There are now 19 universities linked by broadband in South Africa
A key benefit that Universities South Africa offers to its member institutions is guidance and implementation of services that contribute to their long-term wellbeing. This is achieved by providing specialist, value-adding services aimed at the operational level, as well as their core functions of teaching and learning, research and community engagement.
The organisation has set itself the goals of implementing projects and programmes that create the appropriate conditions to support the sustainability of the country’s universities. These include projects such as facilitating broadband connectivity, graduate destination studies, national site licensing for scholarly journals, building the next generation of academics, and strengthening universities’ management and leadership capacity.
It is also instrumental in developing best practice guides based on new policy and regulatory issue requirements that directly impact on their operations.
Universities South Africa also aims to become a trusted source of information on the country’s higher education sector through publishing regular updates on a wide range of subjects relating to the sector. This information dissemination role will include briefings to members on developments in the legislative and regulatory environment and guides on how best to respond to proposed changes.
Such information services will be supplemented by implementing capacity development initiatives to improve capabilities within the country’s universities, while strengthening co-operation between members.
Similar interventions are planned to improve performance of the core functions of teaching and learning, research and community engagement.
Dedicated strategy groups have been established within Universities South Africa that are focused on providing support on specific areas of university operations.
These include funding, research and innovation, teaching and learning, and transformation.
These strategy groups each have specific goals and interventions that aim to improve:
– Research and innovation outputs across the sector;
– Teaching and learning and increasing throughput rates at undergraduate and postgraduate levels;
– Funding resources from the state and private sector to support universities;
– The levels and pool of leadership and management capacity within universities;
– Transformation in line with the goals set out in the Education White Paper 3: A Programme of Transformation of Higher Education in South Africa; and
– The sector’s response to HIV and Aids and related health challenges.
Allied to these specific support services, Universities South Africa also aims to support the internationalisation agenda of South Africa’s universities. It will do this by actively participating in policy development for this agenda, while supporting the government in the implementation of international academic co-operation agreements. It will also play a critical role in monitoring the impact of internationalisation on local universities.
The organisation acknowledges it does not operate in a vacuum and that the higher education sector is subject to external pressures from developments and trends in the global higher education landscape. It hopes to convert these challenges into opportunities by developing an internationalisation policy framework that facilitates co-operation with international counterparts.
Such co-operation might include joint degrees and engaging in joint research projects.