Universities must introduce a common and compulsory first-year course for all students to familiarise them with national, continental and global challenges, the explosive ministerial report on racism in higher education has recommended.
The damning survey, which found that racial, gender and other forms of discrimination are rife in higher education, was first reported by the Mail & Guardian last week. It raises major questions about whether university curricula have been transformed in a way that instils the values of the Constitution.
It says: “Institutions should initiate an overall macro-review of their undergraduate and postgraduate curricula, so as to assess their appropriateness and relevance in terms of the social, ethical, political and technical skills and competence embedded in them, in the context of post-apartheid South Africa and its location in Africa and the world.”
Curriculum reform has been hotly contested since the mid-1990s.
The report says that limited progress has been made in curriculum reform and suggests that this could be because it is “intertwined” with the “white” and “Eurocentric institutional culture”. This was particularly true of historically white institutions — an environment unconducive to curriculum reform.
Education Minister Naledi Pandor set up the committee last year, under the leadership of UCT academic Crain Soudien, to investigate discrimination in higher education.
The move followed the international outcry over the racist video made by white students at the University of the Free State’s Reitz residence.
Pointing to the Reitz incident, the report suggests that “institutions have shown that [universities] are failing in their roles to provide “intellectual leadership to society”. The students implicated in the video had graduated with their views unchallenged.
The report suggests that University of Fort Hare’s first-year rounding course, compulsory for all students, could beneficially guide other institutions.
The Fort Hare course deals with themes such as decolonisation, the principles of ubuntu, democracy and liberation, while aiming to give students an experience of “building a diverse, caring and intellectual community of purpose”.
Among examples of the affirmation of African views and thought systems in curricula were the focus on seminal texts in African thought, which forms part of the African studies curriculum at UCT, and courses that address issues of diversity and discrimination in social work, education and nursing at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.