the data suggest a tendency among some faculty to frame the equity
reform as an exogenous incursion, treating it as no more than an appendage to the
otherwise meritocratic business of the university. This trend is often bolstered by
an invocation of the principle of academic autonomy”.14
the impact of the legislative environment that was designed to promote the
achievement of a more equitable academic complement in terms of both race and
gender, the changing patterns in terms of numbers provide a baseline for analysis.
universities show that while there has been considerable change, the situation is
15 The statistics are presented
permanent and temporary academic employees.
Figure 1 shows that the permanent academic staff complement grew by 35%
between 1994 and 2012. The number of permanent African staff members more
than quadrupled, albeit from a very low base. The numbers of permanent white
academic staff members declined by 13%. In proportional terms, Africans made
up 9% of the permanent staff complement in 1994 and 31% in 2012, while the
proportion of white staff members declined from 83% to 53% over the same
2012 indicates a permanent academic staff complement in which the majority
is white (53%) and male (55%), with roughly a third made up of African staff
members.
Considering the entire academic staff complement, permanent and temporary,
there was a growth in the second decade of democracy of 24%, with the greatest
growth occurring in the African component. While the numbers of white academic
staff overall grew from 2004 to 2012 (after a decline in the period to 2008), much
of the growth was in the temporary staff category. Indeed, the growth in temporary
with permanent staff numbers growing by 19% and temporary staff by 30%,
13 Jansen et al. (2007) ‘Tracing and explaining change in higher education: The South African case’ in
CHE (2007) Review of higher education in South Africa: Selected themes.
14 Thaver (2010) ‘The transition to equity in South African higher education: Governance, fairness,
and trust in everyday academic practice’ in International Journal of Politics, Culture & Society, 23.
15
284 Higher education reviewed
16
HEMIS; the permanent staff category is thus the most comparable over the 20-year period. Data from
HEMIS category used is ‘Instructional and Research staff’, which has here been referred to as academic
staff. The source of the data for the following graphs is SAPSE and HEMIS, extracted annually.
16
18 000
16 000
14 000
12 000
10 000
8 000
6 000
4 000
2 000
01994 2004 2012
African 1 129 3 566 5 430
Coloured 431 756 1 077
Indian 535 1 233 1 477
White 10 699 9 854 9 261
Total 12 852 15 448 17 451
60 000
50 000
40 000
30 000
20 000
10 000
02004 2008 2012
African 9 127 10 494 16 429
Coloured 1 861 2 176 2 664
Indian 3 352 3 730 4 346
White 25 745 24 009 27 456
Total 41 521 41 738 51 573
285
such that in 2012 there were twice as many temporary academic staff (34 122) as
permanent (17 451), as indicated in the Figure 3 below.
In addition to overall numbers, a further dimension to indicating moves towards
African academic staff with Masters degrees almost doubled between 2004 and
2012, while the number of white Masters holders dropped slightly. Similarly, the
number of permanent African staff with doctorates almost trebled in that period,
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0African Coloured Indian White Total African Coloured Indian White Total African Coloured Indian White Total
2004 2008 2012
Temporary 5 561 1 105 2 119 15 891 26 073 6 284 1 269 2 385 14 737 25 802 10 999 1 587 2 869 18 195 34 122
Permanent 3 566 756 1 233 9 854 15 448 4 210 907 1 345 9 272 15 936 5 430 1 077 1 477 9 261 17 451
61%
59%
63%
62%
63%
60%
58%
64%
61%
62%
67%
60%
66%
66%
66%
8 000
7 000
6 000
5 000
4 000
3 000
2 000
1 000
0UG
Dip/Cert UG
Degrees PG up to
Hons Masters Doctoral Other UG
Dip/Cert UG
Degrees PG up to
Hons Masters Doctoral Other
2007 2012
African 208 433 667 1 197 591 470 86 618 839 2 016 1 483 388
Coloured 56 110 124 247 139 80 35 136 11 2 427 332 35
Indian 80 147 237 411 233 125 11 188 188 519 496 75
White 474 790 1 243 3 033 3 531 783 111 572 1 101 2 944 4 284 249
Total 819 1 482 2 275 4 893 4 508 1 471 243 1 516 2 242 5 955 6 743 752
286 Higher education reviewed
while the number of white academics with doctorates grew to a lesser extent, i.e.
by 21%. These changes may, in part, be indicative of the effects of institutional
hiring policies and quality assurance processes that have in recent years demanded
higher levels of academic achievement for permanent appointment, as well as
greater access to higher education over the last twenty years. It also indicates that
the pipeline of potential new black academic recruits is growing.
The distribution of academics across universities has largely continued to
follow the historical race patterns. Disaggregated in terms of institutions, the
proportions of permanent African academic staff in 2012 range widely, from 5%
to 91%, with an average of 31%.17 There were six institutions (of the 23 operative
in 2012) with a majority of permanent African academics, and in terms of
absolute numbers, there were only two with a permanent African academic staff
component of more than 500. This is an indication that the existing pool from
which senior African academics can be drawn by other universities is small, and
highlights the need for larger numbers of Africans to enter academia. There were
seven institutions with an African academic staff complement of less than 20%,
six of which had not been through major merger processes. When considering
black academic staff in general for 2012 (including Coloured and Indian academic
changed slightly for 2013, with no institution having fewer than 21% black
academic staff members. The statistics indicate that the pursuit of equity in terms
of race has proceeded unevenly across institutions.
and 19% of associate professors were African, compared with 10% and 14%
respectively in 2008. In 2012, 76% of professors were white, a drop from 83%
in 2004. In comparison, when considering lecturers in 2012, 40% were African
17 HEMIS data, 2012.
8 000
7 000
6 000
5 000
4 000
3 000
2 000
1 000
0Director
(UoTs) Professor Associate
Professor Senior
Lecturer Lecturer Junior
Lecturer and
below
Director
(UoTs) Professor Associate
Professor Senior
Lecturer Lecturer Junior
Lecturer and
below
2004 2012
African 42 198 145 714 1 962 505 43 303 361 1 163 2 943 617
Coloured 6 61 19 147 446 77 17 98 69 223 576 94
Indian 34 80 76 326 599 118 34 109 135 376 735 88
White 311 1 718 1 021 2 774 3 221 809 85 1 643 1267 2 696 3 017 553
Total 393 2 059 1 268 3 966 6 242 1 520 179 2 174 1 860 4 521 7 358 1 359
287
academics and 41% white. This suggests that transformation of the academic
profession is progressing from the lower ranks and should spread upwards over
the next decade.
With respect to gender equity, the patterns indicate a greater level of change
than in terms of race. The graph below illustrates that the growth in permanent
female academics since 1994 has been far greater than for males (90%: 10%),
and that the situation in 2012 was such that almost 45% of the permanent
complement was female, 55% male. At aggregate level thus, it is apparent that
progress towards gender equity has been rapid.
achieved, statistics at aggregate level mask the continuation of substantial gender
that when analysed according to both race and gender, inequalities in terms of
representation become even more evident, and secondly, that female academics
in general are clustered in the lower ranks of the academy. A derivation from the
graphs below reveals that African women comprise 14% of the entire academic staff
population; white women 27%. Half the female academics are white, with the rest
being African, Indian, Coloured or unknown. Similarly, African female academics
are the least well represented at senior levels: in 2012 they constituted 9% of the
total number of female professors (662), and only 2% of all professors (2 190).
(see Figures 7 and 8). Conversely, women constitute just more than half of all
lecturers and junior lecturers. These ranks are also, however, in relation to the
will be discussed in more details below.
18 000
16 000
14 000
12 000
10 000
8 000
6 000
4 000
2 000
01994 2004 2012
Women 4 105 6 344 7 820
Men 8 747 9 104 9 631
Total 12 852 15 448 17 541
288 Higher education reviewed
those in other parts of the world, including universities in developed countries,
universities that need to be understood.18 Gender inequalities are evident not
in 2012
16 000
14 000
12 000
10 000
8 000
6 000
4 000
2 000
0African Coloured Indian White
Director (UoTs) 37 9 27 82
Professor 310 77 103 1 615
Associate Professor 348 44 107 932
Senior lecturer 950 155 260 1 744
Lecturer 2 884 523 625 3 023
Jnr Lecturer and below 4 847 431 1 025 6 286
Total 9 376 1 239 2 147 13 682
race in 2012
16 000
14 000
12 000
10 000
8 000
6 000
4 000
2 000
0African Coloured Indian White
Director (UoTs) 8 8 9 17
Professor 60 31 31 535
Associate Professor 92 28 57 582
Senior lecturer 505 0 193 1 691
Lecturer 1 989 688 699 3 746
Jnr Lecturer and below 4 397 571 1 210 7 201
Total 7 051 1 326 2 199 13 772
18 L. Morley (2013) ‘The rules of the game: Women and the leaderist turn in higher education’ in Gender
and Education, 25(1) pp. 116-131.
289
only at senior levels of appointment, but also in terms of the related factor of
doctorates the proportions change markedly, with roughly twice as many men as
women holding doctorates. This indicates that the conversion rate from Master’s
to doctorates is higher among male academic staff members than females. The
situation is, however, improving, as seen in Figure 9. In 2004, women constituted
45% of academics with a Master’s degree and 30% of those with a doctoral
degree. By 2012, the number of women with a Masters had increased by 33%
so that they constituted 49% of all academic staff with a Masters. Similarly, the
number of female academics with a doctorate had increased by a substantial 89%
so that they constituted 37% of those with a doctorate. It is evident that the gap
rank. The potential further narrowing of the gap is also evident when considering
postgraduate enrolments and graduations (Figures 10 and 11).
The substantial growth in both enrolments and graduations of women in all
postgraduate categories, but especially at the lower postgraduate levels, indicates
a pipeline that could lead to achieving gender parity within academia.
discrimination in terms of permanent and temporary status. More male academics
were appointed in temporary positions relative to permanent ones than females
during the period 2004 to 2012, and there was near parity of genders in temporary
4 500
4 000
3 500
3 000
2 500
2 000
1 500
1 000
500
0UG
Dip/Cert UG
Degrees PG up to
Hons Masters Doctoral Other UG
Dip/Cert UG
Degrees PG up to
Hons Masters Doctoral Other
2004 2012
Women 332 712 1 131 2 195 1 331 643 125 773 1 147 2 906 2 514 355
Men 487 770 1 144 2 698 3 177 828 118 743 1 095 3 049 4 229 397
290 Higher education reviewed
60 000
50 000
40 000
30 000
20 000
10 000
0PG up to Hons Masters Doctoral Occasional PG up to Hons Masters Doctoral Occasional
2004 2012
Women 41 851 20 454 3 694 13 787 54 090 24 071 6 113 13 179
Men 26 561 24 878 5 410 9 383 31 324 25 488 7 848 9 446
25 000
20 000
15 000
10 000
5 000
0PG up to Hons Masters Doctoral PG up to Hons Masters Doctoral
2004 2012
Women 14 306 3 441 420 20 985 4 983 794
Men 9 482 4 442 683 12 395 5 350 1 084
2000 2004 2008 2012
Perm Temp Perm Temp Perm Temp Perm Temp
Women 5 539 9 584 6 344 11 906 6 916 11 917 7 820 16 884
Men 9 093 14 186 9 104 14 149 9 020 13 881 9 631 17 234
Total 14 632 23 812 15 448 26 073 15 936 25 802 17 451 34 122
With hindsight it is not clear that transformational goals and the pursuit of
planning measures introduced. Despite a strong policy framework for achieving
equity, twenty years into democracy there is deep concern that demographic
19 Furthermore,
as noted by the Commission on Employment Equity, “Race and gender are still the
two major factors that determine where a person sits in the academic ‘hierarchy’
They are followed, in monotonous and predictable fashion, by White females and
then Indian males. The country is rigidly locked into this paradigm.”20
19 CHE (2013)
curriculum structure.
20 DoL (2013) 14th Commission for employment equity, 2013-2014: Annual report.
291
widely, with some focusing on the national policy environment, some on
institutional behaviour and others on economic supply and demand factors. In
some perspectives, the limited success of national legislative and policy measures
can be related to the lack of punitive measures adopted by the Department of
Labour or Department of Higher Education and Training against universities
to ensure compliance, as this would be seen as transgressing the boundaries of
institutional autonomy. In such views, change in universities requires yet greater
steering towards the achievement of goals in the face of perceived conservatism
and recalcitrance. As Minister Nzimande has stated, “Some institutions have made
substantial progress in transforming themselves, but others have lagged behind.
Focused attention by all of us is required on this matter”.21 He added that “… I will
pay close attention to accelerated transformation in our universities, including
setting concrete targets and transformation indicators” and then explained that,
“I am also resourcing the transformation oversight committee to assist us in this
regard”.22 The lack of transformation may, however, be less a deliberate strategy
not to comply, than simply an optimising response by academic managers in the
face of other pressures. In other words, an unwillingness to make systematic
attempts to address the issue arises, almost inevitably, from the fact that there is
little incentive to do so and potentially much cost in the form of internal resistance
The perceived slow rate of change is often ascribed to the relative autonomy
of institutions from government, as the key responsibility for putting in place
mechanisms to achieve equity lies with individual institutions. This has had both
positive and negative connotations. On one hand, it has been argued that any
change that has occurred has been a result of institutional action rather than a
response to legislative requirements to produce plans and to report on progress
at a national level. Sehoole and Ojo (2013) describe a number of programmes and
strategies across institutions to grow the numbers of young academics, and some
of these are discussed below.23 The limitations of such programmes have been
argued to be that they are generally targeted at supporting individuals in their
career pathways, while not necessarily changing the structure of the academic
working environment and shifting the ways in which institutions operate that
might militate against the achievement of greater equity, and that they are
small and not widespread. Much of the funding and support for programmes
philanthropic organisations in the United States and elsewhere. Such foundations
at selected historically white institutions.24
On the other hand, institutional cultures have been regarded as resistant to
change. Research into managerialism and the changing workplace in the early
21 B. Nkosi (2015) ‘This is the year varsities will transform’ in Mail and Guardian, 14 May.
22 Ibid.
23 C. Sehoole & E. Ojo (2013) Entering academia: Conditions and opportunities for new faculty in higher
education.
24 CHEC (2014) Review of initiatives in equity and transformation in three universities in South Africa.
292 Higher education reviewed
post-apartheid period indicated that human resource managers at institutions
other than an individual departmental matter, rather than part of a deliberate
institutional employment equity strategy.25 Descriptions of academics experiencing
discrimination have been found in several studies spanning the period under
review,26 and further studies posit that the effects of past institutional racism remain
27
A government-initiated investigation in 2008 into reasons for the failure of
heavy workloads and unsatisfactory working conditions of academic staff; a lack
of funds for new permanent posts; language policies in some institutions; under-
developed networks and support systems for black staff; an absence of effective
monitoring and a lack of accountability for equity within institutions; and a
28 While raising
concerns about what institutions are doing to address the “real-life experiences”
of staff, the report also noted that many institutions have initiatives in place to
improve staff equity, recruitment and retention.29
The lack of thoroughgoing demographic change in the staff complement has
recently been vigorously debated in the media, with two main broad responses
institutional policies and cultures that militate against or actively resist change,
as noted above.30 A contrary view is that a faster rate of change could not have
been expected, given that, “It generally takes more than 20 years from getting
a PhD to becoming a professor. The pool of South African black academics
available for appointment to professorship in 2014 is a proportion of the pool of
black PhD graduates in 1994. Given our history, this was a very small pool. Few
in that small pool chose academic careers over offers from the new government,
civil service and corporates, all desperate to recruit highly skilled black
professionals.”31
other sectors with generally higher salaries than can be achieved within the
25 Webster & Mosoetsa (2001) At the chalk face.
26 Review of
Higher Education, 25(2), pp. 185-205; C. Potgieter (2002) Black academics on the move; DoE (2008)
Report of the Ministerial Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the Elimination of
Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions; S. Ismail (2011) ‘Researching transformation
at a South African university: Ethical dilemmas in the politics of representation’ in Studies in Higher
Education, 36(3), pp. 275-289; S. Vandeyar (2010) ‘Shifting selves: Constructing and negotiating
academic identities’ in South African Journal of Higher Education, 24(6), pp. 914-934.
27 M. Mamdani (2004); N. Tazi (ed.) Keywords:
Identity; J. Statman & A.E. Ansell (2000) ‘The rise and fall of the Makgoba affair: a case study of symbolic
politics’, in Politikon 27(2).
28 DoE (2008) Report of the Ministerial Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the
Elimination of Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions.
29 Ibid.
30 The Guardian Africa Network Expert Panel (2014) ‘Why are there so few black professors in South
The Guardian, 6 October.
31 UCT (2014) ‘Staff transformation at UCT’ in UCT Daily News.
293
university sector.32 However, it is not possible to say with any certainty whether
that is, in fact, a contributory factor in persistent low levels of representation.
There is as yet little systematic evidence on why individuals choose some career
paths over others, which is crucial information for policies seeking to address
the overlapping challenges of transformation and successfully developing new
generations of academics.
seated frustration and thwarted expectation on one hand, and a resignation to the
Part of the more recent responses of government to expedite change has been to
introduce more hands-on monitoring and planning measures, and the discourse on
dealing with non-compliance in universities has become tougher, while the need for
active interventions such as funding more academic posts to speed up transformation
has also been recognised.33 There have been attempts to develop national measures
Index and a Transformation Oversight Committee has been established to monitor
such change.34 These have not been without some level of controversy, with both
methodological and conceptual concerns having been raised about the Index and the
import of the establishment of such a body.35
Further policies have been developed with the aim of bringing about more rapid
transformation in institutions, requiring social inclusion reports to form part of
annual reports to government, seemingly in addition to already existing reporting
36 Universities have, through their Vice-Chancellors’ association,
Higher Education South Africa (HESA), perhaps as a pre-emptive move in the face
of potential sanctions, also undertaken the monitoring of the pursuit of equity
through compiling transformation reports.37
isolate demographic change from policies and strategies on transformation as
a whole, and indeed, to pin down the concept within the shifting meanings that
shelter under the transformation umbrella. Transformation plans and institutional
32 Potgieter (2002) Black academics on the move; HESA (2011) Sector position paper on the report of the
Ministerial Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in
public higher education institutions.
33 DHET (2015) ‘2nd Higher Education Summit: Addressing systemic higher education’; Parliamentary
Higher Education and Training and the Transformation Oversight Committee’.
34 K.S. Govinder & M.W. Makgoba, (2013) ‘An equity index for South Africa’ in South African Journal of
Science, 5/6.
35 J. Higgins (2014) ‘Universities and state control: Cloudy days for academic freedom’ in Mail and
Guardian, 6 June; A. Morris (2014) ‘Is the Equity Index a good tool to gauge demographic transformation
South African Journal of Science, 3/4; T.A. Moultrie & R.E. Dorrington
(2014) ‘Flaws in the approach and application of the Equity Index: Comments on Govinder et al. (2013)’
in South African Journal of Science, 1/2.
36 DHET (2014) Draft Social Inclusion Policy Framework for Post-school Education and Training Institutions.
37 HESA is now Universities South Africa
294 Higher education reviewed
has traced the shifting interpretations of transformation over time,38 and Lange
has similarly pointed to the differing connotations of the term in different periods
and contexts, and how one, rather narrow, version has “entered the administrative
logic of the state bureaucracy, becoming a key performance indicator for ministers,
the professions, the church and business. From this perspective transformation needs
to be measured, benchmarked, multiplied, squared, divided, exhibited in graphs and
pie charts, monitored and reported on quarterly and annually, and has to be evaluated
and meta-evaluated each decade. Thus transformation has become synonymous with
Lyotard’s performativity”.39 In this she has also cautioned against attempting to bring
about transformation without understanding that, “institutional transformation has
as its structural limit the depth and direction of the transformation of society. This
should not be taken as an excuse to stop change or to absolve universities for not
pushing further, it is simply a reminder that in the big scheme of social change and
social justice universities are but a very small part”.40
outline of some of the contextual factors that have shaped, and that continue to shape,
the academic profession in South Africa.
Apart from the pull factors associated with democratisation, a number of push
factors integral to the context of higher education in the 21st century have been exerted
has been a global phenomenon for over half a century as the social and economic
In South Africa, increasing the participation rate of youth in the higher education
system became a primary goal in the new dispensation.41 The aim was to increase the
participation rate of 18 to 24-year olds from 15% to 20% over a 10 to 15 year period,
both to respond to external pressures for responsiveness to internationalisation and
an increasingly competitive global economy, and to meet an increasing demand from
groups that had previously been denied access to higher education.42 The pressure
education by the apartheid system and its legacy, resulting in major variation in the
levels of preparedness of students to undertake undergraduate and postgraduate
studies. It is complicated further by high levels of variability in quality within and
capacity in the system to teach and supervise doctoral programmes.43
38 N. Cloete (2015) ‘The PhD and the ideology of no transformation’ in University World News, 28 August.
39 L. Lange (2014) ‘Rethinking transformation and its knowledge(s): The case of South African higher
education’ in Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning, 2(1), pp. 1-24.
40 Ibid.
41 DoE (2001) National Plan for Higher Education.
42 C. Bundy (2006) ‘Global patterns, local options: Changes in higher education internationally and some
implications for South Africa’ in Kagisano, 4.
43 NPC (2011) National Development Plan: 2030. Our future – make it work.
295
Nevertheless, in the twenty years post the introduction of democracy, South Africa
change in the demographic make-up of the student body. These achievements were
made possible by the implementation of policy measures to redress past inequalities,
examination; the recognition of prior learning to facilitate access for mature students;
extended curriculum programmes for students that show potential; and a state-
HEMIS data indicate a growth in headcount student enrolments from 493 342 in
1994 to 953 373 in 2012, a growth of 92%, with a change in the proportion of African
students from 43% to 69% in 2012, reaching 81% black students (i.e. Africans,
Indians and Coloureds) overall.44 The proportion of female students increased from
45% in 1994 to 58% in 2012. By contrast to the 92% growth in student enrolments,
the permanent academic staff complement grew by only 36% over the same period.
Looking more closely at the more recent period from 2000 to 2012, as is shown in
ratio deteriorated from 1:20 in 2000 to 1:26 in 2012. In terms of headcounts, as
shown in VitalStats 2012, the permanent academic staff to student ratio for 2012
was 1:55, with the combined temporary and permanent academic staff to student
academic staff to cater for the increase in student numbers. Indeed, this is borne out
by the headcounts of temporary academic staff which rose from 25 571 in 2007 to
34 122 in 2012, i.e. 34%. In contrast, the rise in permanent academic staff between
2007 and 2012 was from 15 812 to 17 451, i.e. only 10%.45
44 CHE (2014) VitalStats: Public Higher Education 2012.
45 CHE (2012) VitalStats: Public Higher Education 2010.
700 000
600 000
500 000
400 000
300 000
200 000
100 000
01994 2000 2004 2008 2012
Enrolments 412 439 397 649 505 279 538 457 634 817
Academics 16 905 20 137 20 409 20 726 24 088
Ratio 25 20 25 26 26
24
20
25 26 26
296 Higher education reviewed
education – the Funding Review reports an annual 1.1% decline in funding per
student FTE between 2000 and 2012 – it is clear that academics are now expected
to do more with less.46 A study by Johnson (2006) bears this out at institutional
proportional increase in the staff complement. The impact was described as
follows, “Academic staff is increasingly required to take on more and more work
as classes get bigger due to the inability of management to track enrolments
or plan effectively. We do this for less and less pay”.47 Certainly, the increase in
student numbers implies a greater total workload. Institutions have adopted
a variety of strategies to cope with increasing research, teaching, community
engagement and administration responsibilities being placed on academic staff,
including shifting undergraduate teaching and assessment to junior or part-time
contract staff, and changing assessment practices, for example, replacing essay
questions with multiple choice questions that can be ‘marked’ by an automated
process. This is not dissimilar to the situation described in other contexts that
have experienced rapid student growth. For example, Altbach writes that, “The
academic profession has been stretched to the breaking point. Close to half
those teaching in postsecondary education worldwide possess only a bachelor’s
degree. Class sizes have increased, and students receive little personal attention
from professors. Academic salaries have deteriorated, and many academics must
hold down more than one job to survive. It is likely that access has produced, on
average, a poorer learning environment for students, in part because the academic
profession has not grown fast enough to keep up with expansion.”48
2.2.2. Age
complements being stretched ever more thinly across more students, but also
to the related challenge of replacing ageing academics with a new generation of
young academics.49 Altbach et al. point out that more than half the professoriate
in much of the world is getting close to retirement, too few new PhDs are being
produced and there are too few incentives to induce new doctorate holders to
enter the profession. These trends are exacerbated in countries with rapidly
growing student populations.50
existing academic and postgraduate pipelines to replace the retiring cohorts.51
This has given rise to a realisation that individual institutional programmes
46 DHET (2013) Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities.
47 B. Johnson (2006) ‘South African academia in crisis: The spread of contrived collegial managerialism’ in
South African Journal of Higher Education, 20(1).
48 Altbach et al. (2013) The global future of higher education and the academic profession.
49 HESA (2011) Sector position paper on the report of the Ministerial Committee on Transformation and
Social Cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions.
50 Altbach et al. (2013) The global future of higher education and the academic profession.
51 ASSAf (2010) The PhD study. An evidence-based study on how to meet the demands for high-level skills in
an emerging economy.
297
– such as those mentioned above – to develop new generations of academics
will not be adequate. Instead, policy documents such as the White Paper of
2013 acknowledge the need for stimulation at a national level to increase the
pool of young academics, and a national programme towards this end has been
developed.52
In its study of the problem, HESA pointed to a looming crisis in this regard,
of the professoriate (i.e. professors and associate professors).53 In the context of
a student body that is growing much faster than its academic counterpart, the
need is not only for replacement as in a static situation, but for growth in terms
of numbers. The loss of academic expertise at senior levels is thus disconcerting
for institutions for many reasons, not least because it is generally at these
levels that research productivity is most intense and supervision is undertaken.
Contradictory pressures have led to institutions adopting a range of strategies in
this regard. While in the early years of democracy some institutions lowered their
retirement age in an effort to accelerate the transformation of the demography
of the academic staff body, more recently, given the effects of the loss of senior
academic expertise, some have reverted to a higher retirement age. There has also
been an apparent increase in contract appointments of retirees, given that 7.3% of
the entire academic population in 2012 comprised people over 60 on temporary
conditions of service.54 In Figure 15 it shows that in 2004, 6% of academic staff
were over the age of 60, but by 2012 this had increased to 10%.
52 DHET (2013)
integrated post-school system.
53 HESA (2011) Sector position paper on the report of the Ministerial Committee on Transformation and
Social Cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions.
54 CHE (2012) VitalStats.
6 000
5 000
4 000
3 000
2 000
1 000
01994 2000 2004 2008 2012
<30 1 509 1 279 1 142 1 331 1 377
30–39 4 370 4 608 4 476 4 550 4 652
40–49 4 983 4 976 4 934 4 996 5 330
50–59 3 967 4 299 4 379 4 576 4 733
≥60 619 905 1 005 1 231 1 359
Total 15 448 16 067 15 936 16 684 17 451
298 Higher education reviewed
12 000
10 000
8 000
6 000
4 000
2 000
01994 2000 2004 2008 2012
<30 10 082 9 837 8 233 9 581 11 625
30–39 5 924 6 200 6 133 6 814 7 516
40–49 4 896 5 251 5 174 5 954 6 443
50–59 3 182 3 582 3 687 4 314 4 723
≥60 1 989 2 386 2 575 3 232 3 815
Total 26 073 27 256 25 802 29 895 34 122
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
02004 2006 2008 2010 2012
<30 2 608 3 291 3 580 4 463 5 174
30–39 7 149 7 881 8 066 8 890 9 456
40–49 9 879 10 227 10 108 10 950 11 773
50–59 10 294 10 808 10 609 11 364 12 168
≥60 11 591 11 116 9 375 10 912 13 002
Total 41 521 43 323 41 738 46 579 51 573
28%
25%
24%
17%
6%
26%
25%
24%
18%
8%
22%
25%
24%
19%
9%
23%
24%
24%
19%
10%
25%
24%
23%
18%
10%
Figures 13 to 15 above indicate that in 2012, 35% of permanent academics
were 50 or older, most of whom would be due to retire in the next ten years,
depending on their institution’s retirement age. At the same time, however, there
were 35% under 40 in the pipeline. Considering both permanent and temporary
be harnessed depending on appropriate staff development strategies, career-
pathing opportunities, and the development of their scholarship and research
299
55 ASSAf (2010) The Phd study.
56 J. Mouton (2010)
57 R. Cahill & T. Irving (2015) ‘Radical Academia: Beyond the Audit Culture Treadmill’ in ‘Radical Sydney/
Radical History’ (blog).
productivity, and thus in a steady state the reported looming crisis may be
contained. Given natural attrition, possible growth in the system, and competition
from other types of employment, however, the concern about whether the next
deliver in key areas of the academic profession, namely knowledge production as
demonstrated through journal articles and book publications, as well as ability to
supervise at masters and doctoral levels. Research shows that older academics
are responsible for a disproportionate amount of research production and
supervision. Whether this is due to the lack or inability of younger academics
to take on such roles or that senior academics have greater opportunities to do
so, remains an open question. Nevertheless, it is one with potentially important
research productivity among younger academics.55
Furthermore, the size of the academic staff body as described above, constrains
the pace and extent to which doctoral graduations can be increased. A study by
“the size of the pipeline from Honours onwards and the limited supervisory
capacity in the system can be addressed.” Furthermore, he argues that research
output and general productivity will decline unless “many more black (and to a
lesser extent female) academics who publish and regenerate the workforce” are
employed. 56
2.2.3. Casualisation
African higher education reveals a trend towards the so-called casualisation of
academic work that mirrors trends elsewhere. In Figure 14 above, it is evident
that there was a growth in the number of temporary academic staff at all levels,
and that in 2012, there were 11 625 temporary academic staff (of a total of 34 122)
who were under 30. While on the one hand this indicates a reasonably sizeable
existence of a so-called academic ‘precariat’,57
such as job security, is at risk of being lured to more stable opportunities elsewhere.
The negative effects of casualisation on the attractiveness of the academic
profession are clear: attraction and retention of academic staff becomes more
satisfaction and personal employment security become increasingly important
expertise are harder to build up; and these together have a negative effect on the
reproducibility of the academic profession overall.
300 Higher education reviewed
58 HESA (2014) ‘Summary of the study of remuneration of academic staff at universities and response from
HESA’ (report).
59 Ibid.
Figure 13 reveals that there has been comparatively little growth in permanent
happened has come about mainly through an increase in temporary positions.
The effects of this are not only deleterious in terms of the conditions of service
since 2004, white permanent academic staff numbers have declined, and that
permanent African academic staff numbers rose from 3 566 in 2004 to 5 430
in 2012, which would suggest a trend towards a major change in demography.
It must be borne in mind that there are relatively few permanent positions
becoming vacant each year; Figure 12 suggests that, given 10% of academic staff
over 60, the permanent posts arising from retirements may be in the region of
4 500 annually, but given the requirements of senior posts, these are unlikely to
that there were 10 999 temporary African academic staff members; two-thirds
of the African academic workforce was thus on temporary conditions of service.
Given the trend towards increasing casualisation, and the much slower growth in
permanent positions, the negative implications for the rapid transformation of
the academic workforce in terms of demography and the achievement of greater
equity are obvious.
2.2.4. Salaries
A comprehensive HESA study on academic salaries in 2012, which compares
them with public and private sector salaries at different levels, comes to a
number of interesting and relevant conclusions. It found that at senior levels,
remuneration levels of academic staff in 2012 were better than that of comparable
staff in the public and private sectors, particularly for some top researchers; at
the introductory levels of academic ranks, however, they were far worse. There
is some dispute, however, about whether the senior academic packages are
indeed competitive with the public sector, as the benchmark of professorial level
against a Director in the public service may not be the most appropriate, given
58 Nonetheless, the
in relation to the attractiveness of an academic career for young graduates who
may be drawn to better offers elsewhere. The report also notes that while there
is no direct discrimination in remuneration between male and female academic
staff, female staff are under-represented at the higher academic ranks and over-
represented at the lower academic levels, resulting in lower remuneration levels
overall. The same is true for African and Coloured academics who are similarly
over-represented at the lower ranks. Interestingly, the data bear out perceptions
that a new managerialist trend has resulted in a widening gap in salaries between
average amount earned by academic staff members.59
301
2.3 Productivity drivers
2.3.1. Audit culture
Higher education operates in an increasingly interconnected and global
environment. Factors internal and external to the universities shape the nature
of what is commonly called an ‘audit culture’ in higher education systems across
the world. On the positive side, the aims of this audit culture have been to bring
of students are to be catered for without a matching increase in the provision of
teaching staff. On the negative side, it has raised many complex questions relating
to academic freedom and institutional autonomy. South Africa has not been
immune to the rise of such a culture, given the advent of more external monitoring
and measurement such as external quality assurance and enrolment planning, as
well as performance management systems, both internal and external, such as the
National Research Foundation’s rating system. The rise of institutional ranking
systems in which institutions seek to climb league tables measured largely on
quantitative measures of output, has also increased pressure on academic staff to
perform in prescribed ways.
A predominantly quantitative attention to measuring performance has
arguably had an impact on academic staff activity, with both intended and
unintended consequences. The positive impact of the system to reward research
output is that it provided an incentive, as intended, to increase performance
in research for both institutions and individual researchers, as evidenced in
the Research chapter of this review. However, a concern with the pressure to
increase research outputs has, in some instances, threatened the appropriate
balance between teaching and research, and has sometimes led to hiring
practices designed to ‘play the numbers game’ that may not be in the interests of
student learning. The pressure to increase research outputs has also, arguably
had an unintended consequence of lowering the quality of research in that it
to undesirable practices such as fraudulent claims for research subsidy, or the
existence of journal-publishing syndicates in which ‘peer review’ is bought
rather than properly and independently applied.
Further unintended consequences are that it has, in some institutions, led to
the creation of hierarchies within the academic profession with some academics
being seen as researchers and some as teachers with the former enjoying more
recognition than the latter, and the general undervaluing of teaching as discussed
in Chapter 4. This is also an historical global phenomenon.60 At an institutional
level, emergent entrepreneurial and audit cultures, coupled with institutional
funding and sustainability pressures, have created the need for institutions to
compete for funds, talent and rankings, and this has thus exacerbated existing
inequalities. Furthermore, as noted by many critics, international rankings can
distort institutional priorities, while the local research incentive system may, in
60 E.L. Boyer (1990) Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate.
302 Higher education reviewed
many cases, simply induce the publication of lower quality work, as noted above.61
The nature of academic work has also been affected by differing models of
management, particularly where academics have increasingly had to manage
academic administrative departments as cost centres, and to adopt new roles
and functions such as fundraising, which can detract from the traditional focus
on teaching and research.62 Academic work has also often been determined and
allocated on the basis of workload formulae used to measure it and manage it
across disciplines in order to be seen to be more equitably distributed.63 Much
of this development has happened to counter the effects of the introduction of
ad hominem promotions, which led small departments with a preponderance of
professors to become too expensive to run as cost centres.
2.3.2. Professional development of academic staff
Some of the constraints on existing staff have already been outlined, but there
is also the reality that many may be out of step with a rapidly changing student
body, context and curriculum, making staff development for more appropriate
and effective teaching and learning a necessity.
In South Africa, as in most other countries, there is no formal requirement for
teaching competence or pedagogical training. Nevertheless, (or perhaps because
of this), academic staff development has focused on building capacity for effective
and innovative undergraduate teaching, curriculum design, and the assessment
of students – and this remains a central concern of professional development
in South Africa.64 The focus of staff development for teaching arose from the
widening access to higher education in South Africa; this confronted institutions
with students who were underprepared for tertiary education (for complex and
varied reasons, including the ‘articulation gap’ between schooling and university
study).65 A culturally, linguistically and educationally diverse student population
challenged many of the fundamental assumptions and attitudes of academic staff,
and in some instances led to the establishment of staff development programmes
that re-assessed traditional curricula and pedagogical practices.66 The admission
of underprepared students placed demands on institutions for foundation
programmes (later changed to extended curriculum programmes), increased
student support, and for more innovative use of learning technologies (such as
learning management systems and social media for learning). As larger and more
diverse student groups participated in higher education, the role of academic
development changed its focus from student development (the ‘underprepared’
61 S. Marginson & M. van der Wende (2007) ‘To rank or to be ranked: The impact of global rankings
in higher education’ in Journal of Studies in International Education 11(3-4); U. Teichler (2011) ‘The
future of university rankings’ in J.C. Shin, R.K. Toutkoushian & U. Teichler, The Changing Academy – The
Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective.
62 M. Sirat, K.R. Lie & S. Kaur (2007)
63 CHE (2016)
64 D. Gosling (2009) ‘Report on the survey of directors of academic development in South African
universities’ (report).
65 CHE (2013) A proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform.
66 T. Gibbon & J. Kabaki (2002) ‘Staff ’ in N. Cloete, P. Maassen, T. Moja, M. Perold & T. Gibbon (eds.)
Transformation in higher education: Global pressures and local realities in South Africa.
303
university student), to teacher development (the ‘underprepared’ university
teacher and, by implication, the ‘underserved’ student).
tools for understanding students’ experiences in higher education, and for
academic staff development is needed to understand how academic staff might be
supported to bring about systemic change.67 South African universities offer many
opportunities for the professional development of its academic staff: workshops,
rewards, incentives, research and innovation funding, specialist associations,
conferences and special interest groups. However, there tends to be a lack of
coherence, and often little sense of purpose, in such offerings, and therefore a low
uptake of professional development opportunities, despite incentives and rewards.
As in other contexts, the trend is towards formalising such learning for staff
through the introduction of higher education studies modules and the like at
several institutions. This will no doubt serve to improve teaching and learning,
but the downside is that yet another demand is placed on academic staff amid all
the other increasing pressures to perform.68
2.4 Restructuring of institutions and the higher education
landscape
As in many other higher education systems, differentiation between institutional
types in South Africa is evident, and this has an effect on the types and nature
of academic staff employed. In South Africa, differentiation is complicated by
the overlay of the historical apartheid divisions which still bedevil patterns of
institutional resourcing in which the legacies of decades of underfunding in some
institutions still endure. This has had concomitant effects on working conditions
for staff across the system which are vastly uneven.
A strategy of mergers of institutions implemented between 2002 and 2005
was a response to the fact of this complex and over-determined differentiation. A
number of studies have been conducted to examine the processes, experiences and
achievements of mergers, most of them based on individual institutions.69 A study
in the early part of the process described the impact of mergers on the emotional
and professional lives of staff at universities, noting that, “Careers ended abruptly,
or were suddenly redirected in ways that were traumatic for the affected staff”.70
Many mergers, already complex in terms of marrying institutions with different
67 L. Quinn (2012) ‘Understanding resistance: An analysis of discourses in academic staff development’ in
Studies in Higher Education, 37(1).
68 See for example, South African postgraduate programmes in higher education https://www.ru.ac.za/
teachingandlearning/staffdevelopment/pgdips/pgdipheforacademicdevelopers/.
69 J.D. Jansen (2002) ; M. Hall (2015)
‘Institutional culture of mergers and alliances in South Africa’, in A. Curaj et al. (eds.) Mergers and
alliances in higher education; S. Badat (2015) ‘Institutional combinations and the creation of a new
higher education institutional landscape in post-1994 South Africa’ in Curaj et al., Mergers and alliances
in higher education; T. Barnes, N. Baijnath and K. Sattar (eds.) (2010) The restructuring of South African
higher education: Rocky roads from policy formulation to institutional mergers, 2001-2004.
70 Jansen (2002)
304 Higher education reviewed
71 See R. Stumpf in CHE (2016)
72 CHE ‘Summary of HEQC audit reports on institutions’ (reports).
cultures, purposes and geographic locations, were further complicated by the
need to harmonise salaries and other conditions of service from widely differing
starting points. In some cases, there were somewhat surprising challenges to
be met, for example, when the salaries of the historically disadvantaged partner
proved to be higher than those for the more advantaged one.71 The merger period
was characterised by processes of voluntary retrenchment in some cases, and
matching and placing exercises, or processes in which staff had to re-apply for
unhappiness among academic staff complements, which no doubt contributed to
some loss of academic talent from the sector. A number of the studies note that
and dominance. The impact of these changes varied in accordance with the
context of the restructuring at the local level.
processes associated with harmonising conditions of service, which sometimes led
to intense industrial disputes. Some point to staff demoralisation; others report on
which not only needed to be aligned across an institution, but with new national
frameworks as well.72 In mergers where different types of institutions were merged,
i.e. between traditional universities and technikons, the demands on staff were
to be competitive. Despite these hints, there has, however, been little sustained
most institutions across the system, this is certainly an area for further study.
3. Changing demands of the academic
profession
The preceding section has outlined the exogenous pressures that shape
interventions or the determinants of new ones. It may be, however, that a more
sophisticated understanding of the nature of the academic profession – particularly
in a highly differentiated system – is necessary if systemic improvements to some
outputs and graduations) are to be achieved. The need to understand the actual
dynamics of academic work – what is referred to here as the ‘demands of the
academic profession’ – is perhaps most obvious in this regard.
305
Altbach et al. describe both the centrality and the crisis of the academic
profession as one of the major current trends in higher education.73 They write
that:
A variety of factors have combined to place growing pressure on the profession and
the growing tension between enrolment demand, constrained budgets, and greater
accountability has resulted in a discouraging environment for the academic profession
academic staff. Neither an impressive campus nor an innovative curriculum will
produce good results without great professors. Higher education worldwide focuses
on the ‘hardware’ – buildings, laboratories and the like – at the expense of ‘software’ –
the people who make any academic institutions successful.
It is also the case that the academic profession is regarded as becoming more
central to the realisation of economic and social development goals. On the
assumption that higher levels of education are related to higher levels of economic
development, the South African policy documents (such as the NDP, White Paper
2013) are replete with exhortations to increase the rate of postgraduate and
doctoral production to increase the pool from which academia itself, the public and
private sectors, and the professions must grow. The comparison of South African
doctoral graduate output with countries with similar levels of development is
very low; in 2013 the entire South African doctoral output was 2 051, or roughly
28 per million of the population, in comparison with 187 for Korea and 48 for
Brazil.74 The NDP sets a target of 100 doctorates per million by 2030, but while
the production of PhDs is growing, at the current rate of growth, which is in itself
very rapid (from 644 in 2008 to 2 051 in 2013), the low starting point makes this
a target unlikely to be reached without major intervention. To reach this goal, the
NDP calculates a need for about 5 000 PhDs (particularly in the STEM subjects)
per annum; this would mean about 2.5 times the current annual output.75
Academic staff are key agents needed to give effect to many policy goals. In
the context of a rapidly growing student population, academics are needed to
teach more, and in different ways, to take account of student diversity in terms
of learning styles and levels of preparedness, to improve throughput rates, and
to develop curricula that are more relevant and appropriate to current realities
than those they inherited or are familiar with. Academics are also the main
drivers of the knowledge production that is essential in a knowledge-based
economy, and thus need to increase research output and to take the products of
research into actualisation for innovation and entrepreneurial ends. The growth
of a next generation is dependent upon the efforts and input of the existing
generation – through increasing their postgraduate supervision, or venturing into
postgraduate supervision where they have not done so before, and mentoring
recruits to the profession. Many current academics are also striving to improve
73 Altbach et al. (2009) ‘Trends in global higher education: Tracking an academic revolution’ (report) p. 89.
74 HESA (2014) ‘Remuneration of academic staff at South African universities’.
75 NPC (2011) National Development Plan, pp. 59-60.
306 Higher education reviewed
76 DHET (2013) White Paper for Post-School Education and Training.
77 P.R. Trowler (1998) Academics responding to change.
78 Becher (1989) Academic tribes and territories.
79 V. D’Andrea & D. Gosling (2005) Improving teaching and learning in higher education: A whole institution
approach, p. 57.
career advancement. Other functions they need to perform include undertaking
community engagement in ways that require deep commitment and reciprocity,
or forging ongoing and dynamic relationships with industry, civil society and
government. Academics also need to ensure that the requirements of internal
and external quality bodies and the professions are met. There is a greater
requirement for measurement and reporting on academic and students’ activities,
with an increasing administrative load to manage the complexity. The pressures
on academic staff (understood as those in universities) are also sometimes in
tension: there is a need to produce the next generation for universities, but in
order to achieve many of the policy goals for the post-school sector, there is also
a need for academic staff to develop the staff complements for colleges in the
growing TVET system, and to contribute to the uplifting of quality in teaching at
schools at all levels.76
The carrying out of these functions and their sometimes intersecting and
overlapping dimensions, as elaborated below, is essential for enabling the
higher education system to meet its societal and developmental obligations.
The successful growth of the size and capacity of the academic profession is a
prerequisite to realising the expansion goals of the NDP and the 2013 White
Paper. In order to achieve this, not only will the size of the complement need to
grow, but the attractiveness, desirability and appeal of the academic profession
will need to be enhanced.
3.2 The value accorded the academic profession
There is a considerable literature on the nature of academic identities that
expresses the importance of understanding academics in any change or policy
development process. As is pointed out by Trowler, any attempt to appreciate
the processes involved in change must have “a developed understanding of
the underlife of higher education” and the social construction of the academic
profession.77 Becher thirty years ago described the identities of academics as
and ‘territories’, implying that academics would naturally resist their activities
being ‘aligned to any corporate or strategic goals’.78 This is still relevant, since,
as D’Andrea and Gosling note, “In the rush to adopt managerialist methods,
universities and colleges can too easily lose sight of the distinctiveness of the
culture of educational organisations. When individuals become simply ‘human
resources’ and managers talk about ‘driving the agenda forward’ and ‘rolling
out the programme’, the indications are present that the people affected by the
change are being ignored.”79
Policy responses to the problematic of the need to increase the number of
academics and particularly to attract young, aspiring black intellectuals in
307
programmes, but there is comparatively little local research into the qualitative
factors that make academia attractive to new recruits, or satisfying enough to
retain those already in the profession.80 Why people become academics can be
assumed to be for different reasons, and these are likely to be somewhat context
intrinsic ones such as personal motivation, to extrinsic ones, such as attractive
conditions of service. Finding out what most academics value may also deepen an
understanding of what would make the profession attractive. Although academic
identities are plural and not homogenous, an empirically-based knowledge of
could inform the development of appropriate and effective recruitment drives
and reward and career advancement processes and structures. Such research is
particularly important in South Africa, where it is little understood what factors
would make an academic life attractive to young people whose other options may
be more immediately lucrative or desirable in other ways.
education system, but there are widespread concerns that a combination of the
unintended consequences of many policy initiatives – particularly those informed by
resulting in a crisis in the reproducibility (not to speak of the extension) of the system.
This is most visible – and needs most to be addressed – in three related dimensions:
is recognised and supported; 2) a system at least capable of self-reproduction, but in
with the myriad challenges it faces, including responding appropriately to changing
the national formation of an innovative research culture, one that brings together
research and teaching for the necessary strengthening of core disciplines, and the
articulation of this research culture with both the provision of entry-level posts
and (equally important) ongoing staff development and enhancement. In this, real
innovation in thinking through how to stimulate and provision improved academic
that existing measures do not go deep enough.
The universities are well aware of the inadequacy of existing measures. With
respect to the retention and attraction of academic staff, for instance, HESA
recognised in 2006 already, that for universities to thrive, they need to be adequately
that, “To remain competitive, they should reward their academics in a way that
80 International literature on this includes M. Kogan & U. Teichler (eds.) (2007) Key challenges to the
academic profession; U. Teichler, A. Arimoto & W. Cummings (2013) The changing academic profession:
; H. Coates & L. Goedegebuure (2012) ‘Recasting the academic
workforce: Why the attractiveness of the academic profession needs to be increased and eight possible
strategies for how to go about this from an Australian perspective’ in Higher Education 64(6).
308 Higher education reviewed
81
82 E. Bexley, R. James & S. Arkoudis (2011) The Australian academic profession in transition: Addressing
the challenge of reconceptualising academic work and regenerating the academic workforce.
83 CHE (2014) Framework for institutional quality enhancement in the second period of quality
assurance (QEP).
84 HESA (2014) ‘Remuneration of academic staff at South African universities’.
85
agenda’, in Kagisano, 9, p. 65.
driven staff who will contribute to the achievement of the university’s triple
mission of teaching, research and community engagement”.81 Given the pressure
placed on academic staff to perform in many areas (from research to teaching and
learning, to contributing to efforts to increase third-stream income, to engaging
meaningfully with communities), reward systems that recognise performance in
ways that do not skew activities towards one or other of these roles, are becoming
increasingly important. Striking a balance in the value ascribed to more easily
measurable or prestigious activities such as research remains a challenge,
not only in South Africa, but also globally. In Australia, research across twenty
universities revealed that academics were very concerned about the perceived
lack of recognition for teaching in existing promotions processes, despite the
efforts of some universities to include teaching performance and achievement in
promotion criteria.82 The baseline study of the Quality Enhancement Project has
83
Rewards are related both to promotion possibilities and to remuneration. At
the level of the individual academic, the kind of contract and salary he or she can
command and the nature of work he or she gets involved in (whether teaching,
research or management) are determining factors for the health of the profession.
HESA’s study on the salaries of academics, discussed above, indicates that at entry
levels, the salaries offered in academia are not conducive to attracting new entrants.84
The issue of whether salaries are competitive with other sectors is complex.
The diversity of the academic profession needs to be recognised in this regard –
academics are not an homogeneous group of people in that they work in different
kinds of institutions and carry out different kinds of activity at different levels. For
example, there are publicly acclaimed and eminent academics whose chief loyalty
is to the production of knowledge and to their disciplines who possess tradable,
specialist skills and are in a position to supplement their incomes through
research or consultancy activity; in contrast, at other senior levels, university
managers, sometimes better paid than their colleagues, are more concerned
with the advancement of their institutions. Furthermore, with the co-called
corporatisation of the university, such managers are becoming less academic
in orientation but rather are skilled generalists implementing generalisable
management theory. Indeed, Habib argues that:
Management practices and accountability mechanisms from the corporate sector
have often been imported unthinkingly into universities. Universities are increasingly
treated like, and understand themselves to be, business entities, and power has shifted
from structures like Senate (where academics predominate) to Finance and Council
(where administrators and external stakeholders are in the majority).85
309
The permanent senior academic staff complement is generally reasonably well-
being placed on them – to produce research and to teach a student cohort with
attractive to newcomers. Then there are the members of the academic precariat,
those on temporary or part-time posts, often holding down posts at more than
In the last category are younger academics in the main, whose prospects of a
for the reproducibility of the system exist. Like their established counterparts,
they are increasingly expected to produce ever larger quantities of research
more time-consuming to get than would be the case in other professions) while
working ever longer hours to make ends meet. A particular problem with the
precariat is that they are prone to becoming professionally stuck: their situations
do not lend themselves to the levels of productivity increasingly demanded of
those hoping to secure permanent or more senior positions. The incentive
structures have changed: research output increasingly trumps teaching as a
measure of achievement, with some institutions having put in many incentive
schemes to reward research.86 And yet many of these same institutions have
adapted to increasing student numbers by shifting a large part of that burden on
to part-time and contract academics, meaning that neither institutions, nor senior
academics, have an incentive to change the position that potential new academics
a global phenomenon, and not something that is likely to be reversed. Institutional
ability to offer rewarding careers. Indeed, to become an acclaimed academic able
next generation of scholars.
In the context of rapidly increasing higher education enrolments, diagnoses of
an ageing academy and a social imperative for transformation of higher education,
there would appear to be few more important issues than the development of
young academics i.e. the process of training, hiring, retaining and the professional
advancement into successful long-term careers. Despite having been recognised
as an imperative at least a decade and a half years ago in the National Plan, this
primary challenge was not addressed through a thorough and detailed national
strategy until recently, with the 2011 HESA proposal for a strategy to create a new
generation of academics having been taken up by the DHET (2013).87 The proposal
for a large tranche of funding to create supernumerary posts ‘earmarked’ for young
academics for three years, after which they would be guaranteed employment
subject to their meeting certain criteria, follows on from preceding research
undertaken in the last ten years. Cloete and Galant, in an overview of institutional
86 Ibid.
87 http://www.dhet.gov.za/
ssauf/home.html.
310 Higher education reviewed
88 N. Cloete & J. Galant (2005)
89 ASSAf (2010) The Phd Study; HESA (2011) Sector position paper on the report of the Ministerial
Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public
higher education institutions.
90 Sehoole & Ojo (2013) Entering academia: Conditions and opportunities for new faculty in higher
education.
programmes that focused on the development of young academics (such as those
funded by philanthropic organisations, as discussed above) found that their
success or failure was hard to determine and advocated a concentrated approach
to such development which should involve institutional collaboration rather than
competition.88 A report by ASSAf in 2010 focused on the constraints to the successful
reproduction of academics associated with PhD output, noting that the limitations
quality of incoming students, limited supervisory capacity in the system (the ratio
of PhD students to PhD-holding staff was already 2:1) and the length of time spent
on doctoral study such that the average age of graduation with a doctorate was
others are echoed in the concerns listed in the HESA proposal, namely, “inequality
academics” and the growth or “expansion of higher education”.89
There are three aspects of concern related to the research that currently exists on
young academics that may have a bearing on the potential success of HESA’s proposal
tracking individual academics’ career trajectories and determining the factors that
induce them either to stay in academia or to take up other opportunities. The data
that exists are based on individuals still within the system, whether postgraduate
students who are continuing with their studies or young staff members who are
continuing their careers, which is likely to skew the results of such assessments
with the most likely effect being a bias toward relatively more positive views.
There appears to be an assumption that, given the creation of some posts, young
academics will stay in academia, but given the paucity of publicised data on attrition
rates and why young graduates leave, this is by no means a certainty. Sehoole and
Ojo (2013) suggest that there is some incoherence in the system and that career
paths are not as linear as is sometimes thought, in that some individuals obtain
permanent posts before getting doctorates or even masters degrees, while others
90 There is perhaps also
inadequate recognition of the extent to which the career paths taken by existing
academics have become less available for new entrants.
Secondly, the increasing reliance on part-time and temporary staff as illustrated
in the data above, which may partly be a response to funding limitations, serves
to reduce the availability of full-time positions and hence academic career paths
available for graduates. It also has an effect on the quality of education that is able
to be offered. According to Altbach et al., the full-time professoriate is in retreat
internationally, with the numbers of part-time and temporary staff members on
the rise. They regard this as undermining high quality education as poor payment
university or its students, needing to divide their attention to focus on secondary
occupations to supplement their incomes. Given that this phenomenon is more
prevalent at institutions that are not the top research universities, institutional
311
inequalities are exacerbated.91 In this context, individuals may initially prioritise
negative consequences for their own later progression and the overall calibre
and supervisory capacity of the academic staff complement. Indeed, the low
masters and doctoral enrolment and completion rates, and the long times taken
to graduation reported in the ASSAf study are almost certainly partly due to
such dynamics.92 In a resource-constrained environment, it is not a given that
universities will be able to convert supernumerary posts based on short-term
funding to permanent ones, a factor that needs to be borne in mind in relation to
proposals to hasten transformation through the creation of ‘equity’ posts.
capacity rests partly on an assumption that this is appropriate for all academic staff,
which, in a functionally differentiated system, may have counter-productive effects.
requirement for academic appointment may inadvertently lead to academic attrition
and make the career path less attractive to a class graduating with diplomas, for
From a knowledge production and policy perspective, it is clear that improving
knowledge producer rather than a knowledge consumer. Figure 4 above shows
that of the 17 451 permanently employed academics in South African universities
of 4 753 (27%) of these academics was below a Master’s degree. This highlights
not only the diversity of the system, but also its unequal and differentiated
practices in the technikon sector which did not require degrees for teaching in
those institutions. Another factor could be the insularity of institutions as a result
of the academic boycott during the apartheid era, whereby as a result of lack of
competition from the academic labour market, many institutions appointed their
own honours and Master’s graduates.93 At the same time, however, the focus
on PhD production may be inappropriate in some contexts (such as extended
university programmes intended to meet the needs of underprepared students,
or in highly specialised programmes in which industrial or professional expertise
is more apposite than deep academic disciplinary knowledge). An additional
challenge is that most of the supervisory capacity is currently within traditional
universities which are most likely to develop academics for their contexts rather
than ensuring a new generation of academics for all institutional types across the
sector.94 The focus on PhD production may also, as discussed elsewhere, increase
the pressures on already existing academic staff and provide further obstacles to
access for a new generation of academics, and this needs to be borne in mind in
further policy development both institutionally and nationally.
91 Altbach et al. (2009) ‘Trends in global higher education: Tracking an academic revolution’ (report).
92 ASSAf (2010) The Phd Study.
93
in South Africa’s tertiary education system: 1910-93’ in Cambridge Journal of Economics, 27(3).
94 ASSAf (2010) The PhD Study.
312 Higher education reviewed
4. Conclusion
particularly in a developing country in which higher education is called on to
play a major role in economic and social development and to meet national
goals, cannot be over-emphasised. It is important to understand under what
conditions both quality and growth in higher education can be realised, and what
following conclusions and recommendations.
4.1 Equity
Concerted efforts will need to be made to increase the numbers of African
academics at all levels of academia, with special attention paid to women at the
higher ranks. This chapter has argued that the achievement of greater equity
needs to be seen as an integral part of changing contextual factors such as
institutional culture.
In terms of the numbers of academics available to carry out a much more
complex range of activities than before in the face of a rapidly growing student
population, the higher education system is clearly underfunded. While access
for students has increased rapidly over the years, a concomitant increase in the
number of academic staff, particularly on permanent conditions of service, has
not occurred.
The projected scenarios developed for the CHE Task Team’s proposal for
undergraduate curriculum reform demonstrate that, to retain the current
student to staff ratio, which is not considered to be optimum, to account for
(i.e. 3-year diplomas, 3-year degree and 4-year degrees) by a modest 13.7%,
the academic staff population would need to increase by 4 102 FTEs. The
subsidy amount generated by the enrolment increase would be in the region
of R3 billion, which would need to cover all costs, including the increased staff
FTEs.95 Assuming no growth in student numbers, Table 2 below indicates that
to reach a more appropriate student to staff ratio, as expressed by universities
in a HESA survey, would currently require 1 582 more academic staff FTEs. This
increase in one cohort of undergraduate students as above to achieve a better
95 The NDP projects a growth in student numbers to 1 600 000 in 2030, from the current 983 698
(2013). This is a growth of over 60%, implying an annual growth rate of some 4%. The R3 billion is
how much would be generated through the increase in student numbers.
313
student to staff ratio, 6 350 more staff FTEs would then need to be funded from
the same level of teaching input subsidy generated, i.e. about R3 billion.96
maintain 2010 student-staff ratios
Status quo Growth
FTE sta required 10 288 14 390
Sta cost R4.775 bn R6.713 bn
FTE sta increase with respect to status quo 4 102
Cost increase with respect status quo R1.938 bn
% increase in cost with respect status quo 41%
Addional subsidy generated by increased enrolment R3.07 bn
Status quo Growth
FTE sta required 11 870 16 642
Sta cost R5.508 bn R7.764 bn
FTE sta increase with respect to 2010 status quo 1 582 6 354
Cost increase with respect to 2010 status quo R0.733 bn R2.989 bn
% increase in cost with respect to 2010 status quo 15% 63%
Addional subsidy generated by increased enrolment - R3.07 bn
Source: Sheppard (2013)
FTEs would need to be drawn from a pipeline that currently produces some 2 000 PhDs
a year, and where growth is constrained by the current supervisory capacity which is
already at full stretch. The levels of subsidy would be hard pressed to accommodate the
be able to facilitate a slightly better average student to staff ratio.97
understood
The nature of academic work, particularly in a South African context, needs
to be better researched to allow for policy interventions that improve its appeal
and make it attractive to new generations of academic recruits. The ways in
which research and teaching intersect and enhance each other need to be better
understood and more appropriately rewarded, both institutionally and nationally,
to ensure the development of innovative and transformed academic cultures
96 The 2010 student to staff ratios were: SET – 19; Business and Commerce – 33; Education – 35;
Humanities – 32. The universities proposed instead: SET – 17; Business and Commerce – 32;
Education – 26 and Humanities – 25. See DHET Funding Review. The assumption is made of an 8%
annual increase in salary costs.
97
314 Higher education reviewed
across all disciplines. At the same time, the diversity of academic work in a
differentiated system needs to be recognised and fostered to ensure that existing
resources are best utilised and deployed. Questions such as the appropriate
all in place of industrial experience, may be having counter-productive effects.
More research needs to be undertaken into what motivates and drives academics
in order to develop a genuinely active research culture, and better teaching and
demoralisation and stress in the face of competing demands.
Salaries are important factors in attracting people into the profession; however,
they are generally not the main issue in terms of retention and the overall value
placed on the profession, although more research needs to be undertaken in this
area. At the more established levels, academics have some freedom to increase
path to such levels. The more likely motivating factors involve respect, recognition,
the provision of suitable conditions for pursuing one’s own learning, reputation,
mobility, opportunities to undertake research, and conducive conditions for
engaging in satisfying and meaningful teaching and learning. Where these are
eroded through factors such as increasing administrative loads, greater numbers
of students, authoritarian management regimes, skewed workloads that mitigate
against stimulating deep learning or undertaking innovative research work, or
that lessen the satisfaction that comes from nurturing others’ research journeys,
the inherent value is weakened and reproducibility is undermined.
a growing student body, of which a growing proportion is becoming ‘casualised’,
functions they need to perform. Among these are: bringing about economic and
social development; teaching generations of underprepared students to achieve
21st century graduate attributes; supervising a new generation of academics for
universities and TVET colleges; improving school teaching, producing world-
competitive new knowledge; earning third-stream income; developing new
patents and designs; facilitating engagement with communities and carrying out
a public intellectual function. There is a risk of increasing demands on academics
resulting in diminished levels of graduate attainments and attributes, poorer
throughput rates and a reduced pipeline from which to draw new generations of
academics. Academics are key to higher education, and where the conditions of
315
employment and the value placed on the profession are in decline, the quality of
higher education may be affected. The policy question to be considered is: how
without concomitant increases in numbers and improvements in conditions, and
4.5 Other factors to consider
In considering what it will take to prevent further decline in the academic
profession and to increase its attractiveness, the pursuit of holism in policy
interventions so that they are not driven by isolated goals becomes increasingly
important. Pursuing isolated goals can, in some instances, thwart the achievement
of others. In attempting to increase research output as one policy goal, for
example, resources may be diverted into prestigious programmes at the expense
differentiation may be ignored in such a way that upward academic drift reduces
the number and type of learning opportunities available for students, and the
system as a whole becomes more expensive to fund as all institutions attempt
to mould their activities according to the most expensive model. Conversely, the
pursuit of some goals may indirectly bring about the achievement of others. As
an example, addressing student funding issues can indirectly assist in making the
academic environment more satisfying for academic staff, increasing its appeal
and creating more space for research and intellectual engagement; rethinking
curriculum structures to avoid teaching many repeat classes and students can
also increase staff satisfaction; more and better co-curriculum support for
students would similarly have a knock-on positive effect on staff and allow for
more attention and care to be paid to the teaching and learning process. It is
only belatedly that attempts have been made to join the policy dots, as it were, in
98
Such strategies include the need to address overall staff numbers, to clarify and
extend academic pathways, to stimulate the growth of new generations of young
academics and to improve salaries and conditions of service. These issues will
stagnation.
98 DHET (2012) Green Paper for Post-school Education and Training.
316 Higher education reviewed
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Vandeyar, S. (2010) ‘Shifting selves: Constructing and negotiating academic identities’
in South African Journal of Higher Education, 24(6), pp. 914-934.
Webster, E. & Mosoetsa, S. (2001) At the chalk face: Managerialism and the changing
academic workplace 1995-2001 (CHET: Cape Town).
The purpose of this study is to illuminate the funding situation of
universities as it may evolve over the next ten years. In doing so, it
considers policy aims, the functioning of the system and resource
constraints. On the projection assumptions, the analysis indicates the
choices facing the main actors: the National Treasury; the Department of Higher
Education and Training (DHET); the universities and students.
The introductory part of this chapter considers values applicable to funding
and the demographic context of higher education. Section 2 puts the current
circumstances of universities into a recent historical perspective, paving the
way for Section 3, which constructs three scenarios, each with different levels
scenarios show the expected pressures on the system, which will require changed
behaviour on the part of the major actors. Section 5 considers four productivity
growth measures which will make available resources stretch further. The last
section draws conclusions.
The study in applied economics undertaken for this chapter takes a general
equilibrium approach to higher education funding. This means that all the major
variables are considered together and brought into relationship with one another.
The aim is to avoid a narrow focus on individual variables, an approach that easily
leads to policies with unintended consequences.
; there must be investment in raising the average levels of
human capital, particularly in terms of formal education and training, in each
successive cohort of the South African population as a complement to investment
in physical capital.1 Ever since the boom of the mid-1930s, South Africa has
lay primarily in the failure to optimise the development of knowledge and skills
across the population. The second (and equally important) value is equality of
opportunity which, applied to education, means that every person should be able
to acquire the education that their interests and talents make worthwhile. It is
Funding
Writers and editors: Charles Simkins with Ian Scott, Rolf Stumpf & Denyse
Webbstock
Task team leader: Jenny Glennie
Members/contributors: Glen Barnes, Gerald Ouma & Charles Sheppard
CHE research assistant: Michael Gordon & Genevieve Simpson
8
1 Educated, trained and experienced people generally earn more than their less-educated, untrained and
inexperienced counterparts. The capital value of the difference in earnings over a lifetime represents the
human capital embodied in an individual or group of individuals.
322 Higher education reviewed
here that particular aspects of the broader concepts of redress and transformation
Investing in human capital development is like investing in other areas: it
produces a return. In terms of education, every person, irrespective of their
capacity, will reach a point where diminishing marginal returns set in, such
that there will be limits on the further value of the type and quantity of formal
education that should be provided. Equality of opportunity does not mean
equality of outcome since there is a range of interests and capabilities among
learners. Neither does equality of opportunity depend on introducing completely
free higher education.2 If higher education is not completely free, equality of
opportunity requires a well-functioning credit market in which students can
borrow on reasonable terms, repaying as graduates out of an enhanced income
stream later on. A good credit market is one that advances loans to all students
who qualify, while avoiding unsustainable levels of student indebtedness.3 This
enables access for all who qualify educationally for higher education, while
drawing on future income streams when graduates start to work. The return
making a loan scheme less onerous on the state than a corresponding bursary
the backdrop against which the material in the rest of the chapter should be
viewed.
1.2 Demographic context
In addition to the values outlined above, a major contextual factor underlying
this study is the demographic context of South Africa. The South African population
increased eightfold between 1900 and 2000 and so the economy could grow
a rapidly expanding labour supply. From the beginning of the 1970s, however,
to achieve economic growth. Moreover, in the last thirty years, demographic
circumstances have changed, with fertility rates dropping rapidly. Table 1 sets out
a projection of the South African 20-24 year-old age group (approximately the
average age of participants in higher education) for the period 2013-2023.
From this table, it is evident that the growth of the cohort will slow appreciably,
especially on the ‘without migration’ assumption.4 This implies that growth will
depend on increasing average levels of education and training rather than on the
same level of education and training spread over more people.
2 Completely free higher education requires no obligation to pay for higher education at the time of
delivery or later. It contrasts with a situation in which no payment for higher education is made at the
time of delivery, but which entails repayment of a loan once earnings commence.
3
income-contingent repayment scheme.
4 The ‘with migration’ estimates are based on net immigration of 200 000 per year; 60% male, 40%
female. This is close to the estimates contained in Statistics South Africa’s 2013 mid-year population
estimates.
Funding 323
With migraon Without migraon
2001 4 486 136 4 486 136
2013 5 091 638 5 091 638
2018 5 211 661 5 074 802
2023 5 507 504 5 307 308
Annual growth (averaged)
2013-2023 0.79% 0.42%
Source: UNAIDS, Spectrum/EPP 2013
1.3 The structure of the chapter
Section 2 contains a summary of developments affecting funding since 1994
the years following the restructuring of the higher education sector. The account
of students into higher education, enrolments, progression rates and graduates.
It then traces developments in university funding (both block and earmarked
grants) and allocations through the National Student Financial Aid Scheme
(NSFAS). The purpose of Section 2 is to contextualise the current state of the
system and to provide a base for a ten-year projection from 2013.
Section 3 considers some of the funding implications attendant on the 2013
White Paper.5 It reports demographic projections for the ten years from 2013 to
2023, following the same pattern as the historical analysis: the senior secondary
graduates. It constructs three scenarios, each of which comprises a connected
6 Common
to all three scenarios is an assumption that the long-term growth rate of the
economy is 3.5% per annum. This is divided into a 1.75% per annum increase in
real incomes and (implicitly) a 1.75% per annum growth in employment.7
alongside the maintenance of the current rates of transition from the National
8 A funding
scenario are compared with the funding envelope. The comparison leads to the
as far as both grants to universities and allocations to NSFAS are concerned. Such
5 DHET (2013)
integrated post-school system.
6 Universities are funded in three ways: by state grants, by tuition fees and by ‘third-stream’ income
which comprises all other forms of revenue. In addition, the state makes grants to the National Student
Financial Aid Scheme.
7 The real growth in wage income between 2000 and 2012 is reported by the Reserve Bank as 1.78% per
annum.
8 Details of the improvement are set out in the Appendix.
324 Higher education reviewed
funding shortfalls will have a number of negative consequences, such as limiting
the access to higher education of prospective academically deserving students,
undue pressure on universities in maintaining academic standards, and downward
pressure on student throughput rates arising from potentially insurmountable
scenarios. The second scenario can be accommodated in the funding envelope,
but it leads to an unduly slow growth rate in student enrolments at universities,
which would, in turn, have unacceptable social and economic consequences for
the country.
of GDP being allocated to higher education, a rising gross enrolment ratio, but
greater competition for university places among those who obtain a National
9
The three scenarios constitute the heart of the analysis in Section 3 and the
study as a whole. Based on the analysis of these three scenarios, the capacity of
the state to steer the higher education system through the challenges of the next
ten years is discussed.
Homer relates the story of Odysseus sailing home from Troy. At a certain point,
he encounters a narrow and hazardous sea lane. On one side is Scylla, a six-
headed monster that would swoop down and consume sailors if ships passed on
its side of the lane. On the other side is Charybdis, a pair of clashing rocks and a
whirlpool that would suck in ships and destroy them. Odysseus chose the Scylla
route, reckoning that the loss of six sailors was not as bad as the termination
of the entire enterprise. By contrast, this study looks for a middle passage, just
out of the reach of both Scylla (very large numbers of students, but inadequate
funds to provide high level university education) and Charybdis (adequate funds
to maintain a high standard of academic services but rendered to a very much
smaller number of students). As is the case with most compromises, the choice
of a middle passage, as will be seen later in the study, will require mind-shifts
and attitudinal adjustments from the various constituencies and stakeholders
relevant to higher education.
Spending an increased proportion of GDP on higher education as foreseen
in Scenario 3’s ‘middle passage’ would need to be accompanied by cost-saving
measures and more prudent forms of expenditure within higher education.
Section 4 considers the steering capacity of the state and the adaptability of the
current system. Section 5 considers four possible sources of cost saving: a shift
in the balance of enrolments to distance education, which is here assumed to be
less costly over the long term than traditional forms of ‘face-to-face’ education;
leveraging higher levels of resources from the private sector; expanding cost-
saving technological innovation; and the introduction of reform in curriculum
structure as means of maximising the effective use of academic resources.
Implications for universities and the Department of Higher Education and
9 The use of UNESCO’s indicator of participation, the Gross Enrolment Rate or GER, i.e. the total headcount
enrolled in some form of higher education over the national population of 20-24 year-olds of the
population, has become widespread. CHE (2015) VitalStats. Public higher education 2013, p. iii.
Funding 325
Training are drawn from the analyses as a whole. Section 6 draws a number of
overall conclusions based on the previous analyses.
than full-time equivalent student enrolments. In the university funding model,
teaching input units are calculated using full-time equivalent student enrolments
in a so-called funding matrix, which is discussed in more detail later.10 Teaching
input units are assumed to be a constant proportion of headcount enrolments.
2. Historical overview
2.1 Key developments affecting funding since 1994
There have been four main developments affecting funding over the last twenty
years.11
education system
As discussed in detail in the Overview, the South African higher education
system has undergone major reorganisation since 2004. There are now eleven
traditional universities, six comprehensive universities and six universities of
technology, plus a further three new universities: one in the Northern Cape, one
in Mpumalanga, and one focused on the Health Sciences established from the
former Medical University of South Africa (Medunsa) in Gauteng.
This restructuring of the higher education institutional landscape has had
two implications for funding. First, the previous funding system which was in
force until 2004, differentiated between universities and technikons, whereas
the new funding system, fully operational since 2007, treats all universities in
terms of one set of rules, except in the case of research output norms set by the
DHET. Secondly, earmarked funding was implemented to steer the system, with
allocations intended to assist with the costs of merging and other developmental
ends. Allocations from earmarked funding in many cases involved the submission
of detailed project proposals to the DHET. This requirement highlighted serious
managerial and administrative shortcomings in some universities that were often
also those most in need of such funding. As a consequence, a proportion of the
funding in this category was not fully taken up by institutions, meaning that the
problems to be resolved by such funding allocations in many cases remained. The
differences between block grant funding and earmarked funding are discussed
later in greater detail.
2.1.2 Reform of the way in which universities are funded
The South African Post-School Education (SAPSE) funding formula, introduced
in the 1980s and now replaced, essentially had a ‘follow the student’ approach.
Funding allocations to universities were based on student enrolment numbers
of two years earlier, as well as course success rates. There was a difference in
funding level between students in the natural sciences and the humanities, and
10 Since part-time students are less demanding of teaching resources than full-time students.
11 See DHET (2013) Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities.
326 Higher education reviewed
the formula contained several so-called cost components graduated partly on the
basis of historical cost. The formula generated an entitlement for each university
and technikon which was then brought into alignment with available state funds
by means of an ‘a-factor’; this represented the proportion of entitlements that
could actually be funded. Attempts were made to keep the a-factors constant
as the provision for growth in student enrolments in the SAPSE formula made
the formula allocations sensitive to unbridled increases in student enrolments at
some universities, which necessitated lower a-values for those. 12
In 2004, the SAPSE system was replaced with a ‘state steering mechanism’
approach. University funding was to be based on block and earmarked grants. Block
grants have four components: teaching input (based on enrolments); teaching
output (based on graduations); research output (based on approved publications
and advanced postgraduate research degree graduates) and institutional factors
(based on institution size and proportion of historically-disadvantaged student
numbers). Block grants are consolidated into a single transfer that can be used
for any legitimate university purpose. Earmarked funds, on the other hand,
must be spent on the purposes for which they are designated. In recent years,
earmarked provision has been made for interest and redemption of government
loans, infrastructure, teaching development, research development, foundation
courses, multiple campuses in the case of some newly-merged institutions,
clinical training of health professionals and veterinary science.
The bulk of the block grant (67% in 2012) is made up of the teaching input
grant. The teaching input grant is calculated using a funding grid which has
along the other. The grid assigns a funding weight to each cell and every year each
university is offered funding for a certain number of places (full-time student
equivalents) distributed across the cells in the funding grid. This offer, negotiated
between universities and the DHET, constitutes the heart of the steering
mechanism. The teaching output, research output and institutional factor grants
are based on historical data.
2.1.3 The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS)
This scheme has its origins in the Tertiary Education Fund for South Africa
(TEFSA), started in 1991 with a capital of R25 million. In 1999, the National
Student Financial Aid Scheme Act was passed and NSFAS became the successor
organisation.13 Funds awarded by NSFAS have expanded massively during
the past number of years: in 2012, R5 871 million was awarded to students
at universities and a further R1 822 million to those in further education and
training colleges.14 At the outset, TEFSA was purely a loan scheme, but soon
12 By contrast, the new funding system distributes available state funds by a system of ‘funded places’.
Universities can admit more students than there are funded places, but no teaching input grant is
allocated for the excess.
13 DHET (1999) National Student Financial Aid Scheme Act.
14 In 1992, TEFSA awarded loans to 10 828 students and in 1997 to 28 076 students. In 2007, NSFAS
awarded loans to 57 837 students and in 2012 to 199 479 students. In 2013, NSFAS allocations
increased further to R6 729 million to university students and R1 953 million to TVET students (NSFAS
(2013) Annual Report, 2013; NSFAS (2014) Annual Report, 2014).
Funding 327
bursary elements emerged, both in the form of rebates for academic success and
form of bursaries.
In 2012, NSFAS had the following components:
• Generally available awards
• An allocation for teacher education, funded by the Department of Higher
Education and Training
• An allocation for disabled students
• An allocation from the National Skills Fund
• An allocation from the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants
• The Funza Lushaka scheme, for training teachers in under-supplied
subjects, funded by the Department of Basic Education
• An allocation from Sectoral Education and Training Authorities (SETAs)
• A range of smaller schemes, some of which are funded by other
government departments.15
2.1.4 The funding of foundation courses in extended curriculum
programmes
These date back to the early 1980s when racial segregation in university
designated as ‘white’ under apartheid, to a situation where students’ knowledge
and skills on entry were diverse as a result of the segregated school system. Initially,
they were funded primarily by donations from external funders, supplemented
in some cases by internal university allocations. The end of apartheid has not
abolished inequality in school quality despite much greater resource inputs – in
general, there is still a large gap between the preparedness for higher education
of learners from top-quintile schools and those from the remainder, although the
racial contours of inequality have been softened somewhat. Accordingly, most
universities have found it necessary to continue – and in fact intensify – a variety
of forms of academic support to students aimed at mitigating the ‘articulation
gap’ between schooling and the demands of higher education.
Foundation courses, forming an integral element of planned extended curricula,
have constituted the major strategy for addressing the articulation gap. The state
has accepted responsibility for funding them, and an earmarked allocation of R235
million was made for them in 2014, intended to enable about 15% of the student
16 Differentials in capacity and commitment
between, and even within, universities have meant that the effectiveness of this
provision has been uneven across the sector.
15 See Table 10.
16 DHET (2013)
328 Higher education reviewed
on funding
First, the system of apartheid-structured inequality of opportunity through a
multiplicity of segregated and initially differentially-funded institutions often led
to educational ‘dead-ends’ – points beyond which students could not progress.
The post-apartheid vision has been one of co-ordinated institutions with a high
the construction of pathways along which students could progress as far as they
could and wanted to, facilitated both through the restructuring of the institutional
(NQF). Articulation of this kind is as yet an imperfectly realised objective, but it
development to ensure articulation between sectors is an ongoing project.
effective articulation between Technical and Vocational Education and Training
(TVET) college programmes and higher education. The need for this is strongly
emphasised in the White Paper for the post-school system.17
2.2.2 Increasing access
Secondly, high levels of poverty and socio-economic inequality have made the
primary vehicle for the dispensing of the state’s obligations in this regard. In so
far as it makes loans, it draws on the expected future increment of earnings from
transfer from the state to the individual student, until now through the university
concerned. In 2011, NSFAS made 221 653 awards to students in universities,
compared with a total undergraduate enrolment of 703 747. This number
decreased in 2013 as NSFAS made 194 923 awards, with a total enrolment of
800 955. NSFAS awards were thus made to 31% of all undergraduate university
students in 2011 and 24% in 2013.
2.2.3 Improving success
Thirdly, as discussed above, underpreparedness of students entering
universities has been, and remains, a widespread problem. In accordance with
policy on state funding for foundational provision that was introduced in 2004,
foundational provision has over the last decade been integrated into ‘extended
curriculum programmes’, which are now offered by almost all the universities.
However, application of this kind of provision has been particularly challenging in
institutions where the majority of the intake are poorly prepared; in these cases
foundation courses, with their present limited scope, cannot be offered on a scale
that can effectively address the articulation gap, and this has implications for failure
17 DHET (2013) White Paper for Post-school Education and Training.
Funding 329
rates and the overall quality and outcomes of the institution’s programmes. This
problem has spread to more universities as enrolments have grown across the
system, leading to an increase in the proportion of underprepared students in the
intake.
One solution to the problem of widespread underpreparedness has been
proposed by a CHE task team: a four-year degree to replace three- year degrees as
the norm, with the proviso that students may be exempted from certain modules if
they demonstrate the necessary competence at the outset of their studies, enabling
them to shorten their studies by up to a year.18 The task team’s study concludes that
the proposed curriculum structure would increase retention in the system and, by
improving pass rates, would increase graduation rates. The projections show that,
the additional provision required. This would be achieved because currently the
majority of the intake (some 70%) are taking an additional one or more years to
graduate, or are not graduating at all, and the state is having to bear the high costs
19
The Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities
was released in early 2014. This report contained many recommendations for
change in the details of state funding, but concluded that the overall system was
sound.20 The Minister has not yet introduced formal proposals for changes to the
existing funding model emanating from this Review. As will be evident later, this
now in place has been a sensible one. 21
2.3 Historical outcomes and constraints
Table 2 provides a snapshot of the highest level of education among 29-year olds
in 2011 in South Africa, 29 being the age by which students in higher education
does not necessarily mean that all the persons indicated successfully completed
that year of study, but merely that they had been educationally active at that level.
Less than Grade 9 168 047
Grade 9 60 305
Grade 10 96 451
Grade 11 139 082
18 CHE (2013)
curriculum structure.
19 The report estimates that, assuming the current student intake, a four-year curriculum would increase
total enrolments by 16% because of increased retention, creating upward pressure on the block
grant to universities, but that it would improve graduate output by 28% (CHE (2013) A proposal for
undergraduate curriculum reform in South Africa, p. 22).
20 Such details are not contemplated in this study.
21 See section entitled “The steering capacity of the state and the adaptability of the current system”.
330 Higher education reviewed
Grade 12 343 102
NTC 1-3 7 586
NTC 4-6 9 494
Cercate/diploma with less than Grade 12 5 127
Cercate with Grade 12 22 222
Diploma with Grade 12 27 254
Higher diploma 21 838
Post higher diploma 2 735
Bachelor’s degree 20 533
Bachelor’s degree and postgraduate diploma 5 188
Honours degree 9 370
Higher degree 4 437
Other 3 492
Unspecied 18 016
Total 964 279
Number Proporon
(Per cent)
Up to completed primary 228 352 23.70%
Incomplete senior secondary 235 533 24.40%
Grade 12 343 102 35.60%
Technical (NTC 1-6) 17 080 1.80%
Cercate/diploma with less than Grade 12 5 127 0.50%
Higher educaon 113 577 11.80%
Other and unspecied 21 508 2.20%
Total 964 279 100%
Source: 2011 Census, interactive tabulation
The following observations are pertinent:
• The number of people who have not progressed beyond Grade 9, which
marks the end of the compulsory phase of education, is substantial, and is
• The number of people who reached Grades 10 and 11 but not Grade 12 is
also substantial. This clearly indicates a problem with progression through
senior secondary school, as is evidenced by the high dropout rates during
the senior secondary school phase (Grades 10-12) as shown by numerous
other studies.
• Despite efforts to improve enrolments in the existing further education and
the numbers with secondary-level and further education technical
• The number of 29-year olds who reached Grade 12 is large, making up
35.6% of the total, and is triple the number with higher education. This
comparison could, however, be misleading since not all those indicating
Funding 331
Grade 12 as their highest educational level would actually have written the
this examination manage to pass, or to pass well. It is therefore estimated
that not many more than half of those indicating Grade 12 as their highest
educational level would be eligible to go on to higher education.
However, a trend towards higher school retention and pass rates for the NSC
examinations, coupled with low absorption rates into formal economic activity
for young South African school-leavers, points to considerable latent pressure on
higher education resources. The FET/TVET sector is becoming an increasingly
strong competitor for resources and, as is evident in Table 2 and as set out in the
2013 White Paper for Post School Education and Training, it is desirable to expand
technical education, especially during the senior secondary and lower higher
education phases. Such expansion would increase demand for higher education.
Removing undesirable constraints, such as resolving imperfections in the credit
market and reducing the existing high unemployment levels, would further increase
the demand and pressure on higher education resource provision.
2.4 Key pressures affecting higher education
2.4.1 Senior secondary school output
The expected increase in the number of learners arriving at the gate of the higher
education system will exacerbate the pressure for access. As this chapter’s focus
is higher education, the modelling of the performance of the senior secondary
system which informs the analyses here, is placed in an Appendix for reference.
introduction in 2008. In this graph, trends are depicted in NSC passes which
provide admission to:
the middle of the period 2008-2013, reverted in 2013 more or less to where
• higher education study at diploma level, which shows a steady upward trend
during the period 2008-2013; and
• higher education study at degree level, which shows an accelerated increase
for this period compared with eligibility for diploma study and with eligibility
Proportionally more holders of the NSC were thus eligible for degree study as
the case in 2008.
2.4.2 University intake
Table 4 sets out the undergraduate intake into South African public universities
between 2008 and 2011. However, the proportion of NSC passes allowing study for
332 Higher education reviewed
2008 and 2010. This indicates that a relatively small fraction of school-leavers with
the position of holders of Bachelor passes. The ‘relative probability’ column of Table
4 computes the probability that the holder of an NSC pass for degree study will
enter higher education compared with the corresponding probability for holders
that holders of NSC passes for degree study are nearly three times more likely to
study, who are also entitled to do so. This indicates a lack of articulation between
22
and degree studies
200 000
180 000
160 000
140 000
120 000
100 000
80 000
60 000
40 000
20 000
02008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Certicate Diploma Degree
22 These estimates are only approximate, since not everyone goes immediately from school to university
and mature age entrance to university is possible. Despite this, the overall trends would be reliable
of Table 4 are also only approximations. This is the case since it is assumed in Table 4 that learners
with NSC passes for degree study will in fact register for degrees only, even though they are entitled to
those with NSC passes for degree study going on to university may be higher than in the fourth column
Funding 333
Year Cercate/
Diploma
Degree 1st-me
cert&dip
entrants/
cert&dip NSC
passes previous
year
1st-me degree
entrants/
Bachelor NSC
passes previous
year
Relave
probability23
2008 68 921 83 047
2009 70 106 94 472 30.1% 88.1% 2.93
2010 70 485 98 457 31.4% 89.8% 2.86
2011 71 967 107 037 30.3% 84.7% 2.79
2012 67 946 101 821
2013 64 466 93 933
Averages 1.5% annual
growth
4.6% annual
growth
30.6% 87.5%
Source: HEMIS data, extracted annually
2.4.3 Enrolments
Figure 2 sets out annual student enrolment growth rates between 1995 and 2013.
A clearly discernible and consistent trend in student enrolment growth rates is not
immediately apparent from Figure 2. However, the period 2008 to 2011 witnessed
average student enrolment growth rates for the whole higher education system of
academic standards and academic services of high quality without a commensurate
increase in resource provision. That this has not been the case is evident from the
deteriorating staff-student ratio for universities during the past number of years.
Table 5 sets out student enrolments in 2001 and between 2007 and 2012 for
23
rate.
Figure 2: Enrolment growth rates 1995-2013
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0
-2% 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Source: SAPSE 1995-1999 & HEMIS 2000-2013, extracted annually
334 Higher education reviewed
format. At the end of each of these three sets of data, the average annual student
enrolment growth for the period 2007-2012 is given.
Set A
Contact universies
Dip/Cert
1-2 year Dip 3 year Degree
3 year
Degree
4 year
Under-
graduate
Post-
graduate Total
2001 27 416 109 111 99 271 120 741 356 539 80 762 437 301
2007 50 280 139 216 125 605 110 977 426 078 86 753 512 831
2008 51 220 143 407 126 522 114 309 435 458 91 421 526 879
2009 50 660 153 035 133 324 127 053 464 072 99 720 563 792
2010 45 741 160 421 141 547 134 409 482 118 104 903 587 021
2011 40 996 163 158 146 981 141 224 492 359 114 848 607 207
2012 31 839 165 498 152 144 148 894 499 538 110 832 616 061
Average annual growth rate 3.7%
Set B
UNISA
Dip/Cert
1-2 year
Dip
3 year
Degree
3 year
Degree
4 year
Under-
graduate
Post-
graduate Total
2001 14 601 22 482 73 328 19 953 130 363 17 049 147 412
2007 13 098 52 182 99 481 33 974 198 735 23 644 222 379
2008 19 625 57 058 104 074 37 183 217 940 27 201 245 141
2009 26 915 48 756 102 902 41 774 220 347 29 027 249 374
2010 20 170 59 616 109 718 55 260 244 764 33 707 278 471
2011 20 208 65 552 115 123 73 505 274 388 33 084 307 472
2012 30 830 53 113 112 964 86 428 283 335 38 644 321 979
Average annual
growth rate
18.7% 0.4% 2.6% 20.5% 7.4% 10.3% 7.7%
Set C ALL
Undergraduate Postgraduate Total
2001 486 902 97 811 584 713
2007 624 813 110 397 735 210
2008 653 398 118 622 772 020
2009 684 419 128 747 813 166
2010 726 882 138 610 865 492
2011 766 747 147 932 914 679
2012 781 710 149 476 931 186
Average annual growth rate 4.6% 6.2% 4.8%
Source: HEMIS data
Funding 335
These data sets indicate that the average annual growth rate in student
enrolments for the entire higher education system for 2007 to 2012 amounted
to nearly 5%, as was already evident from Figure 2. They also indicate that while
contact student enrolments in the period 2007 to 2012 grew by an average annual
a number of factors such as cost and accessibility, but it certainly is an indication
that UNISA is increasingly providing for expansion in the system that cannot be
accommodated at the same rate by the contact institutions.
2.4.4 Student progression
entrants in the case of UNISA) into three-year degrees, four-year degrees and
three-year diplomas, with UNISA and other institutions reported separately.24
Cumulave
percentages
Year
12345678
Three-year degrees
Contact universies
Graduates 28.9% 46.7% 54.5% 57.8%
Dropouts 21.1% 29.0% 34.3% 37.4% 38.7% 42.2%
UNISA
Graduates 1.7% 4.7% 8.2% 10.9% 12.7% 14.0%
Dropouts 38.1% 54.3% 62.8% 66.9% 69.1% 71.7% 73.9% 86.0%
Four-year degrees
Contact universies
Graduates 35.2% 49.2% 54.6%
Dropouts 19.7% 30.1% 35.6% 38.5% 40.2% 45.4%
UNISA
Graduates 3.9% 8.1% 11.5% 14.2% 16.1%
Dropouts 33.5% 50.6% 59.3% 63.8% 66.6% 68.8% 71.1% 83.9%
Three-year diplomas
Contact universies
Graduates 17.5% 31.0% 39.0% 42.9%
Dropouts 26.2% 37.8% 46.2% 50.3% 51.7% 57.1%
UNISA
Graduates 0.2% 0.8% 1.7% 2.7% 3.8% 4.6%
Dropouts 64.7% 75.8% 82.3% 85.5% 86.6% 87.5% 89.4% 95.4%
Source: Sheppard tabulations from HEMIS data for CHE 2013
24 Dropout rates may be biased upwards, since some students not graduating in 2011 (or 2012 in the case
of UNISA) may have re-registered in the following year. This bias is more marked in the case of UNISA,
where stopouts are common. Accordingly, UNISA has adopted a methodology of its own. See Barnes
(2013) ‘The context of the DHET 2006 cohort retention results for UNISA’ (unpublished paper).
336 Higher education reviewed
Column 8, can be compared with an OECD average of 30%.25 However, a major
contextual difference is that OECD countries have participation rates three to
four times higher than South Africa’s, so a very much higher proportion of the
population in the OECD is succeeding in higher education.
From this Table, it is evident that in terms of graduations and accompanying
Proposal for undergraduate curriculum
provides some coverage of
these.26 A range of factors beyond the control of higher education, such as: the lack
of meaningful career and study guidance in our school system; the poor quality
of teaching offered at many schools, especially in socio-economically deprived
areas, which results in severe levels of underpreparedness for university level
independent study at university level contribute to these high dropout rates. In
addition, there are few meaningful alternatives to university study, and these
were further reduced with the incorporation of teacher education colleges into
universities in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Until recently, not all universities
were devoting adequate resources and attention to proven academic support
interventions for students. While such interventions may lead to improved
current indications are that without a systemic intervention, poor throughputs
are likely to remain.
2.4.5 Graduates
Table 7 sets out the number of graduates in each year from 2007 to 2012. As
increased at an average rate of 4.7% per annum for contact institutions, 14.7%
UNISA graduates have increased at a considerably faster rate than non-UNISA
overall rapid growth in the system in the last decade, increasing pressure on the
higher education system.
25 Highlights from education at a
glance 2010.
26 CHE (2013) A proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in South Africa.
Funding 337
Set A
Contact instuons
Dip/Cert
1-2 year
Dip/Cert
3 year
Degree
3 year
Degree
4 year
Post-
graduate Total
2007 14 895 24 547 24 302 22 121 26 412 112 277
2008 14 954 24 601 24 961 23 040 27 763 115 319
2009 16 145 25 671 24 510 24 940 30 913 122 179
2010 15 352 25 849 25 726 28 534 31 791 127 252
2011 15 399 28 193 26 624 28 233 35 368 133 817
2012 16 578 29 624 28 524 29 184 37 330 141 240
Average
annual
growth
2.2% 3.8% 3.3% 5.7% 7.2% 4.7%
Set B
UNISA
Dip/Cert
1-2 year
Dip/Cert
3 year
Degree
3 year
Degree
4 year Post-graduate Total
2007 2 115 1 862 4 157 1 712 4 495 14,341
2008 3 893 2 642 4 448 2 145 4 795 17,923
2009 8 223 1 541 5 275 2 464 5 172 22,675
2010 7 070 3 613 5 725 1 314 8 351 26,073
2011 5 665 3 755 6 031 3 659 7 698 26,808
2012 6 099 3 814 6 354 4 073 8 193 28,532
Average annual
growth 23.6% 15.4% 8.9% 18.9% 12.8% 14.7%
Set C
ALL
Dip/Cert
1-2 year
Dip/Cert
3 year
Degree
3 year
Degree
4 year Post-graduate Total
2001 12 237 18 999 21 667 17 002 23 413 93 318
2007 17 010 26 409 28 459 23 833 30 907 126 618
2008 18 847 27 243 29 409 25 185 32 558 133 242
2009 24 368 27 212 29 785 27 404 36 085 144 854
2010 22 422 29 462 31 451 29 848 40 142 153 325
2011 21 064 31 948 32 655 31 892 43 066 160 625
2012 22 677 33 438 34 878 33 257 45 523 169 773
Average annual growth
2001-2007 5.6% 5.6% 4.6% 5.8% 4.7% 5.2%
2007-2012 5.9% 4.8% 4.2% 6.9% 8.1% 6.0%
Source: HEMIS data
338 Higher education reviewed
Funding is a key factor determining the possibilities in higher education. Table
8 sets out block grants and earmarked funding to universities since 2007.27
28
Block grant Earmarked
grant Subtotal NSFAS Total
2007 10 100 192 2 956 655 13 056 847 1 098 696 14 155 543
2008 11 451 502 2 827 888 14 279 390 1 306 383 15 585 773
2009 12 700 520 2 794 033 15 494 553 1 426 668 16 921 221
2010 14 532 751 3 543 917 18 076 668 1 565 597 19 642 265
2011 16 386 794 3 392 659 19 779 453 2 616 390 22 395 843
2012 17 433 861 3 646 820 21 080 681 3 377 902 24 458 583
Annual increase
Nominal 11.5% 4.3% 10.1% 25.2% 11.6%
Real 5.4% -1.5% 4.0% 18.3% 5.4%
29
The share of state allocations to higher education dropped slightly between
2007 and 2008, but it has since risen.
If allocations to NSFAS are excluded, block grants have constituted an increasing
proportion of total grants to universities in recent years, moving from 77.4% in
2007 to 82.7% in 2012. Earmarked grants have declined slightly in real terms.
This follows since infrastructural grants are not normally made available annually
but in intermittent tranches which can cover 2 to 3 years at a time.
The real increase in NSFAS allocations has been rapid, especially between 2010
and 2012.
The average real growth of 4.0% per annum over the period for grants to
universities (i.e. NSFAS excluded) has had to cater for the growth in the system,
which from Table 5, amounted to an average annual increase in student enrolments
of nearly 5%.
The per unit growth in the four grants making up the total block grant is set out
in Table 9.
27 The data for earmarked grants includes allocations for infrastructural renewal which should, together
with NSFAS allocations, be excluded from the earmarked allocations. However, it could be argued that to
obtain an accurate picture of block grant versus earmarked funding, all allocations that are earmarked
constitute earmarked funding.
28 The block grant is taken as the sum of the teaching input, institutional, teaching output and research
output grants. All other grants are regarded as earmarked.
Current prices refer to actual prices in any given year, and are used to calculate nominal growth rates.
Constant 2013 prices use the prices in 2013 to value items in all other years. Constant prices strip out
29
Funding 339
Teaching inputs
Units Grant R ‘000 Grant per
unit
Nominal
growth per
unit
Real growth
per unit
2007 876 259 6 772 475 7 729
2008 905 000 7 746 610 8 560 10.8% 5.6%
2009 940 000 8 497 186 9 040 5.6% -1.4%
2010 983 663 9 792 984 9 956 10.1% 2.1%
2011 1 027 326 10 909 568 10 619 6.7% 2.3%
2012 1 071 824 11 658 601 10 877 2.4% -2.4%
Average growth 4.1% 1.2%
Teaching outputs
Units Grant R ‘000 Grant per unit Nominal
growth per
unit
Real growth
per unit
2007 108 631 1 692 253 15 578
2008 110 442 1 859 238 16 834 8.1% 3.0%
2009 112 611 2 123 210 18 854 12.0% 4.6%
2010 117 907 2 446 994 20 754 10.1% 2.0%
2011 125 959 2 725 997 21 642 4.3% 0.0%
2012 134 272 2 537 108 18 895 -12.7% -16.8%
Average growth 4.3% -1.8%
Research outputs
Units Grant30 R’000 Grant per unit
Nominal
growth per
unit
Real growth
per unit
2007 14 547 1 236 836 85 026
2008 15 243 1 347 782 88 418 4.0% -0.9%
2009 15 015 1 540 604 102 603 16.0% 8.4%
2010 15 679 1 836 716 117 144 14.2% 5.8%
2011 17 429 2 224 568 127 638 9.0% 4.5%
2012 18 659 2 226 579 119 331 -6.5% -11.0%
Average growth 5.1% 1.1%
Instuonal factors
Grant R‘000 Nominal growth Real growth
2007 705 298
2008 806 746 14.4% 9.0%
2009 884 912 9.7% 2.4%
2010 849 701 -4.0% -11.0%
2011 946 582 11.4% 6.8%
2012 1 011 573 6.9% 1.8%
Average growth 1.6%
Source: DHET, University State Budgets 2004-12, Section 3
30 Excludes research development grant.
340 Higher education reviewed
Table 9 indicates that the real growth in unit allocations was moderate (and
negative in the case of teaching output). Financing system expansion in the form
of providing for increased student enrolments accounts for most of the real
an average of 5.1% per annum, but research output funding only increased in real
terms by an average of 1.1% per annum. This could be indicative of a disjuncture
between policies of government departments such as DHET and the Department
of Science and Technology (DST), and the effective support of these policies
through targeted implementation measures.
2.6 The National Student Financial Aid Scheme: universities
sets out key statistics of NSFAS funding that is allocated to qualifying students.
Set A New grants
to NSFAS31 Awards Number of
awards
Growth in
number of
awards
Average
award in
Rand
Nominal
growth in
the average
award
2009 2 205 953 2 818 220 135 862 20 743
2010 2 516 221 3 343 531 148 873 9.60% 22 459 8.30%
2011 3 875 159 4 833 866 221 653 48.90% 21 808 -2.90%
2012 5 579 188 5 871 490 216 028 -2.50% 27 179 24.60%
Average 16.70% 9.40%
Set B Recoveries Bursaries Per cent of awards in
the form of bursaries
2009 580 129 1 277 598 45.3%
2010 704 339 1 529 453 45.7%
2011 719 435 2 521 348 52.2%
2012 296 401 3 118 515 53.1%
Source: NSFAS Annual reports, 2011, 2012 and 2013
Table 10 shows that there was a rapid increase in the number of student
growth in the size of the average award, so that the average annual real increase
has been in excess of 20%. This is an unsustainable rate of growth. Moreover,
the proportion of awards that has taken the form of bursaries has increased
2000, 45% in 2009 and 53% in 2012. As a result, income from loan recoveries is
very low and, as is evident from Table 10b, fell sharply in 2012. This is most likely
that they passed.32 This is not a sustainable situation in a context of increasing
31 Includes grants from sources other than DHET.
32 Different loans have different rules about conversion. Up to a maximum of 40% of a general loan is
converted into a bursary when a student passes all of the courses they were registered for in that year.
qualify to graduate (see www.nsfas.org.za).
Funding 341
pressure on NSFAS funds. In addition, given that allocations generally cover only
a portion of the full cost of study, awardees continue to be underfunded.33
NSFAS funds are divided into award categories. Table 11 analyses awards by
category and shows that there is considerable variation in average award size
across them.
2009 2010 2011 2012
Average
size of grant
in 2012
DHET
General 106 682 109 798 126 557 99 938 R25 359
Final year programme 24 684 29 203 R37 140
Teacher allocaon 3 898 4 672 5 099 4 198 R27 149
Disabled students 762 1 040 1 104 1 176 R37 867
Historical debt relief 3 521
Naonal Skills Fund 1 890 3 885 24 491 38 987 R22 019
SA Instute of Chartered
Accountants 782 774 837 807 R40 121
SETAs 3 071 R18 404
DBE
Funza Lushaka 9 190 10 074 8 893 11 702 R56 980
Other 12 658 18 630 26 467 26 946 R19 035
Total 135 862 148 873 221 653 216 028
Source: NSFAS Annual Reports
In recent years, FET/TVET colleges have emerged as a substantial competitor
to universities for NSFAS funds. An amount of R1.807 billion was awarded to
students at FET colleges in 2012/2013, all of which took the form of bursaries.34
available for the higher education system.
2.7 Sources of university funding
Table 12 divides recurrent funding of universities into three revenue streams,
these being government subsidies (1st stream income), tuition fees (2nd stream
income) and so-called 3rd stream income representing all other forms of university
income.
33 See CHE (2014) VitalStats. Public Higher Education 2012, Figure 153, which indicates the average full
cost of study in 2012 was R55 843.
34 NSFAS (2013) Annual Report , 2013, p.71.
342 Higher education reviewed
35
State grants Fees Third-stream Total
2007 11 491 425 7 776 841 10 862 153 30 130 419
38.1% 25.8% 36.1%
2012 19 891 962 15 467 386 14 545 547 49 904 894
39.9% 31.0% 29.1%
Nominal value increase 11.6% 14.7% 6.0% 10.6%
Real annual increase 5.5% 8.4% 0.2% 4.5%
Source: DHET tabulations
The recurrent income of the universities increased at an average annual rate
of 4.52% between 2007 and 2012.36 Table 12 shows that state grants and fees
increased somewhat as a share of total income between 2007 and 2012. The
share of third-stream income, however, has dropped from 36% in 2007 to 29%
in 2012, and aggregate third-stream income has only barely kept up with the rate
The increase in the proportion of total income made up by tuition fees from
nearly 26% in 2007 to 31% in 2012 is a cause for concern. When viewed together
with the decline in third-stream income during this period it appears as if
universities have offset declining third-stream income by substantial increases in
tuition fees, as is evident from the high real annual increase in tuition fee income
of 8.4% during this period. Such increases will undoubtedly have a negative effect
would have been the case in the past. A strong case can be made that universities
should not seek to ‘balance their books’ primarily through tuition fee income,
which currently appears to be the case.
2.8 A summary of the current situation
There was a sharp upward movement of 60% in the number of National Senior
2013. The corresponding increase in NSC passes for diploma study was 35%.37
in 2008, has taken root.
increased at 4.6% per annum between 2007 and 2011. Overall student enrolment
rates over the same period grew at 4.3% per annum in universities other than
UNISA, and 8.4% per annum at UNISA.
35 Recurrent funding only. See CHE (2014) VitalStats.
36 University expenditure is not here analysed in detail. Each university’s pattern of expenditure depends
on its infrastructure, its human capital, its range of programmes and the distribution of students across
programmes. It is recognised, therefore, that individual institutions will be differently affected by
changes in state funding.
37 See Table A.1 in the Appendix.
Funding 343
The number of graduates grew at 6.1% at the same time, which is likely to
remains tight, with low levels of unemployment among them, as the 2011 census
indicates that virtually all new economically active graduates are absorbed into
employment within a year of graduation.
Block and earmarked grants grew at a real rate of 4.0% per annum, which
is, however, less than the student enrolment growth rate. This is indicative of
increasing pressure on universities to maintain academic standards and standards
in other services and functions. The number of student awards by NSFAS rose
much more rapidly (16.7% per annum between 2009 and 2011) albeit unevenly,
from year to year, with the average real grant size increasing by 3.5% per annum
between 2009 and 2011. Such growth is unlikely to be sustainable.
In addition to the above it should be noted that the private higher education
to be approximately 10% or slightly more of public higher education sector
enrolments, i.e. 90 000 to 100 000.38 Private higher education institutions receive
no state funding at all, whether in the form of state subsidies or in the form of
NSFAS funding for students.
3. Scenarios for the next ten years
3.1 Introduction
3.1.1 The White Paper for Post-School Education and Training
The Department of Higher Education and Training published its White Paper for
post-school system in January 2014. It anticipates that there will be 1.6 million
university students in 2030, up from 931 186 in 2011. This implies an average
annual growth rate in student enrolments of 3.05%.
proposals; nor are the proposals of the chapter on universities prioritised.
Objectives listed in the White Paper for which new funding for universities is
required, include:
• grants for three new universities;
• more foundation programmes;
• academic staff development;
• new student housing in terms of improved student housing norms;
• increase in research capacity; and
• progressively introducing free undergraduate higher education for the poor.
38 DHET (2014) Statistics on post-school education and training: 2012; numbers are based on a count of
344 Higher education reviewed
In order to assess where the system is going, or might go, projections have been
constructed in this chapter for the decade from 2013 to 2023. The main purpose of
projections is not to predict, but to take the various pressures on the system into
account by means of plausible assumptions and so to create a deeper sense of the
structure of any funding challenges that pertain. Many of the tables in this section
are projection versions of the tables depicting historical trends given earlier.
The projections shown in the tables that follow should not obscure the fact that
there are substantial stochastic elements in the system such as secondary school
from signal in the ensuing modelling exercises is not always an easy task, and
the funding system thus needs effective error correction capabilities. One such
mechanism consists of the discretionary entrance criteria applied by individual
universities. Another, not yet fully developed, would consist of measures to correct
for initial estimates in the components of the block grant funding formulas.
The three scenarios mentioned earlier are developed below. As was indicated
and maintenance of the current rates of transition from the National Senior
slow growth rate in student enrolments at universities. A compromise third scenario
entails an increasing share of GDP being allocated to higher education.
scenario
3.2.1 Parameters of Scenario 1 (Scylla)
An initial ten-year projection can be carried out on the following assumptions:
• Trends in pass rates in the NSC examination as set out in the Appendix will continue.
• First-year enrolments will run at a constant 87.5% of NSC passes for degree
study is assumed to rise thereafter by 1.5% per annum, so that the diploma/
study between 2013 and 2014, and 31.5% between 2014 and 2015 and so forth.
The relative probability in Table 13 below represents the rate of continuation
Funding 345
39
Scenario 1 Cercates/
Diplomas Degrees Total Relave
probability
2013 82 987 119 041 202 028 2.54
2015 94 740 151 191 245 932 2.46
2017 98 221 169 523 267 744 2.64
2019 106 539 172 618 279 157 2.47
2021 115 526 187 025 302 551 2.45
2023 122 513 193 746 316 259 2.37
Annual growth
2013-2023 4.0% 5.0% 4.6%
Table 6, total university enrolments can be projected.40 The initial projection yielded
overestimated. Adjustments in enrolments have thus been applied based on the
Key assumptions are that the following ratios remain constant:
enrolments.
• Four-year degree to three-year degree enrolments.
• Postgraduate to undergraduate enrolments.
educational process are assumed. Table 14 sets out the ensuing total enrolment
projections for all universities other than UNISA, and for UNISA separately, and
contains historical as well as projected estimates based on the above assumptions.
These are used as a basis for deriving projected subsidy and other costs.
From Table 14 it is evident that total enrolments are projected to increase by an
average of 6% per annum during the period 2013 to 2023, which can be compared
39
student enrolments only and should not be confused with the growth rates for total student enrolments
discussed earlier.
40 The methodology for deriving the expected number of students given in the cohort tables constructed
as the number of students remaining in the system at the end of the nth year of study (i.e. students who
have neither graduated nor dropped out) divided by the size of the relevant intake (St-n-1). Then the total
t-n-1ln-1 with l0
enrolled in 2008 multiplied by the four-year survival rate plus the number of entrants enrolled in 2009
multiplied by the three- year survival rate plus the number of entrants enrolled in 2010 multiplied by
the two-year survival rate plus the number of entrants enrolled in 2011 multiplied by the one year
survival rate plus the number of entrants enrolled in 2012.
346 Higher education reviewed
41 Historical estimates based on HEMIS data. Occasional students excluded. The subdivision of 2001
estimates into categories is not the same as in later years. Caution must therefore be observed in
comparing categories of enrolment between 2001 and later years.
41
Set A
Contact instuons
Dip/Cert
1-2 year
Dip/Cert
3-year
Degree
3-year
Degree
4-year
Subtotal
Under-
graduate
Post-
graduate Total
2013 21 692 166 084 162 774 156 167 506 717 118 197 624 914
2015 50 239 190 893 199 627 192 482 633 241 147 710 780 951
2017 52 084 214 545 237 980 232 531 737 141 171 946 909 088
2019 56 496 230 843 256 129 252 632 796 100 185 699 981 799
2021 61 261 250 305 269 398 265 785 846 749 197 513 1 044 262
2023 64 966 268 581 284 832 280 460 898 839 209 664 1 108 503
Average growth
2001-2007 2.7%
2007-2013 -13.1% 3.0% 4.4% 5.9% 2.9% 5.3% 3.3%
2013-2023 11.6% 4.9% 5.8% 6.0% 5.9% 5.9% 5.9%
Set B
UNISA
Dip/Cert
1-2 year
Dip/Cert
3-year
Degree
3-year
Degree
4-year
Subtotal
Under-
graduate
Post-
graduate Total
2013 21 692 54 519 122 341 89 727 288 279 39 318 327 597
2015 24 764 62 120 145 152 125 034 357 070 48 701 405 771
2017 25 674 69 203 168 649 152 456 415 981 56 736 472 716
2019 27 848 75 512 184 768 176 411 464 539 63 358 527 898
2021 30 197 82 604 200 364 188 900 502 065 68 476 570 541
2023 32 023 88 533 211 626 197 213 529 395 72 204 601 599
Average growth
2001-2007 7.1%
2007-2013 8.8% 0.7% 3.5% 17.6% 6.4% 8.8% 6.7%
2013-2023 4.0% 5.0% 5.6% 8.2% 6.3% 6.3% 6.3%
Set C ALL
Under-graduate Post-graduate Total
2013 794 996 157 515 952 511
2015 990 311 196 411 1 186 722
2017 1 153 122 228 682 1 381 804
2019 1 260 639 249 057 1 509 696
2021 1 348 813 265 990 1 614 803
2023 1 428 234 281 868 1 710 102
Average growth
2001-2007 4.2% 2.0% 3.9%
2007-2013 4.1% 6.1% 4.4%
2013-2023 6.0% 6.0% 6.0%
Funding 347
with the historical average annual increase in total enrolments of 4.8% for 2007 to
2012 given in Table 5. The projected enrolment patterns for 2013 to 2023 would
thus require a substantial increase in funding for higher education if existing
academic standards and standards of other services were to be maintained.
can project total numbers of graduates. The initial projection yielded too few
enrolled students, again suggesting that the graduation rates in Table 6 may be
underestimated. Adjustments in enrolments have been made to provide a closer
obtained by adding the entries in Set A to the corresponding ones in Set B.
Set A
Contact instuons
Dip/Cert
1-2 year
Dip/Cert
3-year
Degree
3-year
Degree
4-year
Subtotal
Under-
graduate
Post-
graduate Total
2008 14 954 24 601 24 961 23 040 87 556 27 763 115 319
2009 16 145 25 671 24 510 24 940 91 266 30 913 122 179
2010 15 352 25 849 25 726 28 534 95 461 31 791 127 252
2011 15 399 28 193 26 624 28 233 98 449 35 368 133 817
2012 16 578 29 624 28 524 29 184 103 910 37 330 141 500
2013 17 757 31 056 30 423 30 136 109 372 39 811 149 182
2014 18 003 31 091 29 934 32 982 112 010 45 132 157 143
2015 20 272 33 753 32 040 32 707 118 772 49 751 168 523
2016 20 651 36 009 37 904 36 168 130 732 54 217 184 949
2017 21 017 39 405 41 411 43 858 145 692 57 914 203 606
2018 21 515 41 957 45 453 47 151 156 075 60 478 216 553
2019 22 797 43 470 47 689 51 734 165 690 62 546 228 236
2020 23 854 44 734 48 627 53 410 170 624 64 440 235 065
2021 24 719 46 393 49 336 54 262 174 711 66 526 241 236
2022 25 290 48 432 50 758 54 807 179 287 68 578 247 865
2023 26 214 50 490 52 479 56 694 185 878 70 618 256 496
Average annual growth
2013-2023 5.7%
Set B
UNISA
Dip/Cert
1-2 year
Dip/Cert
3-year
Degree
3-year
Degree
4-year
Subtotal
Under-
graduate
Post-
graduate Total Grand
Total
2008 3 893 2 642 4 448 2 145 13 128 4 795 17 923 133 242
2009 8 223 1 541 5 275 2 464 17 503 5 172 22 675 144 854
2010 7 070 3 613 5 725 1 314 17 722 8 351 26 073 153 325
2011 5 665 3 755 6 031 3 659 19 110 7 698 26 808 160 625
2012 6 099 3 814 6 354 4 073 20 339 8 193 28 356 169 856
2013 6 532 3 872 6 677 4 487 21 568 8 336 29 904 179 087
348 Higher education reviewed
2014 6 623 3 569 6 012 5 637 21 841 9 289 31 131 188 273
Set B
UNISA (connued)
Dip/Cert
1-2 year
Dip/Cert
3-year
Degree
3-year
Degree
4-year
Subtotal
Under-
graduate
Post-
graduate Total Grand
Total
2015 7 458 3 641 6 146 6 601 23 846 10 325 34 171 202 694
2016 7 597 3 841 6 560 7 680 25 678 11 339 37 017 221 966
2017 7 732 4 198 7 172 9 081 28 182 12 029 40 211 243 816
2018 7 915 4 517 7 928 10 225 30 585 12 726 43 311 259 864
2019 8 386 4 877 8 617 11 277 33 157 13 433 46 590 274 826
2020 8 775 5 207 9 235 12 226 35 444 13 936 49 379 284 444
2021 9 094 5 431 9 645 12 856 37 026 14 518 51 545 292 781
2022 9 304 5 663 9 897 13 169 38 032 14 921 52 953 300 817
2023 9 644 5 850 10 183 13 556 39 233 15 308 54 541 311 037
Average annual growth
2013-2023 6.1% 5.7%
Table 15 should be compared with the analysis performed in Table 7 on
of 5.7% given above in Table 15 for 2013 to 2023. A consideration of Tables 5 and
7, and 14 and 15, shows that with an average annual growth in enrolments for
no gains in the number of annual graduates would be achieved, and for the period
of 2013 to 2023, the outputs in terms of graduates would grow only by an annual
matched by a corresponding increase in graduates.
3.2.2 The funding envelope42
The October 2013 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement projects national
government spending to rise from R452.5 billion in 2013/2014 to R550.1 billion
this means that real national government spending will rise by no more than
considered necessary to prevent national debt from rising to unsustainable
levels. The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) October 2013 World Economic
Outlook projects the South African average economic growth rate to be 3.49% in
2017 and 2018, and it will be assumed that this growth rate will be maintained
between 2018 and 2023. It is assumed that funding for public higher education
will account for a constant proportion of GDP between 2017 and 2023.
42 The funding envelope refers here to the amount of government funding that is projected to be available
for higher education over the period. All funding projections are carried out in constant 2013 prices.
Funding 349
Block grant Earmarked
grant Total NSFAS new NSFAS
recovery NSFAS awards
2013 19 313 622 4 040 029 23 353 651 6 180 267 328 334 6 508 601
2015 19 709 629 4 122 866 23 832 495 6 306 988 335 066 6 642 054
2017 20 605 550 4 310 275 24 915 824 6 593 678 350 297 6 943 975
2019 22 068 915 4 616 382 26 685 297 7 061 948 375 174 7 437 122
2021 23 636 205 4 944 228 28 580 433 7 563 474 401 819 7 965 292
2023 25 314 802 5 295 357 30 610 159 8 100 616 430 355 8 530 971
2.74% 2.74%
According to these projections, the funding available for the entire higher
education system, including NSFAS, will grow at an average real rate of 2.74% per
annum between 2013 and 2023.
On the basis of an average annual economic growth rate of about 3.5%, as
teaching input and teaching output will rise at 1.75% per annum for the 2013 to
2023 period. This is the same as the rate of growth of individual and household
income if the economic growth rate is 3.5% per annum: half of the increase in
economic growth is apportioned to rising average incomes, while the other
half is apportioned to expanding employment in the economy as a whole. This
assumption means that university salaries will keep up with the average growth
rate in average individual incomes for the country at large.
It is further assumed that:
• The unit grant for research output will remain constant in real terms.
• The number of teaching input units will grow at the rate of growth in
enrolments, teaching output units will grow at the rate of growth of graduates,
and research output will grow at the combined rate of teaching input and
teaching output grants, since these grants together provide the primary
funding for the employment of academic staff.
• The institutional grant will grow at 1.75% between 2013 and 2023, and
the earmarked grant will grow at 7.5% per annum. This implies that these
components of state subvention to the universities will decline relative to the
teaching input and output grants, since enrolments and graduations will rise
at a faster rate under this scenario.
• NSFAS awards will rise at the same rate as enrolment growth plus 1.75% per
annum.
Table 17 displays the results based on these assumptions.
350 Higher education reviewed
Set A
Grant amounts required
Teaching
inputs
Teaching
outputs
Research
outputs Instuonal Earmarked
Total
university
grants
NSFAS Awards
Unit grant 11 498 19 974 126 143
Annual increase
Unit 1.75% 1.75% 0.0%
Total grant
increase 1.75% 7.5%
2013 13 035 142 2 927 517 2 460 661 1 107 070 3 991 095 23 521 485 6 568 812
2015 16 813 699 3 430 409 3 120 651 1 146 156 4 612 209 29 123 125 8 772 093
2017 20 268 877 4 272 054 3 783 011 1 186 623 5 329 984 34 840 548 10 948 092
2019 22 926 710 4 985 411 4 302 684 1 228 518 6 159 462 39 602 785 12 820 924
2021 25 388 701 5 498 626 4 761 315 1 271 892 7 118 029 44 038 563 14 698 970
2023 27 836 314 6 047 731 5 223 262 1 316 798 8 225 772 48 649 877 16 685 030
Annual
increase 7.88% 7.52% 7.82% 1.75% 7.50% 7.54% 9,77%
Set B Shorall
University grants NSFAS Total
2013 167 834 60 211 228 045
2015 5 290 630 2 130 038 7 420 668
2017 9 924 724 4 004 117 13 928 841
2019 12 917 489 5 383 802 18 301 290
2021 15 458 129 6 733 678 22 191 808
2023 18 039 718 8 154 059 26 193 777
Note: The shortfall is calculated on the following basis:
• University grants
The shortfall here is the difference between the demand for university grants,
as shown in Table 7 Set A, and the university grant funding envelope, shown in
Table 6, in thousands of Rand. For example, the shortfall in university grants
in 2023 is projected as 48 649 877 (the 2023 entry in the ’Total university
grants’ column of Table 7 Set A) minus 30 610 159 (the 2023 entry in the
fourth column of Table 6), which comes to 18 039 718 (the 2023 entry in the
‘University grants’ column of Table 7 Set B).
• NSFAS
The shortfall here is the difference between the demand for NSFAS funding
(at the current inadequate level), as shown in Table 17 Set A, and the NSFAS
funding envelope, shown in Table 16. For example, the NSFAS shortfall in
2023 is projected as 16 685 030 (the 2023 entry in the last column of Table
17 Set A) minus 8 530 971 (the 2023 entry in the last column of Table 16),
which comes to 8 154 059 (the 2023 entry in the NSFAS column of Table 17
Set B).
Funding 351
funding envelope in Table 16. Simply put: Scenario 1 is not affordable. It would
concomitant fallout with regard to academic standards and services. In terms of
Homer’s story of Odysseus sailing to Troy, we have encountered Scylla.
The remaining two scenarios are developed next.
3.3.1 Overview
As noted earlier, additional scenarios have been developed to aid consideration
of future growth and funding possibilities. Table 18 sets out three projections
of aggregate funds required by universities in accordance with three scenarios
over the period 2013 to 2023. Throughout, fees are assumed to rise at 1.75% per
annum, so that they form a constant proportion of average household income.
, the details of which have been set out
constant continuation rates from NSC passes to university and is based on 7.5%
per annum real growth in third-stream funding. As is evident from the historical
analysis of the universities’ three income streams, this may not be feasible.
The second scenario
at the rate of 2.74% per annum to accord with the funding envelope set out in
Table 16, and is based on a 2.5% real growth in third-stream funding.
The third scenario grows student enrolments at the average annual rate implicit
in the White Paper goals. Enrolments are thus assumed to grow at an annual rate
of 3.05% as calculated earlier. The target enrolment in 2023 is therefore 1 292
million by 2030. The third scenario is based on a 5% real growth in third-stream
funding.
As is evident from the analysis of historical income patterns for universities,
in all three scenarios third-stream income needs to rise considerably faster
than between 2007 and 2012. This will pose a serious challenge to universities,
especially to those that have not been able to achieve meaningful levels of
third-stream income in the past owing to capacity constraints coupled to their
geographic locations.
In the second and third scenarios, it is assumed to be inevitable that the degree
continuation rate will drop in 2014. This follows since it is simply not possible
for the universities to absorb the 22% increase in NSC passes for degree study
intake.
3.3.2 Aggregate university income required under the three scenarios
The implications of the three scenarios for aggregate university income required
are set out in Table 18.
352 Higher education reviewed
in thousands of Rand)
Set A
First scenario: aggregate university income required
State grants Annual
increase Fees Third-stream Total
Annual increase 7.50%
2013 23 521 485 3.93% 16 893 092 15 636 463 56 051 040
2014 26 283 520 11.74% 19 372 220 16 809 198 62 464 938
2015 29 123 125 10.80% 21 789 972 18 069 888 68 982 985
2017 34 840 548 8.50% 26 267 762 20 882 014 81 990 324
2019 39 602 785 6.31% 29 712 222 24 131 777 93 446 784
2021 44 038 563 5.51% 32 902 877 27 887 285 104 828 725
2023 48 649 877 5.11% 36 074 899 32 227 244 116 952 020
Annual growth
2013-2023 7.54% 7.88% 7.50% 7.63%
Percentage of total income
2013 42.0% 30.1% 27.9%
2023 41.6% 30.8% 27.6%
Set B Second scenario: aggregate university income required
State grants Fees Third-stream Total
Annual increase 2.50%
2013 23 353 651 3.18% 16 893 092 14 909 186 55 155 929
2015 23 832 495 1.02% 17 239 469 15 663 963 56 735 927
2017 24 915 824 3.49% 18 023 106 16 456 951 59 395 881
2019 26 685 297 3.49% 19 303 071 17 290 084 63 278 452
2021 28 580 433 3.49% 20 673 936 18 165 395 67 419 765
2023 30 610 159 3.49% 22 142 158 19 085 018 71 837 335
Annual growth
2013-2023 2.74% 2.74% 2.50% 2.68%
Percentage of total income
2013 42.3% 30.6% 27.0%
2023 42.3% 30.6% 27.0%
Set C Third scenario: aggregate university income required
State grants Fees Third-stream Total
Annual increase 5.0%
2013 23 353 651 3.18% 16 893 092 15 272 824 55 519 567
2015 24 843 970 3.14% 17 971 129 16 838 289 59 653 388
2017 27 075 609 5.66% 19 585 407 18 564 213 65 225 229
2019 30 229 188 5.66% 21 866 579 20 467 045 72 562 813
2021 33 750 075 5.66% 24 413 447 22 564 917 80 728 440
2023 37 681 051 5.66% 27 256 957 24 877 822 89 815 829
Annual growth
2013-2023 4.9% 4.9% 5.0% 4.93%
Percentage of total income
2013 42.1% 30.4% 27.5%
Funding 353
Comparing the outcomes of the three scenarios with the historical analysis of
income sources of universities in Table 12, it is evident that in all the scenarios,
the proportion of income from government subsidies is set to increase from
nearly 40% to 42% and in the case of Scenario 1 to nearly 43%. The proportion
of income due to tuition fees declines slightly from 31% in 2012 to 30%, while
third-stream income declines from 29% of total income in 2012 to 27%, even
in Scenario 1. These trends can be corroborated from Figure 3 below, which
represents the evolution of required university income from 2013 to 2023 in
each scenario. From Figure 3, it is clear that from the point of view of aggregate
university income, Scenario 3 is indeed the ‘in-between’ scenario and requires
appreciably less overall income than would be the case for Scenario 1.
Figure 4 below represents the required evolution of state grants (block,
earmarked and NSFAS) under the three scenarios. The state grants are depicted
against proportion of GDP for each scenario. Scenario 1 would require a higher
education state budget of close to 1.2% of GDP in 2023, which should be compared
more modest increase in the proportion of GDP spent by government on higher
education, amounting to about 0.9% in 2023.
An increase in the proportion of GDP spent by government on higher education
tacitly assumes some form of re-prioritisation of government’s spending
priorities in favour of higher education, inevitably at the expense of some other
existing priorities. Interestingly, Scenario 2 leads to a proportion of GDP spending
on higher education in 2023 which is very close to existing levels.
3.3.3 Enrolments
The projected student enrolments, tuition fees and required total income per
student according to the three scenarios are set out in Table 19.
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
02013 2014 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023
First Second Third
Rand billion
354 Higher education reviewed
student (constant 2013 prices)
Average fee
(Rand)
First scenario Second scenario Third scenario
Students
Required
income per
student
Students
Required
income per
student
Students
Required
income per
student
Annual
increase 1.75%
2013 17 735 952 511 59 487 952 511 57 906 952 511 58 288
2015 18 361 1 186 722 58 854 938 893 60 429 978 740 60 949
2017 19 010 1 381 804 60 161 948 097 62 647 1 030 282 63 308
2019 19 681 1 509 696 62 868 980 801 64 517 1 111 054 65 310
2021 20 376 1 614 803 66 053 1 014 633 66 447 1 198 160 67 377
2023 21 095 1 710 102 69 715 1 049 631 70 801 1 292 094 69 512
Annual growth
2013-2023 1.75% 6.03% 1.60% 0.98% 2.03% 3.10% 1.78%
From Table 19 it is evident that with annual tuition fee increases of 1.75%, the
annual average growth income required per student in Scenario 3 falls between
the corresponding values for Scenarios 1 and 2. This is mainly due to the student
enrolments for Scenario 3 falling between the corresponding values for Scenarios
2 a very much lower one.
The evolution of student enrolments in each of the three scenarios is graphed in
Figure 5, which shows the ‘middle’ position of Scenario 3.
1.4%
1.2%
1.0%
0.8%
0.6%
0.4%
0.2%
02013 2014 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023
First Second Third
Funding 355
3.3.4 Graduates
Table 20 sets out the projected number of graduates, from diplomas
Set A First scenario Second scenario Third scenario
2013 179 087 179 087 179 087
2014 188 273 188 273 188 273
2015 202 694 191 904 193 957
2016 221 966 195 534 199 641
2017 243 816 192 899 201 086
2018 259 864 186 816 198 834
2019 274 826 188 567 204 912
2020 284 444 189 241 209 963
2021 292 781 190 210 215 471
2022 300 817 192 464 222 602
2023 311 037 195 435 230 785
Annual growth
2013-2023 5.68% 0.88% 2.57%
Set B Third scenario graduate output by qualicaon level in 2023
2023 Percentage of output
Dip/Cert 1-2 years 26 606 11.5%
Diploma 3 years 41 803 18.1%
Degree 3 years 46 495 20.1%
Degree 4 years 52 124 22.6%
All rst qualicaons 167 029 72.3%
Postgraduate 63 756 27.6%
Total 230 785 100%
Figure 5: Student enrolments
1 800 000
1 600 000
1 400 000
1 200 000
1 000 000
800 000
600 000
02013 2014 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023
First Second Third
356 Higher education reviewed
These estimates assume that graduation rates remain constant at the historical
levels shown in Table 6. To the extent to which there is improvement or decline
in throughput in relation to enrolments, Table 20 will contain under- or over-
estimates. Nevertheless, in accordance with its design, Scenario 3 yields an
average annual growth rate in the number of graduates of 2.6% compared to the
Figure 6 presents the information in Table 20 graphically for each of the three
scenarios.
350 000
300 000
250 000
200 000
150 000
100 000
50 000
02013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
First Second Third
Figure 7 displays a pie chart of the distribution of graduates in 2023 for the
third scenario, as given in Set B of Table 20.
20.1%
22.6%
27.6%
Dip/Cert 1–2
Diploma 3
Degree 3
Degree 4
Postgraduate
18.1%
11.5%
The distribution of graduates under Scenario 3 in 2023 shows that nearly
28% of all graduates will be postgraduate. This may seem high but it includes
to ascertain whether projections in government plans such as the National
Development Plan for doctoral graduates have a realistic chance of being realised.
Funding 357
3.4 Implications of the three scenarios
3.4.1 Size and cost
The assumes access to higher education at the current rate by the
growing number of eligible candidates with Bachelor passes from the NSC. This
scenario does not seem to be a feasible one. It requires unsustainably rapid growth,
both in state funding and in third-stream income. Student enrolments grow at 6.03%
per annum and state grants grow at 7.75% per annum between 2013 and 2023. To
keep pace, third-stream income should grow at 7.5% per annum.
In the second scenario, state grants grow at the much more modest rate of 2.74% per
annum between 2013 and 2023. However, this means that student enrolments can
grow only at the rate of 0.98% per annum over the same period, which is inadequate
to meet the anticipated demand for higher education from school leavers qualifying
for access. According to Homer’s story of the journey of Odysseus to Troy, with this
scenario we have encountered Charybdis.
In the third scenario, student enrolments will rise at 3.1% per annum between
2013 and 2023. This would require state grants to grow at 4.9% per annum over the
NSFAS) would rise from 0.78% of GDP in 2012 to 1.21% in 2023. The second scenario
would mean that in 2023 the corresponding level would be 0.73%, lower than in
2011 as a result of projected budget austerity between 2013 and 2016. The third
scenario would mean that 0.9% of GDP would be spent on higher education in 2023.
31.1% in 2023, which does not seem feasible given that this ratio has languished
around 18% since 2001. The ratio would rise to 19.1% in 2023 under the second
43
Scenario 3 would yield a gross enrolment ratio (GER) of 23.5% in 2023, which
scenario, the absolute level of the gross enrolment ratio would rise at an average rate
of 0.48% per annum.
education study for each of the scenarios are set out in Table 21.
44
First scenario Second scenario Third scenario
Degree Dip/Cert Degree Dip/Cert Degree Dip/Cert
2013 87.5% 30.6% 80.1% 28.4% 79.9% 28.4%
2015 87.5% 30.6% 57.2% 20.9% 62.0% 22.7%
2017 87.5% 30.6% 58.9% 22.2% 65.7% 24.8%
2019 87.5% 30.6% 56.5% 21.9% 65.9% 25.6%
2021 87.5% 30.6% 54.0% 21.6% 66.0% 26.4%
2023 87.5% 30.6% 53.6% 22.1% 68.2% 28.1%
43 In 2013, the GER was 20%. See CHE (2015) VitalStats.
44 These ratios are calculated by subtracting the enrolments of students already in the higher education
time enrolments by the relevant number of applicable passes in the NSC in the previous year.
358 Higher education reviewed
continuation rates for the Bachelor’s degree are high and not likely to be
sustainable.
The second scenario’s continuation rates for holders of a Bachelor’s pass decline
steeply from 87.5% in 2012 to 59.7% in 2014 (not shown in Table 21) and decline
further to 53.6% in 2023. This would be unacceptable for both socio-political and
in 2012 to a low of 20.7% in 2016 (not shown in Table 21) and rises to 22.1% in
2023. From a socio-political and economic perspective this is also too low.
The third scenario’s continuation rates for holders of a Bachelor’s pass drop
from 87.5% in 2012 to 61.0% in 2016 (not shown in Table 21), but rise again
slowly after that to 68.2% in 2023. This would be more acceptable from a socio-
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
02013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
First Second Third
Figure 8 graphs the evolution of continuation rates for the Bachelor’s degree.
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
02013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
First Second Third
Funding 359
political and economic point of view and would also be more attainable than
the continuation rates for Scenario 1. The continuation rates for diploma and
Bachelor’s degree, these rates are also more feasible. It is assumed throughout
time enrolments in degrees.
It can be expected that the lower the continuation rate for the Bachelor’s
degree, the greater will be the ‘downward-raiding’ by Bachelor’s pass holders
more competitive. This applies in particular to the second and third scenarios. In
this respect as well, Scenario 3 strikes a ‘happy medium’.
3.4.2 Academic staff requirements45
instructional and research staff) in particular, as this category is likely to constitute
a key constraint experienced by universities. New academic staff recruits are
required in order to:
• Replace academic staff members who exit from the system. While no attrition
data are available, an estimate of 5% per annum is assumed, implying an
average career length of twenty years.
• Add to the academic staff establishment to keep the student-staff ratio
constant as the system expands. No reduction in this ratio is projected,
even though this would be desirable in the longer term, given the pressures
exerted on maintaining acceptable student-staff ratios in higher education
institutions during the past few years.
Table 22 sets out the required annual recruitment needs for academic staff for
each of the three scenarios.
First scenario Second scenario Third scenario
All New All New All New
2013 20 804 1 340 20 804 1 340 20 804 1 340
2015 25 920 3 645 20 507 885 21 377 1 343
2017 30 180 3 276 20 708 1 366 22 503 1 917
2019 32 974 2 899 21 422 1 413 24 267 2 067
2021 35 269 2 917 22 161 1 462 26 169 2 229
2023 37 351 2 848 22 161 748 28 221 2 404
Mean 2013-2023 2 985 1 209 1 858
45
360 Higher education reviewed
Universities have, on the whole, become stricter with regard to desired academic
requiring PhDs for appointment to the level of senior lecturer or above, with the
that all newly-appointed academic staff required PhDs, the ‘New’ columns would
also represent the number of new PhDs required each year just for universities:
1 858 for the third scenario. These estimates compare with 1 878 PhDs awarded
in 2012 for all purposes.46
3.4.3 Special infrastructural needs
a. Redress funding for historically disadvantaged universities
as a special need by the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of
Universities.47
Infrastructure backlogs 4 094
Maintenance 758
Municipal expenses 63
HEQC recommendaons 956
Teaching, learning and research 1 050
Student housing 11 210
Total 18 131
Source: Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities, 185-186
The item ‘HEQC recommendations’ refers to recommendations made in respect
of these seven institutions as part of the institutional audits conducted by the
HEQC in the period 2005-2012.
The total required for redress funding is substantial, particularly for a higher
education budget which is already under pressure in terms of matters such as
form of free higher education for the poor. In addition, the implementation of the
recommendations contained in the White Paper for Post School Education and
Training
To place the amount of R18.131 billion in perspective, even if, under third
scenario assumptions, 40% of the total earmarked grant were devoted to
infrastructure, and 75% of this were allocated to the seven universities, the above
infrastructural backlog could not be eradicated in the next decade.
46 See CHE (2014) VitalStats, Figure 30.
47 The seven institutions are: University of Fort Hare, University of Limpopo, Mangosuthu University of
Technology, University of Venda, University of the Western Cape, Walter Sisulu University and University of
Zululand. See DHET (2013) Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities.
Funding 361
b. The construction of housing for students in the sixteen other universities48
The Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Provision of Student Housing
of 2011, estimated the costs of developing adequate residential accommodation
billion a year in 2013 prices. Against this can be offset the amount required to
reduce the backlog in student housing infrastructure in the seven historically
disadvantaged universities. It is, however, a virtual certainty that given the
student housing needs in these seven universities, little new student housing
could be provided for in the other sixteen universities in the next decade. There
will, therefore, be continued reliance on the private sector to offer student
accommodation, with all the consequential challenges this holds for universities
as well as for individual students.
c. Implications of enrolment growth for infrastructure
There will also be a need for infrastructure other than student housing to cope
with increased student numbers. This could be met, in part, by the introduction of
a trimester system, which would use existing assets more intensively. However, in
the absence of additional academic staff, the effects of doing so on the other core
functions, namely research and community engagement, have not been investigated.
3.5 Conclusion
The analysis of the three major scenarios set out in this section shows that universities
containment will be paramount and universities will need to make every effort possible
in this respect without jeopardising the quality of higher education.
education, particularly through improving the current low throughput and
graduation rates, are not examined analytically in this chapter, but are referred to
4. The steering capacity of the state and the
The discussion of the adaptability of the present higher education system that
follows has two dimensions: a technical consideration of what can be altered in
the system to adapt to changing circumstances; and the constraints that value
commitments put on these adaptations.
Against this background, the components of the funding system are considered
in turn.
48 DHET (2011) Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Provision of Student Housing at
South African Universities. This report considered the 23 universities that existed in 2011.
362 Higher education reviewed
The principal degrees of freedom include:
• The number of places funded each year under the teaching input grant, and
out in institutional enrolment plans. While universities are not prevented
from exceeding the numbers of students approved by the DHET, the fact
that so-called over-enrolments will not be funded by the state is a powerful
disincentive for departing from the DHET-approved enrolment plan. This
follows since the tuition fee income received from such over-enrolled students
does not cover the full cost of providing university education for the student.
• The weights within the funding grid. The original funding grid and its cell
entries are based on data analysis conducted in the late 1990s and early
2000s, which can, and should, be reviewed from time to time to allow for
changes in relative costs and priorities.49
• The relative pricing of units counted under each of the four components
of the block grant. Changing the relative pricing of these four components,
output and research output in determining the size of block grants to
individual universities.
Table 9 above suggests that the parameters driving the block grant did not vary
much between 2007 and 2012. Real growth of unit prices varied from 1.2% per
annum for teaching inputs to 1.1% per annum for research outputs, and -1.8%
per annum for teaching outputs. The drop in the real unit value of the teaching
number of teaching input units increased by 4.1% per annum, the number of
teaching outputs by 4.3% per annum and the number of research outputs by 5.1%,
altered since the inception of the new system, although the Funding Review has
The most obvious steering measure to bring university funding into line with
available state resources is to tie the expansion of study places to the rate of growth
of the funding envelope. Doing so would ensure that academic and other service
standards in universities would not be affected negatively by a growth in student
numbers. However, while some adjustment of this kind seems unavoidable over
the following reasons:
• Students acquire ‘rights’ to continued enrolment as they progress through their
years of study and these rights need to be accommodated in projecting the
49 An example of such an exercise is contained in the DHET (2013) Report of the Ministerial Committee for
the Review of the Funding of Universities.
Funding 363
number of students enrolling for their second and subsequent years. This means
that, in effect, the only policy variable for the total number of teaching input units
cannot be borne by this factor since this would create undesirable year-on-year
entry into higher education, from actually proceeding into higher education.
• Another form of adjustment would be to adjust average unit prices, but there
are limits on how far this can be done. A sharp downward adjustment, or
a sustained smaller adjustment, would require universities to embark on
contested and often undesirable retrenchments of staff, including academic
staff, resulting in many negatives for institutions and students alike. Sharp
upward adjustments are less likely and are also not desirable, since they create
expectations and would lead to commitments in regard to staff expenditure
that may not be sustainable.
Another way of reducing costs per student is to negotiate more distance and
fewer contact students, since the former currently carry half the input subsidy
of the latter. The trend between 2008 and 2012 was in this direction, but the
fact that the average throughput rate for distance education students tends to
be substantially lower than for contact students means that, while such a step
would increase access, it would not be matched by a concomitant level of student
success.50 If this step were to be pursued, it could not be expected that UNISA
should bear the full burden of such student enrolment increases. Increases in
distance education student places could be negotiated with the other universities
as well, as is foreseen in DHET’s White Paper for Post School Education and
Training, 2014 and the DHET’s Draft Distance Education Policy in 2012.
An increase in the size of the teaching output unit grant relative to the size of
of the universities. This would entail reversing the trend between 2007 and 2012
in which, as was seen before, the teaching output grant declined in relation to the
teaching input and research grants.51 However, such an adjustment would have
considerable implications for quality assurance across the sector.
4.2 The earmarked grants
the Minister of Higher Education and Training for earmarked grants; the relative
amounts allocated through the various earmarked windows; and the proportion
of total funds allocated between the block grant and the earmarked grants. If
NSFAS allocations are excluded, between 2007 and 2012 the proportion of funds
allocated as earmarked grants dropped from 22.6% of the total to 17.3%. This
comparison is complicated by the institutional restructuring grant associated
with the mergers and incorporations of universities and campuses of universities.
50 For example, the 5-year completion rate of the 2006 UNISA intake, in respect of all standard Bachelor’s
degrees and national diplomas, was 6% (CHE (2013) A proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in
South Africa, p. 45).
51 See Table 9.
364 Higher education reviewed
These were short-term earmarked grants, compared with some of the other
grants, which have medium- and even long-term expected lifetimes. Table 24
compares the allocation of earmarked grants in 2007 and 2012.
Grant descripon 2007 2012
Interest and redempon on loans 4.6% 0.5%
Instuonal restructuring 32.5%
Former VISTA development grant 4.3%
Mul-campus grant 5.5%
Teaching development 20.5% 18.7%
Research development 4.2% 6.6%
Infrastructure development 24.1% 37.5%
Foundaon programmes 6.2% 7.3%
Clinical training of health professionals 13.8%
Veterinary science 2.9% 4.6%
Other 0.6% 5.5%
100.0% 100.0%
Source: DHET, University State Budgets 2004-12, Section 2
although the basis on which the Minister assigns weightings to the various earmarked
grants or introduces new ones (as in the increase from 2007 to 2012 in the category
‘other’) is not evident. The changes in the earmarked grant component have largely
resulted from changing circumstances. The reduction in the share of interest and
redemption on loans is, for example, a result of no new loans being extended and
underwritten by the state. Institutional restructuring, as mentioned earlier, was
fully underway in 2007, but has since run its course. Some elements of the old
SAPSE funding system have re-emerged, as in the case of the grants for veterinary
science and clinical training of health professionals. Infrastructural development
has moved up as a priority, not surprisingly in the light of the many years of neglect
by the state in providing meaningful funding for this area of expenditure, as well as
the rapid expansion of student enrolments during that period.
4.3 NSFAS
The fundamental problem which NSFAS has been faced with since its inception
is that the funds available for awards are inadequate for creating reasonable
equality of opportunity, despite very rapid growth in NSFAS funding over the last
twenty years. The Ministerial Committee on NSFAS observed that:
Current estimates are that NSFAS has less than half of the funds it needs to meet the
rates… Underfunding [in terms of award sizes] contributes to many of the secondary
impediments.52
Unless loan recovery rates improve dramatically, the gap will not be closed over
52 DHET (2013) Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities, p. xiii.
Funding 365
the coming decade, even under the second scenario. In fact, it will widen.
Nonetheless, the allocation of funds by NSFAS occurs within a framework which
has some degree of freedom. The loan/bursary mix is one of them. The higher the
loan component in NSFAS awards, the higher future loan recoveries can be, which
can then be recycled into the system. A possible route to making NSFAS funding
stretch further is to increase recoveries by abolishing all the bursary components
and reverting to the pure loan fund that TEFSA was at the outset. While recognition
of achievement is desirable, making provision for the conversion of loans into
bursaries means that the most able students (with the highest earning-power
in later life) are exempted much of their repayments, leaving repayments to be
recovered from weaker graduates who take longer to complete their studies,
and from dropouts. As indicated earlier, the bursary component has in fact been
aid funds. It seems that pruning rebates in the form of loans being converted to
bursaries is essential for the sustainability of NSFAS.
Although investigated in the past, consideration should again be given to
components. Commercial banks could, for instance, prioritise the awarding of
being made to the commercial banks.
Moreover, the loan size entitlement criteria in relation to household income can
be adjusted. Also, NSFAS should have loan balance limits for individual students,
such that loans can be repaid within a reasonable time-frame, say not more than
be passed on as a grant to students from the poorest households to enable them to
complete their studies within a reasonable time without becoming over-indebted.53
At present, claims on NSFAS are related to the level of student fees, which vary
Funding found that fee increases from 2005 to 2012 in all but one university were
had risen from 24% in 2000 to 30% in 2010.54 The knock-on effect of such tuition fee
increases on NSFAS funding is obvious. The Ministerial Committee recommended
that no cap be placed on fees, but noted that tuition fee increases well above
increases in the allocation of funds to NSFAS if the scheme is, at the very least, to
consideration should be given to those students who do not fall within the current
means eligibility criteria, but who do not qualify for bank loans.
53 Students with household incomes less than the income tax threshold who reach the loan ceiling before
such a measure is sensitive to interest rates, but is likely to be modest.
54 DHET (2013) Report of the Ministerial Committee for the Review of the Funding of Universities, Figure 9 and
Table 94.
366 Higher education reviewed
because of the limitations it would impose on system growth and individual
opportunity. Scenario 3, representing a compromise position, thus appears to be
the most practicable of the three.
However, it is evident that implementing Scenario 3 would not, in itself,
address all the pressures on the system and could indeed introduce others. It also
involves considerable cost. It is, therefore, necessary to consider what strategies
strengthen the practicability of the scenario. Broadly, there are three areas in
in higher education. Some possibilities are discussed below for illustrative
purposes.
5.1 Changing modes of delivery
Two possibilities are discussed in this section: changing the mix of contact and
distance education; and more extensive use of technological innovation in the
delivery of higher education.
5.1.1 Contact and distance higher education
input subsidy. Distance education students attract half the subsidy that contact
students in the same cell of the funding grid attract, up to and including the
honours degree. It follows that, from the point of view of the state, distance
education makes less demand on the public purse, so increasing the proportion
of distance education students in an expanding system would reduce the subsidy
required. In the following analysis, enrolments in the two categories are taken
from the University State Budget workbooks. The numbers reported there are
not headcount numbers but student units to which the contact and distance
weightings have already been applied. The gap between student headcounts and
student units is not great in the case of contact students, but the student unit
numbers should be doubled to give an indication of the headcount in the distance
education sector. Moreover, the numbers reported are not actual enrolments,
but the enrolment targets or student numbers approved by the DHET for state
funding purposes. So-called over-enrolled student numbers would thus not be
taken into account, nor would under-enrolments. Table 25 reports the student-
unit statistics for 2008 to 2012.
Funding 367
Contact Distance
non-UNISA UNISA non-UNISA UNISA
2008 808 551 777 12 941 82 121
2009 834 640 769 18 676 86 275
2010 874 581 516 17 019 91 547
2011 911 429 615 18 816 96 466
2012 949 522 571 18 171 103 560
Average growth 4.1% -7.4% 8.9% 6.0%
Source: DHET, University State Budgets 2004-12, Section 3
In terms of weighted student units, Table 25 shows distance education enrolments
above are seen as indicative of student enrolments themselves, predominantly contact
universities contributed 14.9% to total distance education student enrolments in 2012.
These enrolments have thus far been concentrated at a small number of universities.
The Department of Higher Education and Training is now encouraging universities
to extend distance education provision, as long as it meets quality requirements set
HEQC in programme accreditation.55 If this trend were to continue, the demands on
subsidy would be reduced. One of the complexities, however, is that the increasingly
widespread use of technological innovation is rendering the distinction between
traditional contact education (learning from live lectures) and distance education
(learning from e-linked materials and mailed printed materials) less clear-cut.
There is now a continuum from completely on-line modes, where lectures, tutorials,
assignments, tests and examinations are all conducted by electronic means, to
‘blended’ or ‘hybrid’ modes, where on-line interaction is combined with face-to-face
teaching and assessment. Consequently, maintaining the distinction between contact
and distance education for funding purposes could be challenged in the future.
As pointed out previously, the mode of educational delivery is here considered
from the point of view of student enrolments. From the point of view of graduate
production, it needs to be borne in mind that distance education graduation rates
online distance education provision may not be less costly than contact education.
infrastructure and effectiveness
a. Costs
South Africa is not the only country to struggle to afford its higher education,
and a substantial international literature has been developed in recent years on
an approaching crisis in higher education, mainly occasioned by reduced public
funding levels.56 There is a wide range of material on the possibilities of cost-
55 See DHET (2012) Draft Policy Framework for the Provision of Distance Education in South African
Universities.
56 M. Barber, K. Donnelly & S. Rizvi (2013) ‘An avalanche is coming: Higher education and the
revolution ahead’ (report); P.G. Altbach, L. Reisberg, & L.E. Rumbley (2010) Trends in global
higher education: Tracking an academic revolution.
368 Higher education reviewed
saving through the expanded use of technological innovation, some of which is
relevant to the South African context.57 While some regard the use of educational
technology as a potential cost-saving strategy, there is no consensus on this.
In these circumstances, South African higher education must weigh and test
options carefully in the light of local conditions. Given funding constraints,
everything that is done must lead to clear cost reduction or quality improvement
to make it worthwhile.
Change in delivery mode also has substantial implications for academic staff
roles. Bowen (2013) and Carey and Trick (2013) observe that the unbundling
and re-bundling of functions in the move from face-to-face teaching and learning
to online/hybrid teaching and learning will have radical consequences for the
structure, composition of employment and status system of universities. Figure
10 illustrates what is at stake:
There needs to be thorough investigation into the extent to which the higher
education sector would have the capacity and will to implement such far-
reaching change in academic staff roles on any large scale. Alerts of this kind to
major complexities in introducing innovation in delivery mode, which may not
be foreseen by policy-makers, are of particular importance in South Africa’s
environment of limited human resources. Constraints on infrastructure are
equally important, as discussed below.
57 For example: W.G. Bowen (2013) Higher education in the digital age; W.G. Bowen, M.M. Chingas,
K.A. Lack and T. I. Nygren (2012) Interactive learning online at public universities: Evidence from
randomized trials; T. Carey and D. Trick (2013) How online learning affects productivity, cost and
quality in higher education: An environmental scan and review of the literature.
TRADITIONAL FACULTY MODEL
Faculty Member
• Delivers instruction
• Develops and maintains courses
and curriculum
• Assesses learning outcomes
• Aligns course materials to deliv-
ery method
• Advises students
• Provides university service
• Conducts research
UNBUNDLED FACULTY MODEL
Course instructor or facilitator
• Delivers instruction
Curriculum writer and subject matter experts:
• Design and maintain academic content of courses
Instructor/graders:
• Assess learning outcomes
Academic advisor:
• Advises students and monitors student progress
Instructional designer:
• Aligns technology and course materials with overall
curriculum design
Figure 10: Reorganisation of staff functions as a consequence of online teaching and learning
Source: P Neely and J P Tucker, Unbundling faculty roles in online distance education, International Review of
Research in Open and Distance Learning, 11(2) 2010. In Carey and Trick, Ontario (2013) p. 18
Funding 369
c. Infrastructure
South Africa has clear limitations, but also some strengths in terms of
infrastructure for supporting technological innovation.
A key consideration is that South Africa has a very different telecommunications
system from advanced industrial countries, as shown in Table 26.
South Africa United
States
Fixed telephone subscripons per thousand inhabitants 7.9 44
Mobile subscripons per thousand inhabitants 134.8 98.2
Internaonal internet bandwidth: bits/sec per internet user 11 668 62 274
Percentage of individuals using the internet 41 81
Fixed broadband prices as a per cent of gross naonal income 4.8 0.4
Mobile broadband prices: pre-paid hand set: 500Mb per month as a per
cent of gross naonal income
2.1 3.8
Digital naves per 100 of populaon between the ages of 15 and 2458 18.6 95.6
Household download average speed: Mbps 4.33 20.55
Sources: International Telecommunications Union, Measuring the Information Society, 2013
58
the internet.
Source: Greaves, TENET
Figure 11: The TENET-SANREN network
370 Higher education reviewed
The implications of these factors, particularly broadband costs and download
rates, are substantial.
which forms the connectivity backbone of South African universities and research
institutions. A proposal to include FET/TVET colleges in this system is being
and operating a network on top of it. This network is comparable in reach and
capacity to those found in many mid-rank developed countries. Almost all of it has
twentyfold. Figure 11 maps the network.
The further strengthening of this network, which South Africa clearly has the
skills to design, could greatly increase the technical feasibility of expanding the
use of technology in teaching and learning in higher education.
It cannot be taken for granted that changing the mode of delivery in the direction
of online learning will be effective in improving, or even maintaining, the quality
of learning (and consequently success and graduation rates) across the South
African student body, with its high levels of inequality and underpreparedness.
Key factors such as those outlined below, require in-depth consideration.
The generally low quality of South African schooling is well-known. For example:
• The 2013 DBE Report on the Annual National Assessments showed that
mean scores on grade-appropriate tests in Grade 9 were 43% for the home
59
• Ninth-grade South Africans achieved an average score of 35260 in the 2011
round of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS),
compared with an average score of 509 among United States eighth-graders
and 613 among South Korean eighth-graders.61
• Fifth-grade South Africans, whose language of learning and teaching was
in the 2011 round of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study
(PIRLS). This included in this group are historically Coloured, Asian and
white schools as well as a substantial number of historically African schools.
The distribution of outcomes against low, intermediate, high and advanced
standards was as follows:
59 DBE (2013)
60 This was up from 285 in the 2002 round. The centre point of the TIMSS scale is 500.
61 V. Reddy, C. Prinsloo, F. Arends, M. Visser, L. Winnaar, N. Feza, S. Rogers, D. Janse van Rensburg,
A. Juan, M. Mthethwa, M. Ngema, M. Maja (2012) Highlights from TIMSS 2011: the South African
perspective.
Funding 371
Per cent distribuon South Africa Internaonal
Worse than low benchmark 43 5
Between low and medium benchmarks 23 15
Between medium and high benchmarks 20 36
Between high and advanced benchmarks 10 36
Above advanced benchmark 4 8
Source: PIRLS 2011, South African Children’s Reading Literacy Achievement, University of Pretoria, 2012, 50
• University entrants are likely to be drawn from the top quartile of the
study conducted by the South African Institute of Physics and the Council on
Higher Education found unanimity among physics teachers that students’
62
• National Benchmark Tests developed under the auspices of Higher Education
South Africa (HESA) have been introduced as a placement mechanism at some
universities. Table 28 shows the outcome for 12 202 students who wrote the
AQL test (which includes academic and quantitative literacy) and 10 672 who
wrote the mathematics test in 2009:
Tes t Basic Intermediate Procient
Academic Literacy 7% 46% 47%
Quantave Literacy 25% 50% 25%
Mathemacs 20% 73% 7%
Source: Unpublished CHE document
These results show that while academic literacy skills are substantially stronger
than quantitative or mathematics skills, fewer than half the students who sat the
academic literacy skills alone. The results for quantitative literacy were worse,
and the mathematics results were very poor. It must also be noted that the
students who took part in the pilot had already been accepted into programmes
at universities.63
In short, many university entrants arrive with slow reading speeds, poor reading
comprehension, limited ability to express themselves in writing, inadequate
numeracy levels, and little experience with computers and the internet. There
are also concerns about the capacity of many entrants to work on their own for
extended periods of time without face-to-face interaction with academic staff.
However, hybrid teaching and learning modules have the advantage of offering
the opportunity of closer contact with students than traditional distance education
62 B. Nkosi (2013) ‘School maths failing varsity entrants’ in Mail and Guardian, 19 July.
63 Some of the universities in the pilot had relatively high admissions criteria (UCT, Wits, UKZN, SU,
and RU).
372 Higher education reviewed
The above discussion suggests that, for South African higher education, at least
in the near future, purely online teaching and learning modules are less likely
to be successful for undergraduates than hybrid or blended modules. As long as
it is well-designed in relation to the target audiences, blended provision could
enhance learning among students who are adequately prepared for utilising it.
leading to reduced demands for infrastructural development. Conversely, hybrid
of time, so there are limits on how far they can replace distance education. As
noted earlier, moreover, changing delivery mode in this way carries a range of
implications – particularly for academic staff recruitment, roles and capacity – as
well as unforeseen consequences. Its contribution to facilitating higher education
growth through cost-saving cannot be taken for granted.
Online and hybrid educational delivery is no doubt here to stay and will develop
fast internationally over the next decade. Although some individual universities are
already active in this mode of educational delivery, it will require a major effort
to incorporate it systemically into South African higher education. Against the
developments should be: unless cost savings are certain to be substantial in a
steady state, maintain the status quo until greater certainty emerges in this regard.
5.2 Alternative sources of provision: Private higher education
Section 29(3) of the Constitution guarantees a right to independent education
and section 29(4) permits state subsidies to this form of education provision.
Accordingly, a framework has been established for the registration of independent
higher education institutions and for their regulation, including the adequacy
of premises, the submission of reports to the DHET, and the accreditation
independent higher education currently receives no subsidy from the state.
According to the White Paper for Post School Education and Training of 2013, this
is not likely to change in the foreseeable future.
In October 2013, there were 89 registered and 26 provisionally registered
private higher education institutions. Among the registered institutions were 18
business colleges, 16 theological seminaries (and three faith-based institutions),
had a mixed range of offerings, and the remainder were specialist institutions
use the designation ‘university’ as part of its formally registered and approved
institutional designation.
While private higher education institutions submit annual reports to the DHET,
data other than enrolments and achievements are currently not collected in the
same way that public institutions submit data to a central database, i.e. HEMIS.
Funding 373
While enrolment and achievement records are collected via the Higher Education
Quality Committee Information System (HEQCIS), these are unaudited and
therefore not easily comparable. A UNISA study, based on unpublished returns to
the DHET, found that 65 755 students were enrolled in 82 private higher education
institutions in 2010, and the most recent count of enrolments, according to the
Annual Reports submitted to the DHET, is over 90 000.64 The policy issue to be
considered is whether, despite the views expressed in the above-mentioned White
Paper, state subsidies should be introduced for independent higher education,
on either a general or a selective basis. Subsidies per student, even well below
those paid to public universities, would have the effect of stimulating the sector,
increasing overall higher education student enrolments and lowering per-student
costs over the entire public and independent system.
It should be borne in mind, however, that if NSFAS support is not extended, the
numbers of students in a position to take advantage of growth in private provision
will be likely to be very limited, with the public sector having to accommodate the
great majority of indigent students.
5.3.1 Trimesters: restructuring the academic year
structuring the teaching time available in a calendar year. It would be possible,
for example, to run three terms per year, each the length of a standard university
semester, which currently averages about 13 weeks. From a productivity point
of view, this would utilise the physical plant more intensively at little extra
maintenance cost. The number of academic staff members would have to rise, but
not necessarily in proportion to the lengthening of the teaching year.
motivated student to complete what is currently a three-year degree in two years
and a current four-year degree in three years. However, unless there were indeed
equipment and other infrastructural implications), the effects of introducing such
a system on a university’s research activities and outputs could be negative.
5.3.2 Reform of curriculum structure
As noted earlier, the scenario projections set out in this chapter all assume the
continuation of the student performance patterns that currently exist across the
higher education sector. However, as research over the last decade has indicated,
the persistence of these performance patterns is in itself a major obstacle to viable
growth in higher education, particularly in relation to the production of graduates
on the scale needed for the country’s development. The performance patterns
show that, despite the student intake being very small in comparison with other
approximately half of each intake not completing their studies.
64
post-school education and training: 2012.
374 Higher education reviewed
While the reasons for this are complex, it is evident that improving the internal
means of facilitating positive growth. This issue has not been addressed in depth
in this chapter, but is the theme of a comprehensive study recently undertaken by
a CHE Task Team.65 The study found that structural curriculum change – allowing
for additional formal time for most degrees and diplomas as the norm, within a
gains, of the order expected to be achieved by the proposed reform, would result
recommendations were subsequently endorsed by the Council, which formally
advised the Minister of Higher Education and Training to undertake pilot studies
with a view to implementing the proposal.
be achieved, would make a substantial difference to the capacity of the higher
education sector to respond to the pressures on it in an economically feasible way.
6. Conclusion
6.1 Key conditions for implementing planned growth in
higher education over the next decade
The compromise position represented by Scenario 3 as discussed above, is
considered to be the most viable of the three scenarios in practice; Scenario 1
politically.
In these circumstances, it is clearly important for the DHET and the higher
that will be required for implementing a viable growth plan along the lines of
Scenario 3, and to determine the feasibility of these parameters and conditions.
This is necessary not only to ensure effective planning and management, but also
to enable all stakeholders to develop realistic expectations of what the higher
education sector can deliver.
The analysis in this chapter indicates that the following parameters and
conditions would be necessary for successfully implementing Scenario 3:
1. Tuition and residence fees at current prices should grow at no more than the
that the burden of fees will not rise in relation to average household incomes.
higher than was the case over the period between 2007 and 2012.
3. The state block and earmarked grant envelope should grow at the rate of
national state expenditure plus 2.1% each year.
65 CHE (2013) A proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in South Africa.
Funding 375
entrants should be allowed to drop in the very short term and, if there are
further upward jumps in the NSC pass rate, for a longer period. This will require
universities to become more selective in their degree admission criteria. They
should also consider making their academic exclusion policies more stringent
for degree study students. Stricter application of rules for academic exclusion
would permit the NSC continuation ratios for Bachelor’s passes to be higher
than indicated for the third scenario assumption rates shown in Table 21. There
5. The NSFAS allocation system needs urgent attention. The whole approach to
funding envelope, and should be heavily targeted towards students from
households with incomes below the income tax threshold, with a gradual
reduction of loan support as household incomes rise above the income tax
threshold. Consideration should be given to making NSFAS purely a loan
scheme (i.e. without bursary elements) and to inviting commercial banks to
participate in the funding of the least risky student loans.
6. Universities should consider whether and, if so, in what ways effective online and
hybrid provision can reduce costs in the steady state, and should innovate only in
such ways as will secure cost-reduction in teaching and learning. Innovations in this
area will take some time to introduce and an undue rush by individual universities
will entail a potential waste of resources. HESA should take the lead in brokering
inter-university partnerships on forms of blended and online learning.
7. The rate of student enrolment growth should, as soon as possible, taper down
student enrolments per unit real state subsidy) in the university system as a
whole (probably not more than 0.5% per annum). As indicated in this chapter,
possible sources of productivity gain include: a shift in balance between
public to private higher education; changing the mode of delivery through
shifting from contact to distance education and/or towards online and hybrid
teaching and learning provided this leads to lower cost; and improving
academic year or reforming curriculum structure. Since the rate of growth of
the 20-24 year age-group will be about 0.8% per annum in the next decade,
this will mean that the gross student enrolment rate will continue to rise, but
entrance into universities will become more competitive.
NSFAS should be extended to them.
In summary, the third scenario can be realised if the following conditions are
• The National Treasury accepts that a rising percentage of GDP should be devoted
376 Higher education reviewed
Higher Education and Training (a) negotiates a higher budget with the National
budget, and (b) stimulates, rather than just regulates, private higher education.
• Universities (a) increase the rate of growth of third-stream income and
(b) adopt teaching and learning productivity improvement measures, for
• Potential students accept that entry into university will become more
competitive.
In addition, the higher education sector would clearly be strengthened if the
Department of Basic Education, the Department of Higher Education and Training
and the universities succeeded in working together to improve the quality of
further education.
6.2 Summary
South African higher education has grown rapidly since the turn of the century,
and is likely to go on doing so for the next decade at only a slightly reduced pace.
In the third scenario, enrolments in 2013 were 953 000 and enrolments in 2023
are projected at 1 292 000, the latter up by 121% from the 2001 level of 585 000.
Table 1 indicated that the 20-24 year age-group is expected to grow from 4 486
000 in 2001 to 5 092 000 in 2013 and 5 508 000 in 2023, and the gross enrolment
rate will have increased from 16% in 2001 and 19% in 2013 to 24% in 2023.66
The actual outcomes will depend on whether material improvements occur in
the levels of school-leavers’ preparedness for university study and the evolution
accorded to higher education in the longer run.
The South African gross enrolment ratio in 2011 is compared with the ratios for
regions of the world in Table 29.
North America and Western Europe 77%
Central and Eastern Europe 68%
Lan America and Caribbean 42%
East Asia and Pacic 30%
Central Asia 24%
Arab states 23%
South and West Asia 18%
South Africa 18%
Sub-Saharan Africa 8%
Source: UNESCO Education Statistics, Table 14
66 If in addition, there were a 0.25% per annum productivity gain from 2013 to 2023, enrolments
would rise to 1 325 000 in 2023 and the participation rate would rise to 24.2%. A 0.5% gain
would put enrolments at 1 366 000 in 2023, with a participation rate of 24.8% in that year.
Funding 377
South Africa needs to improve its position, but there are limits on how quickly
progress can be made.
Funding will remain tight throughout the decade and particularly in the next
three years. The Department of Higher Education and Training will need to keep
the projections indicate that there will be great pressure on the teaching input
and teaching output grants, and that it is not possible to fund all the redress
increases elsewhere in the system.
NSFAS is the weakest link in the system and needs urgent and sustained
attention. It is not reaching all students in need, it does not have equitable access
rules and it cannot proceed on its current path without a huge injection of funds.
Not to optimise NSFAS, subject to the funding constraints, acts against equality of
opportunity.
Also needing more attention is the mismatch between the output of the National
67 Although only modest
progress is likely over the next decade, in the longer run failure to deal with this
issue will entail a low ceiling on the higher education participation rate. Moreover,
continuing failure to improve secondary-tertiary articulation will result in a
similarly low ceiling on completion rates.
In general, the state possesses the necessary tools for steering the system
during the decade to 2023, but it must be careful that the way in which it uses
them does not impose intolerable adjustment burdens on the universities.
Technological advance in computing, telecommunications and the internet hold
promise for South African higher education. However, only those innovations
which offer cost reductions – and do not compromise quality or success rates –
should be implemented.
The task for the decade ahead is to build a basic system for the cost-effective
growth of high-level human capital. More ambitious objectives, such as a
preoccupation with South Africa’s place in global education rankings, should
await a later generation.
67 See Tables 4 and 13. Also to be considered, when graduation rates from TVET colleges rise from
their present very low levels, is articulation between TVET colleges and universities, particularly
universities of technology and comprehensive universities.
378 Higher education reviewed
Appendix
Developments in senior secondary school throughput and
output
This appendix outlines the projections for secondary education output that
inform the higher education projections developed in the body of this chapter.
Year Enrolments
Grade 8 Grade 9 Grade 10 Grade 11 Grade 12
2008 926 603 902 656 1 076 527 902 752 595 216
2009 991 093 926 531 1 017 341 881 661 602 278
2010 1 001 180 1 009 327 1 039 762 841 815 579 834
2011 1 008 110 1 049 904 1 094 189 847 758 534 498
2012 971 509 1 096 113 1 103 495 874 331 551 837
2013 942 345 1 073 060 1 146 285 834 611 597 196
Source: Department of Basic Education, Education Statistics (2008-12) and School Realities (2013)
A simple inspection of Table A.1 suggests that there is substantial repetition in
Grades 9 and 10. Compare, for instance, the 1 146 285 enrolments in Grade 10
in 2013 with 1 096 113 enrolments in Grade 9 in 2012. There is also substantial
learner dropout between Grades 10 and 11, and again between Grades 11 and 12.
No reliable direct observations of promotion, repetition and dropout exist
for the secondary school system.68
indirect estimates based on the following assumptions: modest improvements to
the promotion rates are projected for 2013 to 2018, and 2018 to 2023 (despite
decreases in the 2008 to 2013 period), with accompanying declines in repetition
set out in the following four tables.
Grade 9 Grade 10 Grade 11
Promoon 0.837 0.695 0.651
Repeon 0.113 0.205 0.134
Drop out 0.05 0.1 0.215
Cercate Diploma Degree
2008 105 847 127 423 107 274
2009 93 356 131 035 109 697
2010 91 241 146 224 126 371
2011 85 296 141 584 120 767
2012 88 604 152 881 136 047
2013 94 566 172 624 171 755
68 Promotion, in this context, means passing (or being promoted in) one year and enrolling in the
next.
Funding 379
secondary school system had been greater: 10% of learners drop out in Grade 10,
and over 20% in Grade 11. Furthermore, repetition is high: over 20% in Grade 10
and over 13% in Grade 11.
Senior secondary promotion, repetition and dropout rates are projected as follows:
2013-2017
Promoon 0.857 0.715 0.671
Repeon 0.093 0.185 0.124
Drop out 0.05 0.1 0.205
2018-2022
Promoon 0.877 0.735 0.691
Repeon 0.073 0.165 0.114
Drop out 0.05 0.1 0.195
These rates represent a modest improvement on the rates reported in Table A.2
Demographic projections and projections of enrolment rates make possible
three categories leading on to higher education. Table A.5 shows the results.
Candidates Not
achieved Pass Higher educaon entrance
Cercate Diploma Degree
2013 562 112 122 541 176 94 566 172 624 171 755
2014 558 031 117 796 558 94 411 172 476 172 790
2015 617 186 128 116 617 104 714 191 370 192 369
2016 617 537 126 020 618 105 068 192 091 193 741
2017 617 314 123 807 617 105 324 192 633 194 933
2018 620 718 122 310 621 106 201 194 309 197 277
2019 646 023 125 028 646 110 838 202 870 206 641
2020 663 982 126 172 664 114 236 209 167 213 743
2021 675 878 126 059 676 116 605 213 584 218 954
2022 679 215 124 296 679 117 504 215 311 221 424
2023 691 576 124 130 692 119 972 219 914 226 868
Achievement rates
2013 0.218 0.000 0.168 0.307 0.306
2023 0.183 0.001 0.173 0.317 0.326
Annual growth 2.09% 2.41% 2.45% 2.82%
There was a large jump between 2012 and 2013, with total passes increasing by
16.3%. From 2013 to 2023, an average annual increase of 2.41% is projected for
study. However, these results are sensitive to assumptions made. For instance, if
380 Higher education reviewed
it is assumed that the Grade 11 repetition rate is kept constant at 0.134, and that
the Grade 11 pass rates in 2013 to 2017 and 2018 to 2023 are projected at 0.691
and 0.731, with compensating decreases in the dropout rate, the increase in the
number of NSC passes for degree study rises to 3.40% per annum between 2013
and 2023.
Funding 381
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382 Higher education reviewed
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HIGHER EDUCATION
REVIEWED
Two Decades Of Democracy
South African
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