South Africa’s higher education pot is being stirred up with vigour and one of the newest things cooking is something that will emerge as the comprehensive institution.
Comprehensive institutions are to be created through the merging of existing higher education facilities. They will offer both university- and technikon-type courses to students in a single institution.
The concept of comprehensive institutions was given the final Cabinet rubberstamp in December last year and will be implemented in various stages by 2005.
‘Some of the reasons we are creating these institutions are to ensure that more students have access to tertiary education and that resources are shared, especially in areas where there aren’t technikon facilities,” says Angina Parekh, coordinator of the merger unit at the Ministry of Education.
She adds that technikons also ensure that students who have not managed to get university exemption still have access to tertiary education. In line with this, the government will also set aside funding in the form of bursaries and scholarships to encourage such students to study at technikons.
‘We do have a shortage of human resource skills in the country and that’s why it is important to ensure that the vocational training offered by technikons remains widely available,” says Parekh.
The comprehensive institutions are expected to be particularly beneficial in provinces such as Mpumalanga, Limpopo, the North West and the Northern Cape, where there are currently no technikon facilities. There are also plans to ensure that the comprehensive institutions include programmes that will respond to the regional needs of specific geographical areas. For example, in Gauteng, where mining drives the economy, comprehensive institutions will concentrate on offering programmes with mining and engineering focuses.
As part of the Department of Education’s broader restructuring plan for higher education, the number of tertiary education institutions will be reduced from 36 to 21. Six of these will be comprehensive institutions:
– Rand Afrikaans University, Technikon Witwatersrand and the incorporation of the Soweto and East Rand campuses of Vista University
– Border Technikon and Eastern Cape University
– University of Port Elizabeth, Port Elizabeth Technikon and the Port Elizabeth campus of Vista University
– University of Zululand
– Unisa, Technikon SA and the distance education institutions of Vista University
– University of Venda
According to Minister of Education Kader Asmal the comprehensive institutions will ‘result in the integration of academic and vocational programmes offered across the full qualification spectrum and will allow increased student access and mobility”.
This means that students who have completed a diploma but who want to study towards a degree are given credit for their prior learning experience and will be able to complete degrees in their comprehensive institutions.
But exactly how this articulation between the different courses will be mapped out and how resources will be shared is still to be clearly defined. The administration of running the new merged institutions also needs to be determined.
‘The exact configuration of how some of these matters will take place on a practical level still need to be decided on, but we are already seeing positive responses from the institutions involved. They are speaking to each other and there is an acceptance that they need to make this change happen,” Parekh says.
She maintains that these bodies will also ensure that standards will not be lowered and that the value of the degrees and diplomas are not affected.
‘The degrees and diplomas remain the same. This restructuring is really about resource sharing and making tertiary education a reality for more people,” says Parekh.