The transformation of South Africa’s public higher education system is at risk because of the dangerous mismanagement of the process by the Ministry and the Department of Education.
The finalisation of the aims of the transformation of the public higher education system by the Cabinet, after eight years of intense public discourse, was announced in the National Plan for Higher Education last year.
The plan’s first aim is to move each institution in the public higher education system beyond the confines of its inception and quickly turn them into new, national institutions that support the aspirations of our Constitution in terms of their student enrolment, staff composition and the interests they serve. By implication, the historic barriers that existed should give way to a new set of entry and participation requirements founded on the values of our Constitution, but managed in such a way that they retain diversity. This aim is being pursued through the mergers and incorporations of institutions, announced in November last year.
The second aim is to move each institution to development service through its teaching, community service and research of a wider array of social, cultural and economic interests. Included in this is the development imperative to make “life-long learning” a signature characteristic of the public higher education system. This is being pursued through the programme and qualification mix review exercise managed by the higher education quality committee.
The third aim is to improve the quality of all institutional activities through the quality management review of the higher education quality committee. In future these reviews will be mandatory.
Through the protracted consultation process these transformation aims acquired their legitimacy as public policy. But whether the higher education system has the capacity to achieve these aims is extremely doubtful for the following reasons.
The challenge to the creation of new national institutions is the strength of the grip that some elements of society have on them. In most institutions the invisible, but decisive, control of these elements is manifested in three forms, which have shown themselves to be impervious to changes in the country and public policy.
The first form of control manifests itself in the institutional statutes wherein special interests have secured participation in the continued governance of the institution. It is through the institutional statutes that the alumni, churches and “stakeholders” continue to exercise direct control over institutions.
The second comes in the form of special bursaries and operational support for the institution. In the extreme form, this support is channelled through trusts, with the institution as beneficiary. In this form, the control being exercised finds expression through who gains entry to the institution and which pursuits receive guaranteed collateral external support.
The third form of special interest control manifests itself in conservative succession practices. This form of control is, however, inherent to any conservative hierarchical organisation, like all higher education institutions. Predictably, the former principal’s values and social aspirations are imprinted on the institution and this will determine who will be appointed the new principal.
In more liberal traditions succession is generally race-neutral, as shown in Wits, the University of Cape Town and the University of Natal. In more conservative institutional traditions, race becomes an important co-determinant in succession planning.
The second serious challenge to transformation is the weak under-standing of the process and the incapacity to manage it, in the Ministry and Department of Education. The depth of this incapacity is illustrated by the weak response to the continuing external, direct and indirect control over institutions, despite evidence that this is often in opposition to the public interest. In this regard the minister has seriously compromised himself by approving the institutional statutes where these controls are patently evident.
The incapacity problem has become evident in the mismanagement of the restructuring process. What has become clear to everyone is that:
l The department underestimated the complexity of higher education institutions and this manifested itself in the merger time frames and content. Predictably, the public higher education system will over the medium-term experience noticeable quality depreciations in services and movement on the other parallel transformation aims.
l The financing of the restructuring proposals is also hopelessly inadequate, especially the provision for legal services over the next couple of years. Clearly the department underestimated the number of legal challenges that will emerge because of its non-observance of basic legal principles in the implementation of the restructuring proposals. In particular, some of the provisions in the Higher Education Act will be declared null and void in any competent court of law.
l The creation of new national institutions will not be achieved by simply bringing together different places of higher learning. Evidence suggests that the process will lead to elitism on par with private higher education. The financial assistance channelled through the National Student Financial Aid Scheme is insufficient to ameliorate this medium-term prediction for students. Perhaps, more importantly, the public higher education system will become a future terrain of struggle in continued opposition to the democratisation of South Africa.
l The use of incorporation as a methodology for creating new national institutions is also unsuitable. This option will only entrench bigoted and insulting racial slurs in the public higher education system of the type recently experienced during the University of Pretoria student representative council elections.
l There prevails an unhealthy and unsustainable inequality in the application and pursuit of public higher education system policy. In fact, most institutions have signalled the areas in which they are not bound to public policy. Others have made statutory amendments and promissory ministerial undertakings, pre-conditions for cooperation on policy.
These weaknesses say much about the professionalism prevailing within the Ministry and Department of Education. In a sector where the command of expert knowledge and pursuit of excellence and innovation comes at a high premium, there is widespread disdain for the “nonsense” of the ministry and department, and one has great difficulty in hiding one’s embarrassment about the appalling depths of “juniorisation” in the new South Africa.
The third challenge to the transformation agenda is the absence of any serious commitment to affirm the African identity of the process. The position adopted by the Cabinet seems to be premised on the notion that the continued legacy of colonialism in the public higher education system, not so much in social form, but in intellectual content and pursuits, poses no significant development obstacle to South Africa. The Africanisation of the installation ceremony of Professor Loyiso Nongxa, as Wits’s new vice-chancellor, is typical of affirmation of social form without the commitment to refocus the core resources of the academic enterprise to the challenges of development and the human resource needs of these challenges.
This Cabinet position unfortunately signals that South Africa has prioritised the continued nurturing of subordinate intellectual relations with Europe and the United States, even when this is at the expense of nurturing intellectual application on the historical, material and social divides at home and in the rest of Africa. This prioritisation stems from the compelling need to affirm some Africans, the elite, on the international stage at the expense of other African material needs. When this position is placed next to the Cabinet’s position on the New Partnership for Africa’s Development there emerges an untenable ambivalence in public policy.
Mindful of these challenges, only the brain-dead can possibly be convinced that the public higher education system will improve over the medium- and long-term. What must be placed on record is that our country is about to take a turn for the worse and the claim of “a better life for all” will prove itself to be another empty election promise in 25 years time.
Professor Talvin G Schultz is acting deputy vice-chancellor: administration at Vista University.