A higher education qualifications framework will come into force in South Africa next January, strengthening a quality assurance system that has been operating for four years and laying the foundation for credit accumulation and transfer. All institutions, both public and private, will have to register and restructure their programmes.
Quality assurance in South Africa is the responsibility of a statutory advisory body, the Council on Higher Education. It now also has the job of generating and setting standards and implementing the new higher education qualifications framework, which will determine the types, characteristics and purposes of all qualifications. The new policy also defines how higher education qualifications fit into the national qualifications framework (NQF), which covers all levels of education and all qualifications.
A qualifications framework for South Africa’s previously fragmented but now single higher education system was first proposed in a 1997 education white paper and finally gazetted last October. ‘It has taken some time,†Minister of Education Naledi Pandor admitted in the introduction to the policy.
Separate qualifications structures for universities and former technikons (now universities of technology) hindered the articulation of programmes and the transfer of students between courses and institutions. According to Pandor, the framework will improve the coherence and flexibility of the system and integrate and facilitate articulation and credit transfer.
She emphasised that within the parameters and criteria of qualifications under the new system ‘higher education institutions will have ample scope to design educational offerings to realise their different visions, missions and plans, and to meet the varying needs of the clients and communities they serve.â€
The framework sets minimum admissions requirements for all programmes, but leaves it up to universities to set their own admissions policies beyond those minimums. It allows recognition of prior learning and work-integrated learning.
Qualifications are structured in credits. For instance, there are 120 credits for the first year of a bachelor degree, with each credit representing 10 notional study hours. Credits can straddle different levels of the NQF — levels five to seven cover undergraduate and eight to 10 postgraduate qualifications.
From January 1 next year all new higher education programmes will have to comply with the framework, be registered on it and accredited by the Higher Education Quality Committee or the department of education. There will be a transitional period for existing programmes to be restructured to achieve full compliance with the framework.
The framework will lay the foundation for a credit accumulation and transfer system to be developed fully in the coming years. Meanwhile, a maximum of 50% of credits achieved towards one qualification may be transferred to another qualification (but cannot constitute more than 50% of the latter).
But already there are rumblings of discontent. Universities of technology, said one source who did not want to be named, are ‘not happy†about phasing out the bachelor of technology (BTech) degree. One reason it is being scrapped is because of articulation difficulties between formative degrees and the BTech, which generally requires three years of higher-diploma-level study with a fourth, more conceptual year tacked on to achieve a degree.
‘Another worry for everyone is the amount of work that has to be done to implement the framework and there are other concerns about broad policy issues,†said the source. —