Students paid for vice-chancellor’s misrule

The chickens have come home to roost for Aubrey Mokadi, the fallen vice-chancellor of Vaal University of Technology (VUT), almost two years after a government inquiry described his management style as dictatorial and ‘delusional”.

A Council on Higher Education (CHE) quality audit found that graduation rates at VUT have, in the past decade, fluctuated between 10% and 14%, well below the national benchmark target of 25%. It notes marked differences in the pass rates of African and white students and says some programmes ‘were not sufficiently attuned to the technological and knowledge requirements of industry”.

Now this southern Gauteng university is heaving itself out of Mokadi’s mess: its target is to have 50% science, engineering and technology students in its intake by 2010, but it had already reached 49% in 2007 — something very few universities have managed to achieve, says spokesperson Babini Maneli.

The CHE’s higher-education quality committee recently released an executive summary of the quality audit, which was conducted during the leadership crisis at the university in May 2006. A year before Mokadi was sent on compulsory leave and the commission of inquiry into his management style was authorised by Minister of Education Naledi Pandor.

The Mail & Guardian reported in March 2006 that the commission had concluded that there was evidence that Mokadi’s abuse of his power led to ‘the loss of valuable staff members and indeed turned the VUT into a ‘graveyard of dismissals’”.

Mokadi was dismissed in July 2006 after being found guilty of 161 charges of fraud. The M&G reported: ‘The commission remarked then that Mokadi ‘seems to feel the need to liken himself to Christ’.” It quoted his account of his return to the campus after a previous suspension in 1997, which said that student and staff supporters ‘stripped garments from their backs and laid them on the ground for me to walk on … images of Christ on his triumphant entry to Jerusalem [flashed] through my mind”.

From 1996 to 2006 Mokadi served a broken service as vice-­chancellor. Professor Irene Moutlana was appointed vice-chancellor of VUT last year.

Meanwhile, the quality audit adds that while VUT’s engineering programmes are generally aligned with industry needs, others are not on par. ‘Members from industry commented on a perceived decline in the quality of graduates, particularly in relation to written and oral communication. The panel is especially concerned about the strong perception among employers of the declining quality of VUT graduates.”

It commended the engineering faculty’s efforts to improve the success of first-year students by using its most experienced staff to teach these students as well as by pioneering alternative teaching approaches.

Maneli emphasises that the audit was conducted some time ago and that several remedial measures are in place, which include striving for a graduation rate of 16% by 2010, as set by Pandor.

‘Through the introduction of foundation programmes in engineering and applied sciences we can provide better support to students,” he says, explaining that the department of education has earmarked R11-­million from 2007 to 2009 to establish a foundation programme in engineering.

Maneli attributes the low gradua­tion rates to learners being ill-­prepared for higher education, those with English as a second language struggling to cope, dropouts because of lack of finance, family matters and lack of guidance in course selection at secondary schools.

In 2004 vocational English was introduced as a compulsory module for all first-year students and there is a move towards ‘blended learning”. Maneli says this approach integrates ‘the best of both worlds — face-to-face tutor support and the ability for students to work individually at their own pace”.

According to Alpheus Maphosa, VUT’s director of cooperative education, who joined the university in 1996, VUT could have ended up ‘far worse”, but the current management is keeping the ship afloat. ‘The university is aware of its problems” and is tackling them, he says.

He is meanwhile consulting with 1 700 companies and is involved in the placement of 1 600 students annually into training programmes. ‘We get feedback from companies and try to improve our curriculum,” he says.

How to destroy a university

• Start off with good intentions. Read books on management.
• Turn into a sponge: suck up information and advice from staff.
• You’ve got the power — enjoy it.
• Develop a taste for the high life.
• Appoint spies among your favourites.
• Cover up their incompetence and expensive blunders.
• Ignore your senate.
• Create divisions and fear among your staff.
• Don’t worry about transformation — it’s too much effort to fight the whining whiteys.
• Anyway, if you’re African, transformation has already been achieved.
• Command a high salary package. You’re worth it.
• Forget why you were appointed in the first place.
• Swipe the university’s credit card as often as possible.
• Lose the invoices.
• If you are charged with corruption and mismanagement and a commission of inquiry is hounding you, blame the media. Or blame apartheid.
• Get a court interdict against the commission of inquiry.
• Vanish from the scene.
• Feign a combination of schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder.