Students entering tertiary study next year will walk into a higher education landscape vastly different from the one South Africa has known for decades.
From January, familiar institutional names will cease to exist. Where before you might have enrolled at Unisa or the University of Natal or the University of Durban-Westville, you’ll now be registering at … Well, no one knows just yet.
The new names of institutions that will come into being via complex mergers are known in some cases but not in others. Before January, Minister of Education Kader Asmal will decide on the basis of suggestions universities and technikons have made to him.
Years of debate, reports, White Papers, conferences, working groups and heated exchanges over how to repair decades of apartheid-induced education damage produced the government’s National Plan for Higher Education in 2001, which the Cabinet ratified in December last year.
Mergers and incorporations are the chief tools of transformation by which the government hopes to create greater racial and gender equity of access, better quality and enhanced research outputs in universities and technikons.
The changes go well beyond naming. With the government committed to keeping open all present sites of tertiary education, many newly merged single institutions will become multi-campus.
So, will you be going to lectures on one campus in the morning, and travelling to another in the afternoon?
And the question everyone wants answered: what happens to the quality of your qualifications? In what name will they be issued — especially if you’re now enrolled at one of the institutions due to merge or incorporate next year.
The Mail & Guardian went in search of answers. Here’s the quick guide to the largest education transformation the country has ever seen.
MERGERS
University of Durban-Westville and Natal University
New name: Not yet decided. The University of Natal says submissions from staff, students and the public produced ‘The University of KwaZulu-Natal†as the clear winner. But UDW wants Walter Sisulu University (a suggestion UDW made shortly after the African National Congress stalwart died this year), Shaka University or Eastern Seaboard University, among others.
Size: UDW has 11 000 and Natal 29 000 students.
Logistics: There won’t be any travelling for lectures, though how to rationalise cases where the institutions have similar academic departments is still being discussed.
Qualifications: Current students will graduate under the name of their current institutions, UDW or Natal. Students registering next year will be awarded degrees in the new name.
Progress towards deadline: The two universities say their discussions are on track and the January deadline will be met.
University of North-West and Potchefstroom University
New name: Agreement! The new name is North-West University. This new institution will incorporate Vista University’s Sebokeng students.
Size: Potch has 34 000 students. This includes contact and distance learning students, and enrolments both at the Potch campus and the university’s Vaal Triangle campus. North-West has more than 7 000 students and Sebokeng 2 200.
Logistics: Faculties will remain where they are — five in Mmabatho, eight at Potch. The three campuses are approximately 300km apart.
Students can apply to any of three campuses: Potchefstroom, Mmabatho and Vaal Triangle.
The academic structure of the new institution is currently being discussed by the joint senates committee.
Qualifications: Degrees and diplomas will indicate the university of initial registration. Students now registered at the three institutions will receive certificates in the name of the new institution, North-West University, but the name of the institution where they were enrolled originally, Potchefstroom, University of North-West or Vista, will also be printed on the certificate.
When students who enrol next year eventually graduate, their certificates will be issued in the name of the new institution, North-West. Whether certificates will indicate at which campus of the new institution a student studied is under discussion.
Progress towards deadline: UNW and Potch University say they have made good progress and the January deadline will be met.
Technikon Northern Gauteng, Technikon Pretoria and Technikon North-West
New name: Tshwane University of Technology, by agreement of all three institutions — though the minister of education has still to ratify this.
Size: Technikon Pretoria has 42 000 students; Technikon Northern Gauteng 11 000; Technikon North-West 6 000.
Logistics: Different options of integration concerning the sharing of resources and travelling by students are currently under investigation. Course integration among the different campuses will not take place in 2004 — it will take another two years or so.
Qualifications: Students who register for their first year of study in 2004 will receive a qualification bearing the name of the new institution. Students who complete a qualification this year will receive a qualification from the institution at which they are currently registered.
Progress towards deadline: Technikon Pretoria says the three institutions are meeting the deadline. But it’s a complex process and total academic integration will be done in phases.
Unisa, Technikon SA and Vista University Distance Education Centre
These institutions have been in intensive discussions on all merger details, and were this week reluctant to provide details without the agreement of all parties. What is known is the following:
New name: Still under fierce contest. Asmal’s announcement last year that the vast new institution would be called Olusa — Open Learning University of South Africa — caused heart failure at Unisa, which argues that its name carries national and international brand recognition and should be retained for the merged institution.
Size: The big daddy of all the mergers will produce one of the largest institutions in the world. Unisa has more than 150 000 students — it claims to have one in three of all South African tertiary students enrolled.
TSA has nearly 50 000 students, and Vudec more than 20 000 (full- and part-time.
INCORPORATIONS
No new institutional names here: the institutions being incorporated become part of the receiving institution. Qualifications will be awarded in the name of the receiving institution, no current site of learning will be closed, and practical arrangements are at various stages.
University of Fort Hare takes in Rhodes’s East London Campus;
All the satellite campuses of Vista University to be incorporated;
Port Elizabeth campus into the University of Port Elizabeth;
East Rand and Soweto campuses into Rand Afrikaans University;
Sebokeng campus into Vaal Triangle Technikon (facilities only);
Bloemfontein campus into University of Free State;
Welkom campus into Technikon Free State; and
The Dental School of the University of Stellenbosch will be incorporated into the University of the Western Cape.
And that’s just the start. Come January 2005 another wave of mergers will engulf the tertiary landscape. And two brand-new institutions will appear — the Mpumalanga Institute for Higher Education and the Northern Cape Institute for Higher Education.