The name Unisa is to remain, a university is to be named after former president Nelson Mandela, and the term technikon is to disappear, Minister of Education Kader Asmal said on Tuesday.
He was announcing the new names of higher education institutions that are to merge in terms of a plan approved by the Cabinet last year.
”The name technikon is thrown into the rubbish bin of undistinguished apartheid measures.”
These institutions will be known as universities of technology instead.
However, Asmal said they should remain distinct from traditional universities.
”This is not only important to inform prospective students and the general public, but also to maintain the distinct mission and focus of different institutional types,” he said.
”The renaming should not lead to undesirable academic drift.”
Asmal said he would use planning and funding levers to ensure differentiation and diversity in the higher education system.
Among the mergers due to become effective from January next year, is that of the University of South Africa (Unisa), Technikon SA and Vista University’s Distance Education Campus — retaining Unisa’s name.
Although a single entity comprising the universities of Natal and Durban-Westville will come into being from the start of 2004 as well, no name has yet been designated, the minister said.
He will only do so once he has received a report by an independent assessor, Dr Bongani Khumalo, who is investigating governance and management problems at the University of Durban-Westville (UDW). Khumalo is expected to complete the report by next week.
Among the scandals that rocked UDW during the past year was a media report stating that it had, without the approval of its council, borrowed R70-million and then placed R69,3-million in an offshore account in 1998.
Earlier this month, it was reported that UDW vice-chancellor Dr Saths Cooper was overpaid by R126 666 over an eight-month period since he started in that position in January.
That followed a report about a taped conversation in which University of Natal vice-chancellor Prof Malegapuru Makgoba discussed Cooper with a UDW academic.
Other amalgamations due to take effect from January are that of Potchefstroom University and the University of North West — as the University of North West — and technikons North West, Gauteng and Pretoria — as the Tshwane University of Technology.
Various campuses of Vista University are to be amalgamated with institutions close to them at the same time.
The dental faculty of the University of Stellenbosch will merge with the University of the Western Cape, and Rhodes University’s East London campus with Fort Hare.
Mergers effective from next year are that of:
The University of Port Elizabeth and Port Elizabeth Technikon (Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University);
The Medical University of SA and the University of the North (the University of Limpopo);
Rand Afrikaans University and Technikon Witwatersrand (the University of Johannesburg);
Cape and Peninsula Technikons (the Cape Peninsula University of Technology); and
The University of Transkei, Border and Eastern Cape Technikons (the Eastern Cape University of Technology).
Asmal said he prefers geographical names because universities grow out of their environments. Naming a university after a place also reduces the scope for argument.
Even the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University is named after the municipality in which it falls, he said.
The minister also named the chairpersons of the new university’s interim councils. These include former Mpumalanga premier Mathews Phosa for Unisa, and former director general of public service and administration Robinson Ramaite for North West University.
A former deputy director general in Asmal’s department, Dr Ihron Rensburg, will chair the University of Johannesburg’s council, and Land Claims Court Judge President Fikile Bam that of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. — Sapa