South African Higher Education: Over-Coming Problems, Meeting Challenges

Following on the heels of the report in July 2000 by the Council on Higher Education, the advisory body to the Minister of Education, a Ministerial National Working Group last month reaffirmed that the transformation of higher education was unavoidable, urgent and long overdue. Like the Council, the Working Group proposed major restructuring through mergers of institutions that would reduce the present 36 institutions to 21 and create a more equitable, differentiated, high quality, effective and sustainable institutional landscape.

The Minister will soon formulate his own proposals on restructuring, consult with the Council on Higher Education and take proposals to Cabinet. Any proposals for restructuring are bound to be strongly contested by different constituencies. Yet the stakes are high: whether or not the higher education system becomes a key engine driving and contributing to the reconstruction and development of South African society.

The imperative of change
The inherited higher education system was designed to reproduce, through teaching and research, white privilege and black subordination in all spheres of society. All institutions were in differing ways and to differing extents deeply implicated in this. Higher education was fragmented and divided along racial and ethnic lines, and reflected severe social inequalities of ‘race’ and gender with respect to student access and success and the composition of academic staff. There were also major institutional inequities between what are termed historically white institutions and historically black institutions. One key policy imperative and challenge therefore is to transform higher education so that it becomes more socially equitable internally and promotes social equity more generally.

Research and teaching were extensively shaped by the socio-economic and political priorities of the apartheid separate development programme. Instead, higher education is now called on to address and to become responsive to the development needs of a democratic South Africa. These needs are crystallised in the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) of 1994 as a fourfold commitment. First is “meeting basic needs of people”. Second is “developing our human resources”. Third is “building the economy”, and fourth is the task of “democratising the state and society”.

South Africa’s transition occurs in a context of globalisation and global economic growth is increasingly dependent on knowledge and information. Thus, a major challenge for higher education is to produce through research and teaching and learning programmes the knowledge and personpower that will enable South Africa to engage proactively with and participate in a highly competitive global economy.

However, a number of conditions within higher education represent fundamental challenges to the system and major obstacles to the achievement of key national and social goals. These include:

1) The geographic location of institutions, which was based on ideological and political considerations rather than rational and coherent planning. This results in fragmentation and unnecessary duplication.

2) The continued and even increasing fragmentation of the system. The higher education system still does not function in the unified and co-ordinated way envisaged by the government’s White Paper on higher education. Neither existing planning instruments nor encouraging institutions has produced meaningful co-ordination or collaboration.

3) Competition among public institutions is rife, especially where traditional contact institutions have embarked on large-scale distance provision. This increase in distance provision has resulted, without any national planning, in the establishment of learning centres in various cities and towns.

4) Individualised initiatives of institutions, frequently with no or little reference to real socio-economic and educational needs and to the programme offerings of neighbouring institutions. The major dangers are: lack of institutional focus and mission incoherence; unwarranted duplication of activities and programmes; and destructive competition in which historically white institutions could reinforce their inherited privileges. National quality assurance mechanisms are in their infancy and this creates major concerns about the quality of teaching and learning.

5) Major inefficiencies related to student throughput rates, graduation rates, student drop-outs, student repetition and the retention of failing students. South African universities and technikons produced about 75,000 graduates and diplomates in 1998. Had there been reasonable throughput rates then at least 100,000 graduates/diplomates would have been produced in 1998. One sixth of students drop out of the system each year without completing their qualifications.

6) The skewed racial and gender distribution of students in the various levels and fields of study and at certain institutions.

Gender equity improved in higher education enrolments between 1993 and 1999. Whereas in 1993, 43% of students were female, their proportion increased to 53% in 2000. This change, however, masks inequities in the distribution of female students across academic programmes as well as at higher levels of post-graduate training. Female students tend to be clustered in the humanities and, in particular, teacher education programmes. They remain seriously under-represented in programmes in science, engineering and technology and in business and management.

Black, and in particular African, student enrolments also increased rapidly between 1993 and 2000. Compared to 40% in 1993, 60% of all students in universities and technikons in 2000 were African. Concomitantly, the representation of white students in the higher education system fell from 47% in 1993 to 28% in 2000. The rapid increase in African students, however, masks an inequity similar to that of female students. Large proportions of African students are enrolled in distance education programmes, most of which are humanities and teacher-upgrade programmes. The numbers and proportions of African students in programmes in science, engineering and technology and in business/management remain low. Post-graduate enrolments across most fields are also extremely low.
The extremely poor ‘race’ and gender representation and distribution of academic and administrative staff. All institutions have academic staff and senior administrative bodies that are dominated by whites and males. The historically white institutions continue to have academic and senior administrative staff bodies that are dominated by whites.

The extremely low research outputs of most institutions and the uneven levels of outputs, even in those institutions that evince a higher ratio of research outputs relative to other institutions. About 65% of all publications recognised for subsidy purposes are produced by only six of the present 36 institutions. These same six institutions also produce close to 70% of South Africa’s total masters and doctoral graduates.

There are, however, also a number of immediate contextual problems of the system that include:

1) The decline in student enrolments within the public higher education sector. The overall participation rate has remained static and is estimated for 2000 at 15% for the age group 20-24. This is low for a country striving to become competitive in the global knowledge-based economy.

2) The possible crippling effects on the ability of several institutions to continue to fund their activities because of the relationship between enrolments and funding as well as their inability to attract more diverse sources of funding.

3) The fragile governance capacity at many institutions and the persistence of crises at some of these. A complex of conditions has given rise to weak and/or inadequate governance and management. The problems at these institutions go well beyond episodic student protests and relate fundamentally to institutional leadership and effective management and administration.

The problems and weaknesses of the higher education system are extensive and varied:
• They are a serious drain on national resources and undermine government’s ability to achieve its national goals.
• They impact negatively on the possibilities for democratic consolidation through not realising social benefits of higher education for development of society as a whole.
• They mean that the achievement of equity and economic and social development is being compromised by inefficiencies, lack of effectiveness, and shortcomings in quality.

Recommendations
Urgently required are creative and constructive interventions that have as their overall goal a new higher education landscape that is characterised by equity, quality and excellence, responsiveness to social needs and effective and efficient provision and governance.

Key outcomes must be: first, in the face of the apartheid legacy and current fragmentation, the achievement of a rational, national, integrated and co-ordinated higher education system. Second, because the needs of South Africa are greatly varied, such a system must be a highly differentiated system in which institutions have diverse and distinct missions. There is no virtue in all institutions seeking to be the same and offering the same programmes.

Third, there must be significant improvements in participation in higher education with increasing equity. Real possibilities must be created for social advancement for those who were historically disadvantaged under apartheid—black and women South Africans, and especially learners of working class and rural poor social origins. Equity entails more than simply access to higher education. It must incorporate real opportunity —environments in which learners, through academic support, excellent teaching and mentoring and other initiatives, genuinely have every chance to graduate with the relevant knowledge, competencies, skills and attributes that are required for any occupation and profession and for productive citizenship.

Fourth, high quality and excellence must be the watchwords of all higher education institutions. If equity is not accompanied by quality, lip service is paid to equity and a distorted equity is promoted, which does not in any substantive and meaningful way erode the domination of high level occupations and intellectual production by particular social groups. Finally, higher education must deliver the knowledge and high level personpower that is crucial to South Africa’s success.

Far-reaching changes in higher education are long overdue and unavoidable. The government must mediate diverse interests and make difficult choices and tough decisions regarding a new landscape and spectrum of institutions. Without proactive, deliberate and decisive action on the part of government, there will be stagnation and/or a Darwinian resolution in which the new higher education landscape will be a far cry from the kind that is required in a developing democracy.

South Africa has a historic opportunity to reconfigure its higher education system in a principled and imaginative way, so that it is more suited to the needs of a democracy and of all its citizens in contrast to the irrational and exclusionary imperatives which shaped large parts of the current system. The opportunity must be grasped. It is vital to look to the future, to build truly South African institutions and put to them to work for and on behalf of all South Africans .