Hundreds of thousands of learners who completem matric each year aspire to enter a university (or college) and ultimately to succeed in their studies and raise their prospects for a better life.
Their hopes and dreams and those of their parents and families ride on this aspiration. Many, possibly most, will be the first in their families to enter a tertiary education.
South Africa’s future development is dependent on as many young people as possible developing their skills and knowledge levels sufficiently to gain qualifications and contribute usefully to our economy and our society.
The three million 18-to-24-year-olds who are not in employment, education or training testify to the fact that, much as we have made lots of progress, we are not succeeding in fulfilling our people’s expectations for educational access.
The low through-put rates in our institutions demonstrate our lack of success in providing for those who do gain initial access.
The casualties are overwhelmingly black youth struggling to overcome the privations that are the result of our colonial and apartheid past.
But South Africa is not only a country of the poor and disadvantaged. It also has a relatively advanced economic sector and our future economic growth depends on expanding and developing this sector and transforming it to meet the needs of all.
In the higher education sector many leaders of universities, business and government see the priority as creating universities that can compete with the best in the world in terms of postgraduate enrolments, research outputs and innovation.
As a nation and as a developmental state, we cannot let go of either of these aspirations: increased access and success, on the one hand, and high-level knowledge production, on the other. Both must be fulfilled.
But as Eddie Webster recently pointed out, ‘there is a tension between striving to be a world-class university and successfully confronting the legacy of apartheid” (http://tinyurl.com/yd75lam).
And one’s view of the preferred balance between these two points of tension is often the result of the position from which one sees the world.
As the minister of higher education and training I want to see this tension examined more closely and to listen to the exchange of views between different stakeholders.
I would like the different stakeholders also to listen and respond to one another in a serious manner and to try to understand viewpoints with which they may not necessarily agree.
It is important not only to the stability of our institutions but also to their meeting the expectations of South African society as a whole.
So, an honest and constructive exchange of views between the various stakeholders in the higher education sector and between the stakeholders and their government is the major purpose of the Higher Education Summit to be held on April 22 and 23.
These discussions will address some of the main issues associated with transforming higher education to meet the needs of all South Africa’s people, its democracy and economy.
The initial stimulus leading us to call this summit was the report of the Committee on Transformation, Social Cohesion and the Elimination of Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions — the ‘Soudien Report”.
The report, which has been discussed widely now in universities, examines and exposes discrimination that has continued to exist in institutions despite legislation, policy papers and the deep political changes in the country in general.
The summit will examine and discuss the responses of the university sector to the report and to their intended action for overcoming the problems of discrimination.
Discrimination, in addition to causing deep distress to individuals and groups of people, also effectively restricts academic success by turning the academic environment into a hostile terrain.
Problems of transformation, of course, need to go beyond the problems of discrimination.
The summit will, for example, thus also examine issues of equity, access to university for poor and workingclass youth, curriculum transformation, increasing the academic success rates, how universities relate to and assist the rest of the post-school system and other transformation issues.
While it is important to maintain high academic standards, we need to resist the temptation to create curricula and other programmes in the abstract, without regard to the situation, background and the academic and social needs of today’s students.
Universities (and curricula) are, after all, there to serve the students, not the other way around.
The allocation of government funding should reflect this need for a focus on the quality and appropriateness of teaching and I hope that the summit will help to generate ideas that will assist our upcoming review of the funding formula.
In addition, the summit must look into issues concerning ensuring the sustainability of the higher education system by finding ways to ensure the development and reproduct ion of the academic workforce.
This is, of course, also tied to ensuring that the universities produce a growing number of postgraduates (in contrast to the somewhat stagnant current situation) and engage in the research and innovation necessary to keep South African scholar ship at the cutting edge of knowledge production.
Such work is essential particularly to ensure that universities fulfil their developmental role in South Africa, assisting in finding solutions to overcoming poverty and rural underdevelopment, fighting crime, overcoming discrimination on the basis of class, race and gender, extending democracy, and so on.
Many of the issues that the summit will discuss should be the subject of constant and ongoing discussions in each university. Institutional forums were provided for in the Higher Education Act especially for this purpose: as forums where the major stakeholders in the institutions could share ideas and provide advice to university leaders.
This would assist them to guide the institution towards its goals with as much cooperation and as little conflict as possible.
However, these forums have not functioned properly and interactions between stakeholders often take the form of confrontations and protests.
I expect that the summit will be in a position to make recommendations (to both the ministry and the institutions themselves) to overcoming this problem of inadequate internal dialogue within universities.
This will be a historic summit in that it will be the first time such a gathering has been called to discuss the problems of transforming the higher education sector in our country.
It will be unique in its breadth of participants who will represent a very wide range of constituencies from both the universities themselves and from other stakeholder groups.
I confidently expect that it will stimulate an ongoing dialogue on the problems facing the sector, both within and between educational institutions, between them and my department and among interested organisations and citizens more generally.
The summit will also have to consider the possibility of the establishment of a permanent higher education stakeholder forum for ongoing engagements among stakeholders, and between stakeholders and our department.
Dr Blade Nzimande is minister of higher education and training
The Stakeholder Summit on Higher Education Transformation takes place on April 22 and 23 2010 at the Bellville campus of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. See www.education.gov.za or www.cepd.org.za