David Robbins
The Higher Education Amendment Bill, which allows the minister of education to appoint administrators in the place of vice- chancellors at badly run universities, was passed this week by the National Assembly and is due to go to the National Council of Provinces for consideration.
Educationists speculate that once it’s enacted, the vice-chancellors of two historically disadvantaged universities (HDUs) are likely to be out of a job: the universities of the North and Transkei. The ministry has been trying to solve serious problems of mismanagement at both institutions for more than a year.
The problems at these two universities are not unique, and some of their troubles likely stem from their origin. HDUs are those institutions established as non-white universities in terms of 1959 legislation segregating universities and those built in the early 1970s to service “homeland” populations.
There are 10 HDUs, all directly emanating from the policies of apartheid and separate development. In this sense they are undoubtedly “historically disadvantaged”: there wasn’t really any rationale for their existence other than a discredited political one.
In consequence, they were often inappropriately positioned away from the main cultural centres, making it difficult to create an atmosphere conducive to higher learning. They were also inadequately resourced – many didn’t have proper libraries – and the combination of this with inappropriate locations often gave rise to acute staffing problems.
These deficiencies were offset to an extent by the previous regime’s anxiety to keep its separate development institutions operational, at least on a superficial level. What happened underneath this level in the academic and administrative engine rooms of the HDUs was of far less concern. Nevertheless, the apartheid restrictions on movement kept the HDUs reasonably well provided with students.
Since 1994, however, more natural market forces have come into play, leaving these institutions in direct competition with the established or historically white universities (HWUs) in towns and cities. This has resulted in diminishing student numbers at the HDUs, difficulties with retaining staff and huge financial problems caused partly by students not paying fees and partly by financial administrations creaking under the new and largely indifferent market conditions.
Crudely put: no apartheid godfather was any longer remotely interested in whether an institution survived or collapsed.
“Obviously, the HDUs sought redress after they had joined the privileged historically white universities, the HWUs, in a common university sector after 1994,” observes Professor Cecil Abrahams, vice-chancellor of the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and chair of the Historically Disadvantaged Universities Forum.
“In particular, we sought financial redress from the new democratic state, but this has largely been denied,” says Abrahams. “We also wanted a proper reallocation of resources, but this hasn’t happened either. There was the hope that having been on the right side of the struggle – as many HDUs prominently were – we would reap some dividend after 1994.
“We had been in the frontline, in many respects protecting the HWUs. But no dividends have come. Only competition. And I suppose the HDUs are now wanting to know what sort of priority they are being accorded within the higher education sector. Or are they simply seen as nuisance value?
“Yes, of course, there are problems: on the finance and management sides especially, and also in terms of student unrest. But we believe we have important roles to play in our regions and nationally. The ‘size-and-shape’ debate must therefore be treated with great care. It’s easy to destroy, but much more difficult to build up academic infrastructure again when the country needs it.”
Abrahams isolates several key areas which need to be addressed to lessen the HDU/HWU division. The first is that addressing the under-preparedness of many South African students entering the university sector should be the responsibility of regional groupings of universities and not left for the HDUs to handle alone.
“There’s been a lot of lip-service to this idea, but no action so far,” remarks Abrahams of the situation in the Western Cape. “The established universities go for the cream; they are better equipped to do this. The funding formula favours high pass rates and postgraduate study.
“The HDUs are therefore at a major disadvantage because they receive higher proportions of under-prepared students, who take a year longer to get a first degree, and then go on to postgraduate study at a much lower rate.
“The second is the ability of students to pay. Well-off middle-class students gravitate to the HWUs. The HDUs are left with students from disadvantaged communities who for obvious socio- economic reasons have less ability to pay. The result of this has been financial chaos in the HDUs.
“When the University of the Western Cape opened its doors to black students, many middle-class coloureds went instead to the University of Cape Town. And when we became a dual medium Afrikaans/English university, many more Afrikaans-proud coloureds went to Stellenbosch. These trends, understandably, have made the basic problems of financial viability more acute.”
The question may be whether HDUs – some or all – are worth saving.
“I don’t believe the size of the sector should change at all,” Abrahams replies. “The reduction in student intake is temporary. When our schooling system improves, student intake will rise accordingly, and we’ll need all the institutions we can lay our hands on.
“With regard to shape, I believe a great deal can be done. In the Western Cape, through the Adamastor Trust, the five tertiary institutions – three universities and two technikons – have come together and already there’s some co-operation.
‘For example in law, specific universities have taken specific specialities. UWC’s is human rights law. There’s a sharing of expertise in this area, and students are now coming on to our campus from both Stellenbosch and Cape Town.
“In dentistry there’s a sharing of hospitals and lecturers, and all five institutions now have a common database- linked library service. The books of all five institutions are available to all, and the buying budget is now five times the size it was individually. Heavy equipment in some faculties is also being shared.”
The solution, then, might be that simple: that the key to the problems generated by our past obsession with separateness might, in spite of the current tendency to competition over scarce students, at least in part lie in the vigorous development of sharing and co-operation.
The 10 HDUs are universities of the Western Cape, Durban-Westville, the North and Fort Hare. Homeland institutions are the universities of Venda, Bophuthatswana (now North-West) Transkei and Zululand. Add to that the “black” medical school, Medunsa, and the multi-campuses of Vista University