Higher Education In South Africa Research Articles

The contribution of a private higher education institution to the South African higher education landscape

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.

Relationship between transformtion and institutional culture

Transformation of higher education (HE) is presently a buzzword in the higher education globally and in South Africa. Government policy has suggested a system of higher education relevant to the new South Africa. Since 1994 elections not enough transformation took place in South Africa. This was affirmed by violent student protests two years ago at universities sparked by fees’ hikes. In South Africa, institutional transformation and institutional culture have been approached as different phenomena, and recently it was demonstrated that the one cannot exist without the other. The turmoil at South African HE institutions in 2015 and early 2016 highlighted the issues of institutional transformation and institutional culture. The student protests were linked to lack of transformation and an institutional culture that alienates black students. This article explores the concepts of transformation and institutional culture, in the context of HE institutions. I conclude that these concepts are intertwined, therefore we cannot have a completely transformed HE in South Africa until the institutional culture also changes.

The decolonization of higher education in South Africa: Luke’s writing as gift

This article pays tribute to Allan Luke's work as a pedagogical gift. His ability to bring sociological theories of power, identity and the body to bear on conceptualizing critical literacy is a gift. His research with indigenous populations, and his writing on inclusive curriculum, genres of power and double consciousness resonate in South Africa where students are fighting to decolonise higher education. Luke's work is a important because it enables us to imagine the changes needed to effect recognitive, redistributive and representative social justice in education. This is a significant gift.

Women in senior management positions at South African universities

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present reasons for the mobility of women in senior management positions in South African higher education. Against the backdrop of women underrepresentation and retention challenges in institution of higher learning in this country, it is pertinent to share the experiences of senior women, with the aim of understanding institutional structures and cultures that make it difficult for women to survive in senior positions.Design/methodology/approachThe paper used a qualitative approach. The focus of this paper was on the women who had held or were still holding senior management positions in higher education in South Africa. The requirement for this paper was that these women should have moved out or across institutions while at a senior management position. This paper drew from five women from different institutions and involved them in in-depth interviews. The women who fitted the category of senior management in this paper included deputy vice chancellor, deans and heads of departments.FindingsThe findings indicated that the decisions to opt out of senior management positions for the women ranged from personal to institutional. The personal reasons that emerged from this paper pointed mainly to issues of salaries. The women opted to move out of their positions for better salaries which they believed they would get in the private sectors or in other institutions. Professional development also led women to move to more promising spaces that could afford them an opportunity to grow. Apart from these personal reasons, hostile institutional cultures were cited by all women as the most serious contributory factor to their turnover. Of these, they cited patriarchal practices that led to oppression and dominance, which made it difficult for them to cope in the senior positions they held.Originality/valueThis paper aimed to respond to a gap in research on senior management women’s mobility in higher education, specifically in South Africa. According to Samuel and Chipunza (2013), there is a serious concern that pertains to retention of senior management within African higher education. However, most studies do not provide a focused attention on women but offer a general interpretation of senior management turnover. There seems to be lack of research that aims at understanding the contextual reasons that lead to turnover of women senior management in South African higher education. Against the backdrop of low representation of women in senior positions in specifically South African higher education and calls for equity, the study looked at the reasons why higher education institutions at times fail to retain this most sought after group (women) in these positions of power. Understanding issues around this matter has the potential to contribute towards improved practices while adding a voice to discourses around gender equity and equality.

South Africa's Higher Education System in Crisis … in a State in Crisis

South Africa's Higher Education System in Crisis … in a State in Crisis Ahmed C. Bawa (bio) on december 16, 2017, the then-president of south africa, jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, gave his last address as president of the African National Congress (ANC) at the party's 2017 elective conference. The three-day event captured the attention of millions of South Africans, partly as engaging reality TV, but mainly because of its potential impact on the future of this adolescent democracy. At the end of the meeting there would be one of two outcomes: a consolidation of the rent-seeking, corrupt, and corruptive state that had pervaded every level of government in the previous 10 years, or the chance of another start to the South African dream of producing a caring, nurturing, innovative society, bringing to reality the dreams of millions. The unexpected, even shocking centerpiece of Zuma's address at the conference was the announcement of a new system of funding for "students from poor and working-class families" to access higher education (HE) in response to the #FeesMustFall campaign waged by students since August 2015 (Zuma 2017). Universities are social institutions of a special kind. In South Africa, as in other parts of the world, while they protect and reproduce power and privilege, they are also fiercely independent and often the loudest voices of political and social dissent. They are simultaneously global and intensely local; places of construction and deconstruction of national imaginations; powerful engines for social mobility and the construction of a more equitable society; and central to the creation [End Page 253] of South Africa's democracy. They are both witness to and participants in the emergence of a human-centered society carrying the hopes of most of its citizens after hundreds of years of devastating oppression. The recent crisis that overtook the HE system between 2015 and 2017 is an interesting prism through which to understand some of the dynamics of the last 24 years of South Africa's faltering adventure into democracy. Between 1994 and 2016, the number of students in the HE system grew from fewer than 500,000 to more than a million, the largest part of the growth being driven by the broadening and deepening participation of black South Africans. By 2016, some 74 percent of students in the 26 public universities were black, and the shift in enrollments over the past 24 years has had an enormous influence on the universities (CHE 2018). Their role in social mobility may be garnered from the fact that 20–30 percent of students receive financial aid, which means they are from families with a gross annual income of less than R122,000 (about $8,500; NSFAS 2018). Issues of food insecurity, deep inequality, and social justice are firmly on the agendas of all South Africa's universities and are major causes of high incompletion rates (Letseka and Breier 2008). The HE crisis has unique aspects, but it is also fully connected to the general crisis in national development. Interestingly, this is happening at a time when the performance of the universities has, over the last 5–10 years, improved significantly in terms of the usual metrics by which HE is measured. While the student upheavals were initially directed at the objective of establishing a free-HE-for-all system, this was supplemented very significantly by the additional demand for "decolonized, quality education"—a much more qualitative demand that focused on the perceived orientation of the knowledge project of the university system. There is significant conceptual and practical overlap between the student activism and contemporary community struggles that occur daily. [End Page 254] SOUTH AFRICAN HIGHER EDUCATION POST-1994 Following the transition in 1994, President Nelson Mandela signed into existence the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE) with very broad social representation, including leaders of universities, the business/industry sector, the trade union structures, and civil society organizations. The idea was to produce a new framework for HE consonant with the vision of the new democratic state, to provide it with a policy infrastructure that would help it to reshape its purposes in a transforming society. These were captured in the Education White Paper 3...

Unbundling education: Mapping the changing nature of Higher Education in South Africa - ESRC

Unbundling education: Mapping the changing nature of Higher Education in South Africa - ESRC

Multilingual and multimodal mediation in one university module: The people and processes involved

At the core of using languages other than English in higher education in South Africa lies the processes of translation/mediation and the mediators themselves. Within the framework of the descriptive theory of translation, this paper offers a critical consideration of the people and processes at the heart of one such project at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa: the mediators who must either translate lecture material or lend their voices to the aural versions of such materials. The paper shows the processes involved in translating part of a lecture in English into varieties of Afrikaans and isiXhosa, and making these available in both reading and listening format. In addition, the paper examines interview responses of five of the mediators involved in the project, as well as some student responses to the material. Apart from showing the interdependence between the different stages of mediation in this project, we concluded that discipline-specific mediation is best done by subject specialists themselves. The findings also showed that most students felt that the informal, localised translations in the oral format offered the greatest epistemological access to the course content.

Reflections on Language Transformation at Nelson Mandela University

After a brief overview of the historical bilingual and parallel-medium language policies of universities in South Africa, this article highlights the limited implementation of the Language Policy for Higher Education in South Africa (2002), the resulting linguistic challenges faced by students in university classrooms, and the coping mechanisms they have developed. Thereafter, it reflects on successful formalised national and international practices before arguing the case for the inclusion of similar language practices in the curricula of South African universities in general and of Nelson Mandela University in particular.

Encounters with coloniality: Students' experiences of transitions from rural contexts into higher education in South Africa

Encounters with coloniality: Students' experiences of transitions from rural contexts into higher education in South Africa

Designing a Model for Facilitating the Inclusion of Higher Education International Students with Disabilities in South Africa

Higher education in South Africa is regulated by several policies, and the obligation of increased access and participation of persons with disabilities into higher education is recognized in legislation (Department of Education, 1997; Department of Higher Education and Training, 2013). However, research indicates that the proportion of students with disabilities in higher education and in study programmes abroad is still very low worldwide (Fazekas, 2017; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2011). Study opportunities for these students in higher education institutions abroad, including South Africa, should therefore be increased to provide equal access and experience in an inclusive higher education environment. This study explores possible reasons for the low engagement of South African students with disabilities in international mobility programmes and the function of key role-players in supporting international students with disabilities studying in South Africa (incoming students) and South African students with disabilities studying abroad (outgoing students). This study also explores the ways by which the exchange process could be facilitated more effectively within the context of an inclusive higher education environment. Data on the support services offered to these students was obtained by means of questionnaires sent to the International Relations Offices and Disability Rights Units at higher education institutions in South Africa. The study culminated in the design of a model which specifies the roles of the various role-players in supporting international students with disabilities during their pre-departure, study and return phases.

Caring for justice in a neoliberal university

This article is based on a study on participatory parity in higher education in South Africa. Its purpose is to explore the nature of the relationship between care and social justice under conditions of neoliberalism. Using the lenses of Joan Tronto’s democratic ethics of care and Nancy Fraser’s work on social justice, I also reflect on my own practices as a social work lecturer in a university that has a high percentage of students who, by their own accounts, are poor. Based on the study’s findings and my reflections thereupon, I argue that the context of higher education in South Africa renders relationships between students and lecturers vulnerable to replicating and reinforcing prevailing injustices in the sector. However, in the face of such entanglement, to care emerges as subversive practice, apt to substitute some of the key conditions and processes at the root of the injustices afflicting the field. I conclude that a democratic ethics of care can be employed to further the ends of social justice against the odds of a neoliberal learning context. This will also contribute to enhancing the well-being and academic development of both students and staff.

A collaborative auto-ethnographic exploration of socially just practices by new academics in two South African higher education institutions

ABSTRACT Challenges experienced in the higher education context require new academics to engage with issues of social justice in their pedagogical practices. This article focuses on such challenges and how these are met by the authors, who are new academics from two higher education institutions in South Africa. Using a collaborative auto-ethnographic approach to analyse and interpret practices from different disciplines and higher education institutions, critical insights into ‘response-able pedagogies’ are highlighted. ‘Response-able pedagogies’ may be described as those which foreground attentiveness, responsibility, curiosity and capability, are used as a lens to examine the pedagogical practices of the authors, as new academics. This lens is useful in that it illuminates ethical dimensions of how a socially just pedagogy might be enacted in disparate South African higher education contexts. Issues of language, academic literacies, resources, employability, cultural diversity, large classes, and student abilities are reflected upon in relation to new academics’ engagement with socially just pedagogies. The paper is intended to be a useful resource specifically, but not exclusively for, new academics entering the field of higher education in South Africa.

Student activism in a time of crisis in South Africa: The quest for ‘black power’

Higher Education in South Africa has been in crisis over recent years. University systems in many parts of South Africa have witnessed student protest, as well as ongoing violence, resulting in many campuses turning into spaces of violent confrontation between students and police. This paper examines student social activism in the higher education sector in South Africa, especially the Nelson Mandela University, as well as the patterns that exist and frame student social activism in pursuit of ‘black power.’ Furthermore, the paper notes the strong sense of solidarity and unity amongst students, despite these existent challenges. The paper will also present a historical analysis of student activism in South Africa with the aim of demonstrating the longstanding and persistent student politics as well as the student dissatisfaction with, the way in which the higher education has been governed in South Africa. Keywords: black power; higher education; representation; student activism

Articulating a space for critical learning with a social justice orientation in an adult education programme

This article reflects on work as a radical-feminist adult educator and as part of a group of academics from 10 universities who have developed new national qualifications in the Adult Education Community and Training Sector (ACET) for Higher Education in South Africa. The qualification will respond to the training needs of Adult Education Community lecturers and practitioners, and thereby indirectly contribute to the education and training needs of the communities, unemployed adults and youth who require skills to find employment. In the design of this qualification we sought to ensure the inclusion in the qualification of the new policy requirements, critical transformative educational practices, and perspectives from community educators, as well as recent demands from students for a decolonised curriculum. Sometimes these frameworks are in contradiction to one another, particularly in a neo-liberal context in which education has a strong focus on the workplace. I provide evidence from a qualitative study on student motivations to study further that shows that whilst there is a concern with education for skills development to grow the economy, there are still present strong political motivations to learn on the part of students and therefore it is imperative to teach from all these standpoints. Keywords: context; critical learning; education policy; social justice orientation; student motivations

Towards decolonising teacher education: Reimagining the relationship between theory and praxis

We live in a dynamic world, characterised by major economic, technological and social change. Decolonising teacher education is embedded in a critical approach that aims to create counterhegemonic intellectual spaces in which new worldviews can unfold, in ways that can lead us toward change of praxis. The idea for this article was born out of discussions that took place during the various workshops of our recent curriculum renewal process and provides an explication of the subsequent outcome of the process; the newly developed, integrated Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) curriculum of the Nelson Mandela University’s Faculty of Education. This curriculum is underpinned by a critical, conceptual framework of teacher development, progressing from ‘ bridging ,’ through ‘ becoming ’ and ‘ being ’ towards ‘ belonging ’ as a teacher in the teaching profession. Drawing upon key themes which emerged during our curriculum renewal process, we explore possible strategies to intervene and disrupt various forms of oppression that are manifest in the current composition of a colonised higher education in South Africa. Keywords: curriculum renewal; decolonisation; developmental model; teacher education

Developing first-year students’ self-efficacy beliefs about academic writing through online peer collaboration: The case of Facebook

Higher education in South Africa faces the challenge to provide every student with an open and accessible learning environment. Educational institutions, therefore, have to make students feel confident and competent in their own learning practice and provide them with opportunities to develop positive selfefficacy beliefs. In the case of language learning, students foremost need to acquire confidence and competence in communicating in an academic context. This paper reports on a peer collaboration project at North-West University where a closed Facebook group was established to support firstyear students’ development of positive self-efficacy beliefs about a specific aspect of their academic trajectory: their academic writing skills. Students were instructed to collaborate on a writing assignment through Facebook, enabling them to discuss their writing and learning process. The results show that the students in the project feel comfortable interacting with their peers online and feel confident in their academic writing practice. The participating students considered themselves significantly better prepared to complete their task in comparison to the control group. These results provide strong indications that peer collaboration on a Facebook forum may have a positive effect on students’ self-efficacy beliefs and, by extension, facilitate students’ engagement with their peers and the academic community.Keywords: Computer supported collaborative work, academic writing, Facebook, perceived self-efficacy, academic acculturation

Why Efforts to Decolonise Can Deepen Coloniality and What Ubuntu Can Do to Help

ABSTRACTEfforts to decolonise societies, and in particular the field of higher education in South Africa, have frequently been framed in terms of “dismantling” strategies. This article examines the ethico-cultural assumptions implicit in this idea and shows that it derives from a realism of what Michael Karlberg (Beyond the Culture of Contest. Oxford: George Ronald, 2004) calls “normative adversarialism”, where power is negotiated conflictually and contests, struggles, and protests are seen as natural and inevitable strategies of social organisation. Such approaches are unattractive, as they effectively deepen coloniality rather than unravelling it. The African moral philosophy of ubuntu provides a very different realism, where processes of decolonisation can be framed as evolutionary, developmental, and integrative. Through the lens of ubuntu, decolonisation can be reimagined as a constructive process of resilience that significantly transcends coloniality. As such, this article also provides a non-exhaustive discourse analysis of how and to what end some decolonisation debates shape and are informed by various understandings of power.

Change agency and higher education in South Africa

This article applies change agency to the institutions of higher education in South Africa – referring here to all the post-school institutions and educators in general and more specifically focused on the unique opportunities and responsibilities towards change agency in theological training. The focus is on the characteristics of a change agent, which could be an individual or a group. Seemingly, change is not going to be initiated in a ‘top-down’ approach; therefore, this article suggests a ‘bottom-up’ approach, starting with a change agent (an individual or a group) to become enthusiastic and active to bring about change. The method of constructivism is used, complemented by a general literature review of the past 70 years, filled with definitions of change agents and change agency. After the discussion of a few models, the researcher ventures to propose a way in which change agency can find a foothold among theological educators in higher education institutions in South Africa.

Internal barriers to supply chain management implementation in a South African traditional university

Background: The demand for higher education in South Africa continues to increase, placing pressure on public higher education institutions to satisfy this demand. Supply chain management is one of the practices that may be implemented to ensure that public universities improve their operations and can, therefore, meet the increased demand for higher education in the country.Objectives: This study aimed to explore the barriers to the implementation of supply chain management practices at a South African public university.Method: The study used a qualitative case study approach using a sample of 17 members of management and staff at a South African traditional university in the Limpopo Province. Data were collected using a combination of a focus group discussion and semi-structured in-depth interviews.Results: The study generated eight themes that embody the barriers to the implementation of supply chain management at the institution. These themes were labelled as stakeholder buy-in, knowledge of supply chain management, supply chain systems and processes, procurement policy and practices, implementation of supply chain management, stakeholder change management, human resource management and organisational culture.Conclusion: Various internal barriers impair the implementation of supply chain management practices at the institution. Administration at the institution has invested limited resources, time and initiatives to ensure the successful implementation of supply chain management. The focus should be directed to finding lasting solutions to each of the barriers identified in this study. Further studies should address the issue of external barriers to supply chain management in public higher education institutions.

“Putting Food back on the table”: Decolonising towards a Sustainable University that Feeds Us in South Africa

The higher education landscape in South African (SA) has recently experienced a wave of student movement organised under the #MustFall campaign, where students demanded quality and accessible higher education. This movement spoke against the colonial character of the curriculum, demographic representation, institutional cultures, and architecture of the university in South Africa today, which excludes the majority of the students who cannot access higher education in South Africa. It is in this context that the high cost of higher education was questioned, with some questioning the very “idea of the university”, and the role of the university in a society contending with income inequalities, unemployment, and poverty. This article seeks to position food at the centre of decolonising tools towards a sustainable African university of the future. Looking at growing levels of hunger, and the lack of access to food among our students, I argue that in putting food at the centre, regarding our understanding of the curriculum, shape, size, and future of the university in South Africa, we might begin to transform the exclusivist, uncaring and elitist spaces that define a university. In trying to rethink the ‘‘idea of the university’’ in South Africa I look at one of the enduring institutions of knowledge in African societies—uMakhulu (“Senior Mother/Grandmother”) as a body that can reconnect the African university to its matriarchal heritage, in order to define a university that can feed itself beyond the narrow neoliberal understanding of sustainability.