Tracking Progress Towards Gender Equity in the South African Academic Economics Pipeline

In this article I would like to indicate that there is an inherent conflict between the underlying values portrayed by the policy document entitled 'National Plan for Higher Education in South Africa' and the values embodied in the discourse about the African Renaissance and the promotion of African indigenous knowledge systems (IKSs) in South Africa. This article will attempt to analyse the dominant values of the National Plan for Higher Education in South Africa as well as the underlying values portrayed by the programme for African IKS in South Africa. Thereafter the paper will demonstrate that the cultural climate emanating from the discourse in policy documents such as the 'National Plan for Higher Education' (NPHE) is relatively hostile to the value system necessary for an IKS programme to take root in South African soil. I thus want to argue that a case of conflicting values between the NPHE and the IKS programme arises from an existing split between official values and non-official values apparent in the policies governing the direction of higher education (HE) in South Africa. The paper will offer some ideas why this situation has come about and pose some critical questions for discussion.

On 6 November 2020, the Policy Framework for Internationalisation of Higher Education in South Africa was promulgated. It provides high-level principles and guidelines for the internationalisation of higher education in South Africa, lays down specific rules for certain aspects of the process and aims to shape the process of internationalisation at South African higher education institutions, redressing past inequalities whilst addressing policy imperatives of higher education in a democratic South Africa. In this paper, we analyse the context and content of the Policy Framework. We first explore the context by discussing the historical background leading to the development and drafting of the Policy Framework, whereafter we analyse the substantive content of the Policy Framework. We consider its suitability for advancing the South African higher education system's internationalisation objectives, interrogate whether it can provide direction for comprehensive internationalisation of higher education in the country and provide recommendations on the way forward devoting attention to strategies for successful policy implementation.

Public higher education in South Africa is governed by the Higher Education Act (Act No. 101 of 1997). Governance of public higher education in South Africa is just one element of governance practised across the entire domain of government to ensure accountability to the citizens of the country. This paper refers to four different, but related, levels of governance that span the landscape of public higher education: firstly, within the global context, secondly, in the context of the country with all of its government ministries; thirdly, the “system” of education in the context of legislative governance within the public higher education sector in South Africa; and finally, the institutional governance arrangements required in terms of legislation or regulation, which will be reviewed with particular attention being given to IT governance. Further, the notion of “managerialism” will be discussed to provide some structure to the context in which governance is practised. IT governance, as a subset of institutional governance, within and across the public higher education system is subsequently addressed. Finally, the current absence of IT governance oversight or reporting to the public higher education authority and mechanisms to improve governance in the sector are discussed, which provide an indication of the value that can be created by the implementation of a best practice IT governance framework at institutional level. Accordingly, an IT governance framework can be used to measure the maturity of a wide range of IT processes that The layered approach to governance investigated in this paper provides insight into the factors that influence the ability to govern subsystems, particularly the IT subsystem, in the public higher education sector in South Africa.

Private Higher Education (PHE) in South Africa has been perceived to deliver programmes of questionable quality in search of profit maximisation (CHE 2016, 84). To curb this perception, the Council on Higher Education (CHE) has instituted strict regulations with regard to accrediting qualifications offered by Higher Education (HE) institutions. To determine the contributions of PHE to the South African higher education landscape, this article evaluates a registered management programme, on recommendation of the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) of the CHE, with the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) (CHE, 2013). Using Kirkpatrick’s (1996) four-level model of training programme evaluation as the theoretical framework, the management programme was evaluated to determine its contribution to higher education in South Africa. The four levels included the perception of the learners, the knowledge gained by the learners, the learners’ performance in the workplace and the return on investment. Other stakeholders, such as the sponsor and students’ line managers, were interviewed to determine whether the programme has contributed to work outputs. Overall, the results show that the programme is contributing to the development of higher education in South Africa.

Nelson Mandela once argued that ‘education is the most powerful weapon, which you can use to change the world’. This sentiment is echoed by governments and citizens across the world. Education can help us to better understand the world around us and our place in it, equipping us to push for positive social, economic and political changes. Calls for accessible Higher Education (HE) in South (and the rest of) Africa make perfect sense: a university degree is a passport to a better life for those who have it. For example, the unemployment rate for those with a university degree is significantly lower than for those without. In addition, university campuses offer more than just taught knowledge: they are a place where young people build networks, relationships and values (see, e.g. May & Jones in this volume, Chapter 5). They are where the future business, political and intellectual leaders of a country are forged. Africa, generally, is faced with numerous serious challenges regarding access to HE, and this chapter explores some of the key ones with particular reference to South Africa.

Higher education institutions strive to ensure that their faculty are representative of the diverse students they serve. The importance of faculty diversity is particularly important in engineering, which is often dominated by white men. In South Africa, race remains contested 26 years after the end of apartheid, and the majority Black African population continues to be marginalized in political, economic, and knowledge enterprises. Black women represent 90% of the female population in South Africa. However, Black women are scarcely represented—and sometimes absent—in engineering academia. In this chapter, I argue that Black women’s career choices are influenced by their higher education experiences, which signal to Black women that they do not belong in higher education spaces. Using evidence from qualitative interviews conducted with 18 Black African women engineers in South Africa, I highlight how Black women experience higher education as racialized and gendered, discouraging them from pursuing academic careers. These race-gendered experiences need to be understood in the historical context of higher education and engineering in South Africa and in the remnants of an apartheid past that continue to impact everyday decisions of Black African South African women pursuing engineering degrees. The chapter concludes with implications and considerations for higher education institutions and engineering departments as they work to recruit and retain Black women in engineering academia.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the discourse and politics of racism asthey manifest themselves in legislative and policy directives of higher education (HE) in South Africa. Focus will be on how black Africans are constricted and as such continue to be disadvantaged therein. The author will show how various HE policy imperatives since the advent of the new South Africa have attempted to deconstruct and remove racism from the HE landscape, but how unfortunately this aberration continues to bedevilprovisioning of curricula and opportunities of learning in this sector of education.

The need to transform higher education in South Africa is indisputable. This article explores how the recent #mustfall protests, as an Event, could inform transformation. An Event follows three phases: reframing (shattering the frame through which we understand reality), the fall (the loss of a primordial unity which is a retroactive illusion) and enlightenment (subjectivity itself as an eventuality). In conclusion, I pose that a shift towards who comes into presence in higher education and not (a pre-determined) what comes into presence, could provide possible footpaths to decolonialisation and transformation. Through processes of subjectification, the subject(s) of higher education could reframe historic ontological othering and actively take part in the process(es) of becoming and being human in higher education in (post)colonial South Africa.

The history of women's engagement with the academy has been characterised by exclusion and inequality. Seven decades ago, Virginia Woolf1 asked: Do we want to join the procession or don't we? On wh...

The Ministry of Education in South Africa has identified distance education as a system that should extend educational opportunities and provide access to individuals who do not have the opportunity to study fulltime. The White Paper 3 - the National Plan for higher education (DoE, 2001a) advocates an increase in the general participation rate in public higher education in South Africa, with the aim of facilitating lifelong learning, developing the skills base of the country and redressing historical inequities in the provision of education. Badat (2005) adds that through distance education access is presented to people who would not have the opportunity to study fulltime because of work commitments, personal and social circumstances, geographical distance or poor quality or inadequate prior learning experiences. Distance education offer flexible learning to students. The flexibility of learning at a distance using new technologies gives students an opportunity to study while working. The technology can make an impact in supporting teaching and learning.

The Ministry of Education in South Africa has identified distance education as a system that should extend educational opportunities and provide access to individuals who do not have the opportunity to study fulltime. The White Paper 3 - the National Plan for higher education (DoE, 2001a) advocates an increase in the general participation rate in public higher education in South Africa, with the aim of facilitating lifelong learning, developing the skills base of the country and redressing historical inequities in the provision of education. Badat (2005) adds that through distance education access is presented to people who would not have the opportunity to study fulltime because of work commitments, personal and social circumstances, geographical distance or poor quality or inadequate prior learning experiences. Distance education offer flexible learning to students. The flexibility of learning at a distance using new technologies gives students an opportunity to study while working. The technology can make an impact in supporting teaching and learning.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is rapidly transforming global higher education, offering both unprecedented opportunities and complex challenges. In South Africa, where the legacy of apartheid has entrenched deep educational inequalities, the strategic implementation of GenAI holds the potential to either bridge or widen existing divides. This chapter critically examines how GenAI can be harnessed to promote inclusive and equitable quality higher education in South Africa, while addressing the structural, ethical, and practical challenges that accompany its adoption. Drawing insights from a comprehensive synthesis of the existing literature on GenAI and education, this chapter argues that the AI revolution has the potential to either narrow or intensify existing educational inequalities in South Africa. If not implemented equitably, GenAI may further widen the gap between historically privileged and marginalised universities. The chapter suggests the need for critical dialogue to ensure that GenAI catalyses an inclusive and equitable higher education in South Africa.

Globally, private higher education offers access to higher education, especially where public provision cannot cope with demand. However, South Africa does not mirror this trend. This article reports on a survey of stakeholders’ understanding of private higher education in South Africa that aimed to determine why it has not grown to complement public higher education in mitigating the access gap. The findings point to limited knowledge of private higher education, especially amongst parents. Furthermore, there are perceptions that it is expensive with low returns on investment, as well as a lack of trust in the value of the qualifications and quality of the tuition offered. However, the respondents also acknowledged the advantages of private higher education and graduate success. Based on these results, addressing perceptions of costs and more effective communication should be priorities for both this sub-sector as well as the national authorities. This is important as South Africa will be unable to reach the National Development Plan’s target of 1.62 million students in higher education without the private higher education sub-sector complementing public universities.
 Key words: Private higher education, reasons to select private HEIs, teaching and learning quality, private higher education cost, graduate employability, contribution to the HE sector

Higher education in South Africa, as elsewhere in the world, is under pressure to reinvent and transform itself. Traditionally it has enjoyed the financial support of the government and has also enjoyed an autonomous existence. In South Africa, since the demise of apartheid, the education policy terrain has shifted remarkably fast and policies have required that universities respond to a national plan for higher education that commits universities to become cost- effective, massified institutions opening access to all who were historically excluded due to apartheid’s policies of educational exclusion. Universities in the higher education sector as a whole are required to generate strategies that broaden access routes for disadvantaged groups and at the same time consider curriculum strategies that ensure success and inclusivity to such groups after access. In addition to these daunting challenges, the higher education sector has experienced a decrease in government funding and an increase in government control. Student-led protest around the cost of higher education has also introduced a new kind of pressure point on universities. These shifts are in sharp contrast to the more elite traditional model of higher education in South Africa, which has been mostly residential institutions focusing on full-time study, with lectures, seminars, and laboratory demonstrations as the dominant forms of pedagogy. This model is also based on sets of internal rules designed to support staff to spearhead the knowledge-production processes. They function best under stable environments and tend to meander and falter when the foundations for stability are threatened.

Freire (1993) premised his pedagogical theory on the assumption that humanisation is the fundamental objective of education, and he emphasised the role of dialogue as praxis in achieving this. In South Africa, race has played a constitutive and dehumanising role in higher education since its beginnings during colonialism and apartheid (Soudien, 2015, 2016). During 2014 and 2015, higher education in South Africa came under attack from various student organisations for alleged discrimination, racism, and exclusive practices. We propose two conditions for dialogue as humanising praxis in higher education: the acknowledgement of situated selves, and the ontological need for, and right to, voice. We conclude that these conditions are interrelated and point to the possibilities of humanising post-1994 higher education. We use qualitative data from the NRF-funded project, Human rights literacy: a quest for meaning (Roux & du Preez, 2013) to explore student teachers' experiences of implicit and explicit exclusion, racism, and discrimination at institutions of higher education in South Africa.