Equity, Development, and New Knowledge Production: An Overview of the New Higher Education Policy Environment in Post‐Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

This article traces the influence of an important body of international literature on the development of post-apartheid policies in South African higher education and training ( HET ). Its main focus is on the emergence of a new mode of knowledge production and its impact on HET. The author tabulates the distinction beween Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge.The study also analyses the inter-relationship between equity and economic development. The article highlights a fundamental tension that permeates HET in South Africa today. On the one hand, the new mode of knowledge production and the new HET policies provide new access routes into HET for previously excluded constituencies. On the other hand, all of these changes and the economic development trajectory they privilege pose real problems around the increasing commercialisation and marketisation of HET in South Africa – changes that have impacted negatively on equity in higher education world-wide. However, the discussion concludes by indicating that the jury is not yet out in South Africa on which tendency is dominant or whether these interests – development versus equity – are in fact mutually exclusive.