things to come
Are universities in turmoil or in ferment? Are they collapsing, or merely in flux? David Robbins looks at the tertiary sector
The troubles afflicting South African universities and technikons are many, and dramatic: campus protests, lecture boycotts, revelations of institutional collapse, widespread financial investigations, crippling amounts outstanding from unpaid student fees, rumours of “rightsizing” and fundamental change – the situation in South Africa becomes more complex by the year.
Responses to the crisis are mixed. Some people contend that the turmoil in the sector is terminal and warn of at least partial collapse. There are plenty of precedents for this in sub-Saharan African countries.
Others reject these views as alarmist, saying instead that current instabilities are simply the pains of inevitable policy change. A sector which has grown up with both colonial and apartheid bias now finds itself wincing in the light of fundamentally new demands.
“I think it is overstating the case,” says Professor Colin Bundy, vice- chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, “to suggest that tertiary education is in turmoil, with the overtones this bears of unruliness and dysfunction. More accurately, perhaps, the sector is in ferment – which implies growth and richness as well as change and stress.”
However widely interpretations of the prevailing climate may differ, one thing is abundantly certain: major new realities are changing the face of tertiary education in South Africa for ever. “These new realities should be a source of vitality and strength within the system, rather than an axis of division and discord,” says Bundy.
And, sure enough, if one looks carefully, it’s not the shadow of chaos so much but the image of a much more logical and dynamic future that has already begun to flicker on the currently clouded horizon.
The process of working towards this future, however, has brought new schisms and agendas, and considerable quantities of instability and bewilderment.
According to the 1996 Higher Education Act, the Council for Higher Education is obliged to hold regular conferences of parties with an interest in the sector – anyone from the parents who foot the bills to industry and commerce, the Ministry of Education, staff and students. The next gathering is due to take place later this month.
Doubtless, from this source, we’ll get fresh glimpses of crucial issues: the problems of historically disadvantaged institutions, current demographic trends, the funding crisis, the divide between universities and technikons, the many issues surrounding quality control, the burgeoning private tertiary education sector and the debate on the size of the sector and the shape it should take.
In the hurly-burly of post-1994 policy change, the tertiary education sector appears confused and many of the issues blurred. Even the jargon seems new as the systems of primary, secondary and tertiary education are overhauled.
One sure way to grasp some of the complexities is simply to take a few steps back.
Tertiary education is one of three distinct levels in education. The primary level encompasses all basic schooling up to the end of grade nine (standard seven).
Secondary education is these days often referred to as further education and training and encompasses high school or technical college education up to grade 12 (standard 10) or its equivalent.
Tertiary (higher or third-level) education is delivered through 21 universities, 15 technikons, and scores of single-purpose colleges, most notably in the field of teacher training.
Until the early 19th century there were no tertiary institutions at all in South Africa. People went to Europe for this level of education.
Only in 1829 was an attempt made to improve the local situation, when the South African College came into existence in Cape Town. Developments in other centres followed, but the country had to wait until the early decades of the 20th century before universities finally came into their own.
The South African College became the University of Cape Town in 1918, and Victoria College, founded in 1865, became Stellenbosch University in the same year.
Rhodes University saw the light of day in 1904, and Witwatersrand (built on the foundations of the 1895 School of Mines) achieved full university status in 1922.
The South African Native College was established in 1916, metamorphosing into Fort Hare in 1951. Then the Universities of Durban-Westville, the Western Cape and the North came into existence under the auspices of the 1959 Extension of University Education Act, designed to bar the entry of black students into historically white institutions and establish racially segregated universities instead.
These “non-white” institutions were small. By the early 1960s, South Africa’s universities were catering to about 62 000 students, only 5 000 of whom were not white. The racial bias began to even out when, in the heyday of separate development, universities were constructed in the “homelands” of Transkei, Venda, KwaZulu and Bophuthatswana.
This was followed by the gradual “racial opening up” of many of the historically white universities, so that by the late 1980s student statistics revealed that in addition to the 150 000 white students studying at the country’s universities, there were 120 000 black, coloured and Indian students.
Today, of course, the majority resides with the latter sector – 207 000, according to preliminary enrolment figures for 1999, and 122 000 white students.
Yet beneath these bald statistics, the divisions within the university sector were profound. A glance at events in the Committee of University Principals (CUP), established in 1916 as the governing body for the higher education sector, highlights some of these.
In 1986, for the first time, some of the universities created for Indian and coloured students were incorporated into this statutory body. But the ensuing “unity”, designed to coincide with the country’s new tricameral Constitution, was less than skin deep. For a start, Fort Hare and the other black universities set up later in the homelands were excluded on the grounds that they operated in foreign countries. There was in consequence an air of political unreality surrounding CUP activities. Indeed, many participants have described the forum in those days as little more than a social club.
It is difficult to deny that the CUP’s complacency, even as the country approached the 1990s, mirrored to a certain extent the complacency within the historically white university sector generally. Certainly, there had often been vigorous campus protests against various manifestations of apartheid, particularly as it impacted on education, and some institutions had been seriously grappling with non-racial admissions policies since the early 1980s. But with regard to the fundamental position of universities in relation to other tertiary institutions and to the demands of the economy there seemed often to be a dearth of creative thinking.
For decades, universities had ruled the roost in the tertiary sector. Percentages of school leavers going to universities were higher among white South Africans (37% in the mid-1980s) than in any of the developed countries; while the numbers of all South Africans entering technical or vocational tertiary training were hopelessly low, even by comparison with other countries in the middle-income category.
The traditional colonial/settler bias away from manual work to the professions had been reinforced by job reservation, and technikons (which were only established after 1979) were seen therefore to offer an education which failed to reach the standards offered at the country’s established universities.
So the nation’s white matriculants flocked to the universities, and the universities (state-financed, at least in part, according to student numbers and pass rates) were hardly motivated to tamper with the status quo. Nearly every historically white university in the country saw itself as an Oxbridge or Ivy League style of institution where autonomy, academic freedom, the maintenance of quality and the value of pure (as opposed to applied or Third World) research became the main defendables.
But external events soon overtook the sector. In fairness to some universities, it must be said that radical institution- level changes had begun well before the 1994 political transformation of the country.
In spite of this, however, the complacency in the CUP was jolted when representatives of those universities established in the former homelands (sometimes disparagingly called the bush universities) were all at once brought into the fold.
The need for change now assumed an urgent sectoral dimension. How should universities as a sector respond to the major demands emanating from the new democratically elected government?
It was a situation which demanded a unified approach, but the “unified” university sector was immediately plagued with an essential disunity.
Those universities born of apartheid and separate development gravitated rapidly together into what is now called the historically disadvantaged university (HDU) group. The established universities, both English and Afrikaans, found themselves labelled the historically white or advantaged universities (HWUs or HAUs).
Some of the resulting tensions within the sector were embarrassing. Meetings of CUP had traditionally alternated between English and Afrikaans.
When the HDUs asked that English be used because it was the language most widely understood, some Afrikaans universities objected. In fact, they went to the expense of laying on simultaneous translation facilities rather than surrender the use of their language.
But such rigidities didn’t last, even though their occurrence helped to cement the fundamental division. CUP meetings became tense affairs, and on the agendas there appeared the question of financial redress for the apparently underfunded and academically marginalised HDUs.
To its credit, the CUP (which has now changed its name to the South African Universities Vice-Chancellors Association, or Sauvca) very quickly embarked on a process of transformation in an effort to reposition universities in the rapidly changing tertiary education terrain.
Yet divisions within the sector have remained. To begin with, the Ministry of Education listened with scant sympathy to the HDUs’ requests for redress.
At the same time, questions were being asked about the tertiary education sector as a whole. Nobody could argue that technical and vocational education should now become a primary focus, thus redressing the old imbalances between universities and technikons. But did this mean that there were too many universities as a result of apartheid’s tendency to duplication?
Thus began the “size and shape” debate, based on the premise that the sector was in need of rightsizing and rationalisation. There was talk of closures and mergers, which the HDUs immediately saw as a threat to their continued existence.
After all the disadvantages they had suffered under the old order, the HDUs argued, were they now simply to be swallowed up by the HWUs which had so manifestly benefited under apartheid?
The debate has been fuelled by several factors. The first has been the severe financial difficulties afflicting many of the HDUs.
Widespread non-payment of student fees is one cause, and the introduction of the R390-million National Student Financial Aid Scheme, which in 1998 alone supported nearly 76 000 students, hasn’t solved the problem.
Another cause is undoubtedly poor financial management.
Listen to what erstwhile education minister Professor Sibusiso Bengu had to say in an address to a Higher Education Stakeholders’ Meeting in January this year.
“I must express my profound disquiet at the financial status of some of our institutions. The not insignificant resources allocated by the state, together with the physical and human resources, must be utilised efficiently and effectively.
“Too many institutions are running unacceptably high overdrafts. It has even come to our notice that, in one or two instances, annual budgets have not been formally approved by councils. This is not an acceptable basis for the running of institutions. In co-operation with the office of the auditor general, the Department of Education will be undertaking in-depth financial audits of some institutions.”
The other major factor feeding into the “size-and-shape” debate has been the problem of declining student numbers at most HDUs. After 1994, higher education planning was premised on the idea of rapidly increasing student numbers. Not only has this increase not occurred in overall terms, but black students are more and more opting for the urban-based universities – the HWUs – and technikons. Much of this movement is into distance education opportunities being developed at historically Afrikaans universities.
So while the student population of the University of the Western Cape, for example, has declined from 14 500 in 1995 to little more than 9 000, Stellenbosch, Pretoria and the Free State are all reporting steady student growth rates. The average decline in student numbers at the HDUs is about 11% for 1999 alone.
(Student numbers at South Africa’s biggest distance-learning institution, Unisa, decreased by 9% [103 389] in 1998.)
Recurring explanations for the current student drift are not particularly reassuring to the HDUs – that students are rejecting the HDUs as being a manifestation of apartheid inferiority, or that they are going where they can get the best education for their money. The geographical position of most HDUs, especially those in the old homelands, is too remote to attract good staff or to compete against the city-based institutions.
This situation is bedevilled by another reality, which is clearly shown in the following statistics supplied by Edusource. Although between 1994 and 1998 the number of students sitting for senior certificate examinations rose from 495 400 to 551 000, matric exemption passes declined from 89 000 to 71 600. Within this statistic, the number of people passing maths and science is also in decline. In 1995, 29 700 candidates achieved a higher-grade pass in maths and nearly 35 000 a higher-grade pass in physical science. Those figures had declined to 22 800 and 25 400 respectively by 1998. This means that the pool of raw material for universities is becoming smaller, a situation which increases the competition between them.
“It’s a case of the survival of the fittest,” admits University of Cape Town vice-chancellor Dr Mamphela Ramphele. Or as one Gauteng university official recently put it: “We see other universities very unambiguously as competitors. We’re not state institutions pure and simple. If we depended on state money alone, we’d all be dead.
“We’re all staring basic economic survival in the face, and in that sense we’re competitors, each of us striving for an adequate slice of the higher education market.”
The situation is made no easier by the current burgeoning of the private tertiary education sector.
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Private colleges are springing up thick and fast, all offering tempting courses and diplomas, and in some cases full degrees. For example, in Gauteng alone there are more than 30 institutions at which students can currently study for an MBA. A few of these opportunities are available through reputable British and other universities. Obviously, though, some of these private institutions are not as good as others, but most seem to be flourishing.
“The problem, in part,” says Minister of Education Kader Asmal, “is that these private institutions are taking students and revenue away from our state- subsidised institutions. In the end I will have to decide: do we allow their unlimited establishment? What sort of registration system should we put in place? How do we monitor quality so that our people get value for money? And should we allow for the unlimited repatriation of profits?
“What is certain, though, is that we will deal with all these issues by negotiation and agreement rather than by decree.”
More pressure is coming the way of the universities from the country’s expanded technikon sector. The Technikons Act of 1979 made provision for certain advanced technical colleges to be turned into full tertiary institutions on a par with polytechnics or institutes of technology in other parts of the world. Today, nearly 200 000 students are studying at South Africa’s 15 technikons, many of which were established in the 1980s.
Initially there was an almost complete divide between universities and technikons, with the universities naturally enough assuming the superior position. Since 1994, however, the two classes of institution have been forced together by new policy imperatives.
Most notably, the South African Qualifications Authority Act of 1995 makes provision for a single national qualifications framework into which both universities and technikons are supposed to fit. This has helped to encourage co- operation, particularly in the matter of credits and transferability of students between the two classes of institution in a process now called “articulation”.
The technikon sector has grown fast, at nearly 9% a year between 1992 and 1998, although in 1999 this growth has been marginally reversed. At the same time, black admissions are soaring. In fact, with an annual growth rate of nearly 30%, black students now form the majority on most technikon campuses.
Professor Roy du Pr, executive director of the Committee of Technikon Principals, finds the rise of black students at these institutions remarkable.
“Understandably, Africans at first thought that here was an extension of Verwoerdian education policy, where blacks should be trained to do the manual work. But they soon realised that a technikon education was more relevant to the needs of the ‘new’ South Africa, and provided job-oriented technology education which gave a greater chance of employment than most university degrees.”
Du Pr is forthright about the position of technikons in the overall scheme of a new unified tertiary sector. “We will be its backbone. The speed with which technology is changing, and the need for constant retraining within the workforce, will ensure that. It will also ensure the growth of the technikon sector. I don’t know whether this will be at the expense of universities or not. I certainly think there should probably be 21 technikons and 15 universities, rather than the other way around. That would bring us more into line with the mix found elsewhere in the world.
“Should some universities be converted to technikons? Allow me to say that it is patently absurd that in some of the most rural and under-developed parts of the country apartheid has left us with universities, but not technikons. At this stage, South Africa’s fundamental educational need is for job-oriented technical skills. Of course the universities are important. But we must be careful that we don’t produce too many managers and not enough technically proficient workers.”
These words point all too clearly to the stresses in the university sector. But the sector cannot lightly be dismissed. Some of our institutions have world-class academic and research reputations, and superb facilities. Take Wits as a convenient example: its 16 libraries contain more than a million books, with database access to five million more.
Yet most universities are struggling for turf. Student numbers at universities have been in decline since 1996. Although black student numbers are increasing, the number of white students is in decline, as are the overall numbers.
In the latest Edusource update on the tertiary sector, which is scheduled for publication at the end of the month, Edusource director Monica Bott ascribes the over-all declining numbers at universities to:
l the shrinking pool of matric exemption school leavers;
l the inability of many potential students to afford the fees;
l the widespread clampdowns, especially at the HDUs, on non-paying students; and
l the increased competition from the private universities and colleges.
Bott believes that many thousands of white students from the state tertiary sector generally have found suitable opportunities in the private sector. Obviously many black students have also been seduced. Educor, a listed company on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange to which many private institutions are attached, has become one of the country’s largest providers of private education. According to one of its subsidiaries, Educor is “at the forefront of a global trend towards technology-based training and education”, and enrolments for 1998 topped 350 000. This figure obviously includes post- school certificate and diploma courses as well as full tertiary degrees.
The drop in enrolments makes it difficult for the sector to act in concert and, more importantly, makes “size and shape” into such a fraught debate. And the situation isn’t going to get any easier, especially when the funding formula for tertiary institutions changes, probably in 2002.
Currently, the post-secondary education formula (known as Sapse) takes into account student numbers, study area, student pass rates or throughput and research output. No one knows in detail yet how the new formula will work. It seems clear, though, that some of the disparities between universities and technikons will be ironed out, the funding of research will almost certainly change and the avowed intention of using the new formula to steer the sector, influencing what is being taught, is still on the cards, but, according to some observers, only just.
The new arrangements will probably favour technikons the most, and the HDUs to some extent. Nevertheless, it’s a safe bet to say that some universities will be further pressured by these arrangements. Already, their Sapse subsidy levels have been cut from about 80% to 60% of operating costs.
Coming on top of everything else – in particular the problem of student debt for non-payment of fees and faulty management systems – the financial pressures on all but the most focussed and successful universities could prove to be overwhelming. Already, at least half-a-dozen universities are in serious trouble. Fort Hare is R80-million in the red; the University of the Transkei, R60- million. By comparison, all but one of the country’s technikons are currently operating in the black.
It is tempting to speculate that these pressures will ultimately change the size and shape of South Africa’s tertiary education sector more surely than any decree issued from the Ministry or Department of Education. What has come so far from Asmal can be found in the eighth of his nine education priorities spelled out in July.
“We must,” he asserted, “implement a rational, seamless higher education system that grasps the intellectual and professional challenges facing South Africans in the 21st century.”
What must be abundantly clear to most observers of the system and its apartheid history is that South Africa does not have a rational and seamless tertiary system right now. The pain of getting the current multi-headed organism into this fundamentally new shape is considerable. But the task is not impossible.
Wits University’s Bundy reminds us that “the emphasis since 1994 has been upon the creation, for the first time, of a single higher education system – planned, governed and funded as a single system. Now, the development of a more differentiated set of institutions is the crucial next phase.
“Our institutions have different histories, different geographical locations, different relations with their immediate communities, and different capacities. The notion of ferment embraces agitation and movement. It also holds out the promise, like the action of yeasts in baking a loaf or maturing a wine, of a transformation process that yields an end product richer, healthier and more exciting than the beginning of the process.”
Yet the words of Sauvca’s CEO, Piyushi Kotecha, also demand attention. “What the sector needs more than anything right now is leadership. We all understand the policy of having one rational and seamless sector, and so on.
“But the crucial responsibility of managing the policy’s implementation must now be squarely shouldered, and I believe this should be done by the ministry in engagement with all the major higher education players. We all need a healthy dose of political will. This is crucial if we are to transform and simultaneously protect the priceless resource, in facilities and staff, which the sector represents.”
Finally, it is tempting to concur with the University of Cape Town’s Ramphele when she says that the sort of tertiary education system we finally create will inevitably reflect the sort of society we want for the immediate future of this country. “Surely we will want to achieve excellence first and foremost as Africans, but always with our eyes focused on global realities. If we ever lose sight of either of these imperatives, we will most certainly become marginalised.”