David Macfarlane
With the ink barely dry on proposals that could see South Africa’s 36 tertiary institutions slashed to 21, it is already clear that massive resistance can be expected from universities and technikons the proposals target. And it is equally clear that Minister of Education Kader Asmal now faces a torrid political battle to win African National Congress backing for radical transformations in higher education that will in effect extinguish many historically black institutions.
This week’s proposals, from a ministerially appointed national working group, constitute the latest stage in nearly a decade’s focus on how to rid tertiary education of apartheid-era inequalities and inefficiencies, and create a coherent higher education system capable of meeting the country’s dire need for highly skilled graduates.
Following the release early last year of the government’s National Plan for Higher Education, which provided a blueprint for tertiary transformation, Asmal appointed the working group in April to formulate specific proposals on a regional basis aimed at reducing the number of tertiary institutions.
Headed by Saki Macozoma, deputy chairperson of Standard Bank Investment Corporation, the working group largely endorses recommendations for mergers and regional collaborations that the Council for Higher Education first unveiled in its June 2000 “shape and size” report. And indications are that the political storm the council recommendations unleashed, especially over the closure of institutions, is gathering with redoubled fury.
“It’s hugely problematic that the report establishes a divide between the ‘untouchables’ [universities such as Witwatersrand, Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Pretoria, Rand Afrikaans and the Free State that will undergo no merging], for whom it will be business as usual, and ‘others’, which now includes all historically disadvantaged institutions and on whom the burden of change will now fall,” says Professor George Suboztky, director of the University of the Western Cape’s Education Policy Unit.
“And there’s far too much attention on the one, isolated goal of reducing the number of institutions. Key government policy aims of efficiency, equity and quality are not necessarily met by mergers,” he says.
Questions are also being raised about how this week’s report meets national education priorities. “Not long ago there was much official talk of ‘massification’,” says Salim Vally, a researcher in Wits University’s Education Policy Unit. “Now we’re down to closing institutions. Will these proposals, if implemented, increase access to higher education for working-class people previously denied the chance? This looks unlikely.”
In early signs that serious opposition to the heart of the working group’s report can be expected, the University of Fort Hare this week rejected the proposal that it merge with Rhodes University as did Rhodes. Compounding the problematic picture in this region, the University of Transkei (Unitra) is expected strongly to challenge the working group’s proposal that it be closed and that its medical school be absorbed by a merged Fort Hare and Rhodes. Unitra’s senate met this week to formulate what the Mail & Guardian understands will be a “detailed” response.
Further and weighty opposition to the gist of the report looks set to come from the South African Universities Vice-Chancellors’ Association (Sauvca). A special meeting of the association’s 21 members is due to be held next week, but its initial response to the working group’s response indicates less than wholehearted endorsement.
Sauvca chairperson Professor Njabulo Ndebele comments that “structural reconfiguration on its own does not guarantee quality; the real work is the indentification of intellectual enterprise, i.e. the research agenda, the commitment to teaching and learning and relevant curricula that constitute the core challenges if we are to produce successful graduates for the economy and society”.
Sauvca recently produced a study of institutional mergers and collaborations that starkly concludes: “The lack of experience with mergers in South Africa, and the probability of considerable costs attending them make radical restructuring a hazardous and potentially damaging enterprise.”
One of the Sauvca study’s suggested conditions for mergers to succeed is that “there must be strong support for mergers from participating institutions” a condition that already looks unlikely to be met in all cases.
Asmal has about a month in which to present proposals to the Cabinet based on the working group’s report. It is widely expected that intense lobbying will now ensue, both from potentially affected institutions and political stakeholders concerned to protect particular institutional identities.
Two major factors remain to be spelt out: how the huge costs (as yet unquantified) of an extensive merger process will be met, and the time period within which mergers will be implemented. Deputy Director General in the Department of Education Nasima Badsha says Asmal’s proposals to the Cabinet will specify time frames and financial implications.
War has been declared, Page 20; Reversing Verwoerd, Page 16