Recommendations on the size and shape of tertiary institutions could spell the end of black universities, writes Dolina Dowling
At the beginning of this year the Council on Higher Education (CHE) was asked by Minister of Education Kader Asmal to develop a set of concrete proposals to “ensure that our higher education system is indeed on the road to the 21st century”. To meet this request the CHE set up a task team, and its Report on The Size And Shape of Higher Education was submitted to the minister, with comment invited before September 15. While the report recognises the need to address some of the disparities in the present higher education system spawned by apartheid, it nonetheless proposes the destruction of the historically disadvantaged institutions (HDIs) – including historically black universities and some technikons – and the marginalisation of the African student. The higher education framework, the task team writes, “must encompass possibilities of enhancing redress for historically and disadvantaged social groups through unhinging institutions from their past and setting them on new roads to development in accordance with social needs”. At first blush, this seems to be an encouraging statement in that it raises the expectation that our historically disadvantaged institutions will be empowered to follow a developmental trajectory. However, these hopes are soon dashed when we read that “the categories of ‘historically advantaged’ and ‘historically disadvantaged’ as applied to institutions are becoming less useful for social policy purposes”.
The report recognises also that there needs to be a unified and coordinated seamless higher education system to which all people have access. This entails that there be a differentiated and diverse system. “Differentiated” means a range of social and educational mandates within which institutions can fit. “Diversity” means within their mandates, institutions can develop their own missions and responses to South Africa’s needs. In order to give content to the notion of a differentiated system, five categories of institutions are proposed. The first three are the ones that concern us here. These are:
l Bedrock institutions whose research is limited to curriculum and teaching; l Comprehensive postgraduate and research institutions; and l Extensive masters and selective doctoral institutions.
The research output and the number of academics holding doctorates largely determine to which of the last two categories an institution will be allotted. This, in a nutshell, is the report. It is not clear that the task team has understood that higher-education institutions perform multiple roles, serve many purposes and have various responsibilities.
The task team correctly acknowledges that all South African institutions are apartheid institutions. As a result historically advantaged institutions (HAIs) have been particularly well-resourced in monetary and other terms. HDIs were not. Yet, no redress funding has been made available to HDIs. Nor has there been any move to redistribute the wealth of HAIs to HDIs. Given that these historic inequities continue to the present, it is grossly unjust to penalise HDIs for not being the same as HAIs. The report says that the aim is not to close institutions but rather “the reconfiguration exercise is the key to preventing closure of those institutions that are experiencing serious difficulties”. However, through the euphemism of “combination” some institutions will in effect disappear. Certainly the buildings will still be in use, students will be seen in the lecture halls, lecturers will be found in the library, but the university with its particular identity, culture and ethos will be no longer. By proposing “combinations”, the task team displays a preference for large, multi- campus institutions. One reason given for the proposed combination of the universities of North West and Potchefstroom is that “it would enhance management and administrative capabilities and lead to economies of scale”. No arguments are given to support this claim. It is reasonable to suggest that the planning and management of the new combinations of institutions will be correspondingly more complex. Given that some of the problems the task team identified are inefficient management and the lack of capacity of academic managers to manage relatively small institutions, why is it now thought that forced combinations with campuses as far as 450km apart will result in efficient and effective management? It is important to note that no combination of HAIs was mooted in the report. This is despite Rand Afrikaans University and the University of theEWitwatersrand being within 2km of each other; Stellenbosch and the University of Cape Town and the University of Port Elizabeth and Rhodes University being fairly close. In the report it is suggested that the universities of Transkei and Fort Hare be combined with Rhodes, that North West be combined with Potch, that the University of Qwaqwa be combined with Free State, and so on. HDIs will be absorbed into HAIs. In not suggesting the combination of RAU and Wits, did the task team feel they could not ask either the Afrikaners or the English speakers to lose their identity and culture? Why is it that it is consistently deemed to be acceptable not to ask our white compatriots to give up anything in the interests of transformation while our black compatriots are constantly required to do so?
When we turn our attention to the three proposed categories of institutions, we find that no arguments have been put forward for the selection of criteria to define each one. What we are given instead are statistics from Australia regarding student enrolment, staff withEdoctorates and what seems to be most important, quantity of research output. There are a number of obvious difficulties with this. Firstly, why should we be benchmarked against Australia? Is the task team suggesting that there is nothing we can learn from our sister universities on the African continent? Secondly, the figures put forward by the task team are arbitrary and take no account of South Africa’s recent political past. Thirdly, there are a number of serious problems that arise when we accept the South African Post-Secondary Education System (Sapse) funding formula which sets out the list of journals that the government deems acceptable. Only articles published in journals on this list may receive a government subsidy. Research output is an important criterion for awarding an institution a particular mandate. This raises many problems. Firstly, an institution’s research output is judged on quantity, and the quantity in Sapse-accredited journals at that. The task team has approached its assessment of research output in a simplistic fashion by only playing the numbers game. Secondly,Ethe Sapse formula has long been discredited, which means that the task team used apartheid research criteria to judge our institutions. Thirdly, no consideration was given to different forms of research output; for example research reports that inform government policy, research that has an effect on a community or on society; and reflective newspaper articles that stimulate public debate. Fourthly, no consideration was given to what has been researched. The task team could, for all we know, be rewarding those institutions that have supported the most inhumane type of research. There is another problem with the proposed categories of institutions. The remit of a bedrock institution is untenable due to the artificial separation of teaching and research. It has been demonstrated and is accepted by the global higher-education community that teaching, research and community service form an integral whole. By delinking them the quality of our undergraduate programmes will be compromised.
A related point: if the task team had done their homework they would have discovered that pockets of research excellence exist at the historically black universities. Why was no developmental trajectory put in place for these institutions to follow so that some opportunities for equity could be realised?
The task team expresses concern about the low throughput rate of students. This exists at all our institutions. If the HAIs are such centres of excellence, why do they have such a low throughput rate of black students?
Might it be that, despite the material and educational advantages of the typically middle-class black student who attends HAIs, the identity and culture of those institutions remains alienating to the student?
The task team acknowledges that “at historically Afrikaans-medium universities, the predominant form of incorporation of African students has been the enrolment of distance students who are seldom seen on campus”. The task team clearly sees that this is a problem. And for good reason. This practice resonates with our apartheid past of separate development. Interestingly, however, the task team was unable to see that their set of concrete proposals, which seek to combine institutions – or more accurately, to effect hostile take-overs of HDIs by HAIs – will result in the black student being educated separately. In the newly created combinations of the HAIs that the task team envisages, the African student will once again be invisible at the centre. He or she will be found only in the satellite of the white institution. Yet the African student will bolster the institution’s image and student numbers. He or she will become a statistic to be used to gain political credibility. Apartheid is dead, long live apartheid! The Size and Shape report has set the stage. It has defined the parameters in which discourse on the future of higher education must take place. We have to engage the report. The government must be left in no doubt that this isEa flawed, prejudicial, unimaginative and politically unacceptable report. Having noted the assumptions that were supposed to guide the report, we must embrace those with which we are in agreement. We can then developEproposals for the higher education system as well as for our own institutions that meet the desiderata of the 1997 White Paper on theETransformation of Higher Education and the principle of a differentiated and diverse system. We must become active players in the transformation of our higher-education system. The future of our children and country depends upon our willingnessEto do so.
Dr Dolina S Dowling is dean of research and postgraduate studies at Vista University