Higher education and training policy and practice in South Africa: impacts of global privatisation, quasi-marketisation and new managerialism

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Trends suggest that business practices and private sector ideas and values are increasingly permeating public funded higher education institutions world-wide. The impact of business practices and values on higher education policy and practice is discernible in the growing dominance of global privatisation, quasi-marketisation and new managerialism in the higher education sector. However, reactions of different role players and responses of higher learning institutions to these external demands have varied according to local conditions and institutional types. This article contributes to the debate on the increasing permeation of business practices and private sector ideas and values on higher education in South Africa after apartheid using the case study of the University of Pretoria. It begins with the review of debates on higher education on this topic in general, and then moves on to analyse these debates in South Africa using the resource dependence theory and structuralism as conceptual frames. It argues that: (i) the increasing marketisation and quasi-marketisation in higher education and training could be attributed to the influence of neo-liberalism and new managerialism; (ii) changes in higher education provision, policy and practice in South Africa need to be understood in terms of marketisation and quasi-marketisation rather than in terms of privatisation; (iii) although the influence of these external forces is unlikely to be reversed, provision, policies and practices must be tempered by imperatives of redress and equity in South Africa; and (iv) the case study of the University of Pretoria reported here is used as an example of the extent to which institutions are becoming entrepreneurial.