It has taken the idealism of youth, in this case the Young Communist League, to reignite the debate on access to post-school education. They certainly have a point.
Since 1994, despite the strongest growth rates in the country’s history, the participation rate in higher education of 18-to 24-year-olds has increased from about 14% to 18%.
More alarmingly, the country has adopted a steady-state solution with a 2010 target of 20%. This ambition contrasts sharply with an average percentage for North America and Western Europe of 70%; in South Korea it is even higher.
This gap suggests that a primary feature of transformation processes of higher education in developed and newly industrialising societies is the move towards increasing the number of students — ‘massification†is the mangled noun that has been used to describe this development. Indeed, some authorities have suggested that these enrolments are increasing at ‘breakneck speedâ€.
Figures certainly bear them out: there were 152.5-million tertiary students worldwide in 2007, a roughly 50% increase compared with 2000. This indicates that more and more 18- to 24-year-olds now participate in some form of post-school education.
Even the Jeremiahs at the World Bank — who baulked at investment in higher education in developing societies a decade ago — now call on poor societies to broaden access to higher education.
So why the steady-state approach in South Africa, when it is clear that as a young, multilayered, complex democracy, the country will require an educated populace to deepen its economic competitiveness?
Financial constraints are often advanced as a reason. But this ignores the old saw: if you think education is expensive, try to cost ignorance.
So, the question is not whether the country can afford massification, the question is this: what kind of educational system does this transforming, nation-building, developing society require?
Recognising this releases new possibilities about positioning post-school education at the centre of the social and economic well-being of all South Africans. This can only be done by addressing the inverted pyramid of post-school training. To explain: the greater part of post-school education is in the expensive university system — about 800 000 students.
The number of students participating in the further education and training sector in 2006 was something like 380 000. Moreover, the under-performing school system emphasises the absurdity of this inverted pyramid.
The post-school further education and training (FET) sector should be enlarged tenfold so that the university system sits on solid bedrock. So, to reinvent post-school education over the next decade we must put the pyramid back on its base. Here are seven ways to do this.
First, and most importantly, draw all the providers of education into a single, seamless system. This must include the universities, FET colleges, agricultural colleges, nursing colleges, industry-based training and the private for-profit providers of post-school education.
Second, establish community colleges and promote them as natural places of study for students who have completed school. The latter would be a sine qua non for a guaranteed place in post-school education for every school leaver. This would require the expansion of the national strategic project for teacher education and a return of retired teachers.
Third, promote post-school education at local levels. Each urban/regional complex should have its own system of FET, nursing, agricultural and community colleges; each of these should be integrated into local developmental and human resource needs. These must become central to both nation-building and the deepening of democracy, and must enhance the skills needs of a developing nation.
This harks back to the policy thinking in the pre-1994 period, when planning was infused with a human-centred approach both to deepening democracy and nation-building. That was an age when thinking on post-school education linked social reconstruction with developing a competitive economy.
Fourth, construct a differentiated and highly defined post-school system that punishes mission creep. For this to work there must be ladders for students to migrate between the different institutions.
The majority of students would be based in community colleges, fewer in four-year degree-awarding institutions and even fewer still in research universities. But, and this is crucial, every student should know that success could lead all the way to higher research degrees.
We need to pause here to reinforce the central point: the post-school sector must consist of a range of institutions, which include intermediary colleges (both vocational and general education) and a university system. The latter, though very expensive at the high-level end, is absolutely essential.
Fifth, the National Qualifications Framework must ensure greater articulation of the curricula. This will require great imagination and not a little humility. Sixth, monies squirrelled away through the skills levy or the Setas must be released to drive post-school education.
The intricate relationship between the private and public goods of education means there must be burden-sharing between individual learners and the public purse.
And finally, ensure quality: all learning must be genuine, purposeful and driven by social and community concerns. Post-school education cannot become a dumping ground for yet another lost generation.
The creation of the new ministry of higher education and training has cleared away many stumbling blocks, the most important of which is that the post-school system is concentrated under one roof.
Now action and imagination are required. Since the Soweto tragedy 33 years ago, South Africans have struggled with education. More recently, the horror of neoliberal public policy-making has stifled efforts at reform.
Happily both have been consigned to Trotsky’s dustbin of history. It’s time to return to youthful idealism: let’s reconstruct post-school education to make a real difference.
Ahmed Cassim Bawa was formerly deputy vice-chancellor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal and Peter Vale was vice-rector of the University of the Western Cape. Both have returned to teaching and research, Bawa at Hunter College in New York, Vale at Rhodes University