In an article entitled “‘Rock Bottom’ Morale at Wits”, the Mail & Guardian turns its attention to the question of restructuring at the university. The entire tertiary sector is currently grappling with this issue and we welcome attempts to promote awareness about and debate on this crucial topic.
In order to take the debate forward, we need nuanced, balanced and well-informed reporting on the tertiary sector that will help readers understand the full range of issues involved in what is necessarily a complex and at times Byzantine process.
The article in the M&G, however, presents a one-dimensional picture of restructuring. It focuses mainly on the faculty of arts at Wits and its message is clear – restructuring does more harm than good.
As representatives of that faculty and as people who have been involved with the process of regrouping 23 departments into four new interdisciplinary schools, we feel the situation is considerably more complex than the article allowed for and that restructuring can bring long-term benefits. Obviously we acknowledge that restructuring is difficult and may in the end mean that some jobs will be lost. We also acknowledge that the process is uncomfortable and disruptive. This is a characteristic feature of change.
However, the process is also unavoidable. We spend more than we earn and we have to find ways of addressing this problem. As a faculty, we are attempting to correct our deficit by a dual strategy of cutting and growing. To achieve growth, we have followed a policy of building on our academic strength while cutting back in areas where we are not as strong.
Schools can enhance these strengths by bringing together academic skills and expertise that were previously kept separate. These interactions enable new cross-departmental courses and programmes in areas like IT for humanities; health and society; heritage and tourism; international commerce, law and diplomacy. Schools also stimulate postgraduate growth.
Small departments often have ceilings on the number of postgraduates they can take because of limited supervision capacity. This problem disappears in a bigger unit. The proposed schools will have, we believe, academic expertise unrivalled in this country. Fewer units in the faculty also mean more efficient administration and management.
The discussions within these schools are advancing. As people who have been party to these interactions, our sense is that most staff are enthusiastic. There is a sense of challenge, excitement and new possibility. At a special meeting of the arts faculty board on Thursday May 18, which was called to discuss the faculty’s restructuring proposals, there was overwhelming support.
Later this year, the university will be inaugurating a cultural precinct around the Wits Theatre. This development will draw together art galleries, coffee shops, a cinema and a theatre. It will combine a unique repertoire of retail, intellectual, cultural and tourist experiences. One of our new schools that draws together the performing and visual arts will play a central role in this venture. As a school its intervention will be more effective than as a set of disparate departments. This focus of energy, expertise and resources is made possible by restructuring.
We hope that as people start to visit the cultural precinct next year they will feel that restructuring in the faculty of arts at Wits has in fact been worthwhile not only for the university but for the city, too.
The university does need to improve the physical environment at Wits, and it does need to market our academic resources and offerings more systematically and professionally. This is now occurring. But the faculty too needs to play a central role. We are doing so with our restructuring plans, which are aimed at growing student numbers by building on our areas of strength. – Members of the faculty of arts executive – Professor Philip Bonner, Professor P Delius, Professor B Domeris, Professor G Eagle, Professor P Germond, Professor C Hamilton, Professor I Hofmeyer, Professor H Janks, Professor M Leon (acting dean), Professor Tom Lodge, Professor B W McKendrick, Professor N Pines, Professor M Purkey, Dr N Thwala, Professor R Wilson
Also look at the positive
Your article “‘Rock bottom’ morale at Wits” (May 19 to 25) provides a biased and mischievously negative view of Wits. Why not present a positive, upbeat message about Wits meeting the challenges of a new century with enthusiasm, drive, energy through restructuring and repositioning the organisation? Wits university is a living, vibrant institution constantly renewing its intellectual capital. It is a university offering a culture of open debate and discussion, a rigorous training in thinking skills and a world-class education.
Proclaim the good news that Wits is a winning university with hundreds of quality, dedicated academics researching to give substance to the “African renaissance” in diverse fields such as palaeontology, architecture and medicine. Send your reporters to observe the physical renewal of the campus in new buildings, new computer labs and better access points into Senate House, on Yale Road and on Enoch Sontongo Road. Share the excitement of new programmes such as the Wits plus, BA for the world of work aimed at the mature adult learner and the development studies programme in the graduate school of humanities and social sciences. Celebrate the amazing hominid fossil discoveries of Wits scientist Dr Andre Keyser at Drimolen or path-breaking work in energy optimising housing in Soweto. Interview the student recipients of the R90-million bursary, scholarship and loan funding.
Yes, Wits is restructuring and yes, change brings anxiety for some, but it also brings opportunities and opens new intellectual directions. A university that slavishly clings to past practices is a wasting asset. Your article based upon interviews with two academics is thin evidence to support your negative banner headlines hung on city lampposts. Why deliberately set out to harm Johannesburg’s premier tertiary institution by carelessly reporting on “widespread perceptions” of a lack of safety, protest action and falling standards? Your reporter shoddily reinforces perceptions simply not grounded in facts. Thousands of people come on to Wits campus daily and are perfectly safe. Access to the three campuses is managed by a dedicated corps of campus control staff offering a quality service. In six years not a single lecture or academic activity has been disrupted. Wits offers a quality, internationally accredited education in diverse disciplines, from medicine to engineering, from commerce to architecture. In 1999 Wits held 13 graduation ceremonies and conferred 3E767 degrees. As a public institution, supported by taxpayers’ money, Wits is here to serve the Johannesburg community. Criticise Wits when there is substance and cause but offer a balanced viewpoint. – Katherine Munroe, director, Wits plus – centre for part-time studies
The benefits of change
As members of the new schools brought into being by the Wits restructuring process, we are writing in response to the article “‘Rock Bottom’ Morale at Wits”.
The article creates the impression that staff across the board are demoralised and that there is little enthusiasm for the new entities created by restructuring.
Our experience of the process has been rather different. The new school to which we belong draws together eight departments involved in the fields of literature, language, linguistics and their professional applications. Discussions around this new school are well advanced and the process of coming together has generated new ideas, programmes and strategies for growth.
At the undergraduate level we will be offering a series of cross-disciplinary vocationally orientated packages in areas like publishing, translation and interpreting, IT for humanities students and journalism. In conjunction with other schools we will be offering a media studies package. These packages will be offered alongside our traditional strength, the Wits BA that four years running has been awarded the Professional Management Review Golden Arrow Award. A Human Sciences Research Council survey also showed that the Wits BA had the best employment track record of all BA degrees in the country.
At the postgraduate level, the new school will provide us with increased capacity and will continue to build on the Wits faculty of arts tradition of being the premier research and postgraduate site on the continent.
The restructuring process is obviously difficult and time consuming. But it does also confer longer-term benefits by creating new entities that are greater than the sum of their previous parts. – Members of the school of literature and applied language studies – Michelle Adler, Dr N Berenz, Simon Donnerlly, Stella Granville, Professor Isabel Hofmeyer, Dr J Inggs, Hilary Janks, M C Latti, Kenneth Mabaso, Pinky Makoe, Dr C von Maltzag, Dr Jocelyn McIver, Lungi Majisko, Phaswane Mpe, Dr A T Nice, Dr P Nicholas, Dr James A Ogude, Dan O Ojwang, Wonderboy Peters, Professor John Rennison, Jean-Pierre Rudinga, Dr N Thwula, Professor M A Williams, Rita Wilsonm, Dr S van Zyl
Excited about Wits’s future
In any university with the size and history of Wits there will be people who are sometimes critical of the administration (I often am), or are unhappy with the direction of the university. The current restructuring affects us all in some way and those whose jobs are at risk are clearly going to be very unhappy. But there is a long way from that to the image you presented.
In the departments that I am most familiar with – the mathematical sciences – there is excitement about and confidence in the future of Wits. We believe that our teaching and research programmes are national assets, look forward to meeting South Africa’s needs, and are proud to be at Wits. – Scott Hazelhurst, department of computer science, University of the Witwatersrand
Bundy talks left, acts right
Colin Bundy’s utterances in response to “‘Rock bottom’ morale at Wits” remind us of an anecdote in his famous doctoral thesis on the rise and fall of the African peasantry. Buried in this groundbreaking Marxist analysis of late-19th century South Africa is an account of how many white farmers left their farms to seek their fortune on the mines, leaving their land to be occupied by black peasants. After it became clear that most of the prospectors had embraced destitution rather than riches, the mines became known in African communities as “the white man’s Nongqawuse” (a reference to the Xhosa prophetess who, after promising victory over the Settlers and blessings from the ancestors, led her people into a famine caused by their own sacrifices). Bundy would seem to be offering Wits similar promises: retrenching 600 workers, cutting the budgets of libraries and departments, downsizing and merging faculties, placing lecturers on contract – all this will lead to some sort of millenarian “exhilaration”. Such a “talk left – act right” prophetic style suggests to us that, on Wits campus at least, Bundy is “the working man’s Nongqawuse”. – South African Students Congress (Wits branch) media office