An accountable university

Theuns Eloff

20 FEB 2009, 04:00

5 min read

The North-West University (NWU) has already responded officially to some media reports about the Report on the Investigation by the Ministerial Task Team into the NWU, which became public last week.

It probed, among others, the 2004 merger between the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, the University of North-West in Mafikeng and Vista University’s Sebokeng campus.

The university council remains in discussion with Education Minister Naledi Pandor about the report and, despite certain concerns about the process, the NWU decided to cooperate fully with the investigation.

This process and its outcomes raise a number of questions: how difficult are mergers to manage? How is success measured? When should success or failure be declared? How should multi-campus mergers be managed?

International literature on university mergers in China in the 1990s stated that “few if any mergers are painless and … it is generally agreed that it can take up to 10 years for the wounds to heal and for the new institutions .. to operate as a cohesive and well-integrated whole”.

The merging of a historically white Afrikaans university and a historically black university into the NWU was extremely complex, requiring wisdom, patience and courage. After only five years it is too early to declare either complete success or failure on this or any merger.

But what were some of NWU’s strategies and what did we learn?

Merger successes must be measured in terms of efficiency and quality and transformation.
Once quality and efficiency are compromised with “quick” transformation strategies, it is very difficult to regain those qualities. Similarly, transformation cannot be postponed indefinitely.
The results of the university’s strategy to focus first on quality and efficiency, while simultaneously following a process of sustainable transformation, will be clear only in a number of years, but in the meantime has served the institution well.
In 2008 the NWU won PricewaterhouseCoopers’ “best governed university” competition, the Pan South African Language Board’s award for the university that has done the most for nation-building and multilingualism and the department of trade and industry’s most innovative university competition. In 2006 the NWU produced the third most PhDs in the country and had the second-highest undergraduate graduation rate. All campuses contributed to this.

The report states: “The management of multicampus institutions is much more complicated than what the merger proposals assumed.”
The ministerial report recommends that Pandor appoints a working group to study the different management models for multicampus institutions. There is no clarity on the one “golden model” for multicampus mergers.
The NWU is a unitary institution with decentralised operating campuses. The model’s strong points are campuses taking ownership, being accountable and being educationally sound. In a recent independent assessment higher education expert and a former vice-chancellor, Rolf Stumpf, concluded that although it has growth pains, the present management model is the only workable one for the NWU. Without this model the NWU would not have made the progress it has achieved.

The report is a mechanism for ongoing introspection.

The NWU remains fully committed to make its merger successful, having already made strong progress. Some of the challenges highlighted in the report brought fresh perspectives. The NWU will therefore treat the report as a valuable mechanism for ongoing introspection.

The university has, however, highlighted its concerns over the report’s scientific basis.

For instance, the NWU’s request to the ministerial task team to comment on the factual issues in the report before it was handed to the minister was denied.

This resulted in numerous factual errors in the report, some of which were used to base fundamental findings and recommendations on. Below is NWU’s response to specific findings in the report related to diversity and alleged management failures.

Allegations of racism at the Potchefstroom campus are devoid of any truth. Access to the NWU is open to any academically qualifying student. The Potch campus actively recruits black students. The majority of students who marched in protest against racism following the Facebook incident were white.

The report fails to mention the policy of “functional multilingualism” that ensures access and a sense of belonging. The NWU offers classroom interpretation in 600 periods a week at its campuses in Potchefstroom and in the Vaal. Regular student evaluations in the past five years have been overwhelmingly positive. The NWU’s multilingual approach is in line with the Constitution and the Higher Education Act.

The criticism of Mafikeng’s poor research output fails to recognise that the strategy has been to improve teaching-learning, encourage staff to obtain PhDs and only then start focusing on research.

Allegations that students were treated unevenly in disciplinary cases are false. Students charged and found guilty in Mafikeng were allowed to write exams in June, pending their appeal in August. The Potch students involved in the Facebook incident were also allowed to write exams as their disciplinaries took place after the exams. The allegation that Potch students were offered counselling is false. No one received counselling with a view to their disciplinary hearings.

As a merged university the NWU has had to deal with issues of unity and diversity, reconciliation, tolerance and change management. It has also achieved successes in terms of its core business. The NWU will continue on this path as an accountable and responsible South African university.

Theuns Eloff is vice-chancellor of the North-West University