Private higher education has presented new and exciting possibilities for career building in South Africa. It has helped supplement strained public education resources but, as is always the case where the profit motive is at play, there have been problems.
‘Private education providers in partnership with state institutions are critical at this stage of development in South Africa,” says Carol Prince, a director of the Boston Group.
The group owns the 40 Boston City Campus and Business Colleges peppered around the country. Boston has about 15 000 students registered at its colleges.
Prince notes that apart from offering University of South Africa degree programmes, a crucial area they focus on is the post-matric skills gap.
‘The bulk of our focus is on the kid who has finished matric but cannot go to university,” she says.
In a report titled ‘The State of Private Higher Education Provision in South Africa” the Council on Higher Education (CHE) sets the pace that governs private higher education providers. The CHE notes, ‘In carrying out their various activities, institutions should strive to play a major role in meeting the development challenges for Africa. It can no longer be a case of profit before quality.”
The report is based on an evaluation carried out by the Higher Education Qualifications Committee. The evaluation was done at 56 institutions offering 217 programmes. Twenty-five of these, with 64 programmes, were visited.
One of the critical features of private education that the report notes is the relative size of the institutions. They were generally found to be ‘small and highly specialised into a unique niche area”.
Prince confirms this, saying: ‘Our survival technique is to track the market and respond to its needs. Our size allows us to do that.”
The evaluation also undertook a re-accreditation process for the programmes. Half the institutions achieved full re-accreditation. But only 18% of the programmes, or 39, got full re-accreditation. Conditional accreditation was granted to 53% of the institutions and 55% of the programmes. Ten institutions and 52 programmes were de-accredited.
Rick Edmonds, chairperson of the Association of Private Providers of Education, Training and Development, says the association is ‘not happy” with the CHE report but could not give the reasons until they have been communicated to the council. His association accepts departmental regulation but finds the registration process as it stands ‘cumbersome”.
He notes, for instance, that the process of registering a programme can take up to two years. He is also concerned about requirements such as institutions providing recreational facilities.
Edmonds concedes though that recent vigorous scrutiny from the HEQC officials has forced private institutions to look more closely at their quality management systems.
Edmonds says roughly half of private education providers are in Gauteng. But they do reach into small towns and sub-Saharan Africa through distance learning.