In a major about-turn Education Minister Naledi Pandor has softened her stance on private providers of tertiary education, indicating interest in cooperative ventures with public institutions.
Pandor and her predecessor, Kader Asmal, took a hard line on private universities, introducing tough legislative controls.
But at last month’s opening of the Johannesburg campus of the brand communications school, Vega — a division of the Independent Institute of Education — Pandor said she was trying to design a model that could lead to partnerships between private and public higher education providers. ‘We need to look at what role private higher education providers can play in widening access to higher education. We can’t grow the public sector — it is at its [full] capacity,†she said.
The late 1990s saw an explosion of private tertiary institutions. Unregulated by legislation, they were seen by the government as a threat to public institutions, which were in the throes of transformation and torn by student protest.
Stringent legislation was enacted requiring private institutions to prove their academic integrity and furnish evidence of the quality of their research and assessment procedures. They could not describe themselves as ‘universities†and had to register their programmes with such bodies as the National Qualifications Framework and the South African Qualifications Authority. As with public institutions, they also had to undergo quality assurance by the higher education quality committee (HEQC).
Some recognised overseas universities, including Warwick, pulled out of South Africa because the legislation violated their statutes. Bond South Africa and De Montfort allowed their registration to lapse following a hard-hitting HEQC audit of their MBAs.
Pandor said poor instruction and lack of accountability have now been ”transcended” and South Africa is ”the envy of developing countries with regard to the regulation of private education”.
Roy Marcus, chairperson of the Da Vinci Institute for Technology Management, which offers postgraduate management programmes, said that the international trend in academia is ”talk about partnerships or perish rather than publish or perish”.