One of the goals of the National Plan for Higher Education is to “promote equity of access and fair chances of success to all who are seeking to realise their potential through higher education, while eradicating all forms of unfair discrimination and advancing redress for past inequalities.”
It seeks to achieve this through a “rational arrangement for the consolidation of higher education provision through reducing, where appropriate, the number of institutions but not the number of delivery sites on a regional basis.”
A rational arrangement of higher education is necessitated, among other things, by the need to overcome the “apartheid-induced fragmentation” of the higher education system and to enhance its responsiveness to labour-market needs and the country’s social and economic priorities. The rationality of the proposed restructuring of the institutional landscape should, therefore, be assessed on the basis of its capa-city to advance social and economic development at regional and national levels.
To what extent, then, will the proposed changes by the Minister of Education be able to advance social and economic development, regionally and nationally? To what extent will they be able to achieve equity — and thereby diversity — in the higher education system? To what extent will it be able to do this — among “Blacks in general and Africans in particular,” most of whom live in poor rural areas? Blacks and Africans who, in the past two democratic elections, voted virtually with their bellies for the African National Congress, and made the rural vote so decisive in the democratisation of state and society, confident that the people’s government would bring facilities to where they are as a key strategy for affirming their right to development.
To answer these questions, a close look at regional restructuring of the institutional landscape sheds much light on the contradictions between government policy and the minister’s proposals.
In its 2000 Population Report, the National Population Unit indicates that in 1999 the Limpopo Province had a total population of about 5,3-million and a total fertility rate — the highest in the country — of about 3,9. By contrast, the Western Cape had a total population of about 4,1-million and a total fertility rate of about 2,3. The Free State had a total population of about 2,7-million and a fertility rate of about 2,2.
If the minister’s proposed changes are implemented, then the Limpopo Province, with the highest fertility rate in the country, should be content with one “comprehensive higher education institution”, compared to the Western Cape’s three fully-fledged universities and one technikon and the Free State’s one fully-fledged university and one technikon.
If you take into account the Western Cape’s fertility rate, the second lowest in the country, then you will realise immediately that the Limpopo Province is woefully under-resourced. This regional disparity becomes more graphic if you note that of the four institutional types proposed by the minister, it is the university — and not the “comprehensive higher education institution” — that will have more capacity for research and innovation. And as we all know, in the knowledge- driven global economy, power resides in those who have the capacity to produce knowledge.
The spectacle of regional imbalance deepens when we look at the North West and Mpumalanga. The North West, with a total population of about 3,5-million and a total fertility rate of about 2,4, higher than that of the Free State, will have only one “comprehensive higher education institution.” Mpumalanga, with a total population of about 3,0-million and a total fertility rate of about 3,1, will have neither a university nor a technikon, but one “national institute of higher education,” whose viability, in terms of governance and curriculum management, cannot be guaranteed.
Needless to say that this regional imbalance in the provision of resources for higher education will undermine the meeting of basic needs, economic growth, nation-building, and democratising of state and society; and this will invariably undercut national development and global competitiveness. It will undercut, also, our contribution to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development.
It will also accelerate the migration of students to those areas, usually urban, where there are adequate resources for higher education. For example, the report of the National Working Group states that in the 2000 academic year, 10 000 students from the Limpopo Province were registered for contact education programmes in the universities in other provinces and 12 000 for contact education programmes in technikons as against a total of 11 000 students who were enrolled at the universities of Venda and the North. As everybody must know, the social consequences of this migration — the financial strain on families, most of them black and poor, cultural fragmentation and uncontrolled urbanisation — are too ghastly to contemplate, and seem not to have been considered by the Minister of Education.
The spectacle of regional disparity extends to the education of the disabled. The incidence of disabilities in the Eastern Cape constitutes 17,39% of the disabled population, yet the province has only 10,79% of the total number of special schools. Gauteng has 17,14% of the disabled population but has 25,26% of the schools. The Western Cape has 5,47% of the disabled population but has 21,58% of the schools.
Illuminating, also, is the per-learner expenditure in the various regions : Western Cape R28 635, Free State R22 627, Limpopo Province R16 609, North West R13 015, Mpumalanga R17 839, and Northern Cape R15 749. What the minister says on special-needs education can be said of his own proposals for higher education: “This mismatch between needs and provision is a direct result of previous apartheid policies that allocated facilities on a racial basis. These policies also centralised provision within the Western Cape and Gauteng so that, today, the vast majority of learners attend residential special schools in a province other than their own since no facilities are available in their province of residence.”
Professor GM Nkondo is vice-chancellor at the University of Venda