South African University System Research Articles

A Critical View On Doctoral Supervisor Capacity Development At A South African University Of Technology

Growing the number of doctoral graduates, increasing the capacity for study supervision, and enhancing the quality of research output and impact remain some of the many challenges for higher education institutions in South Africa – especially for universities of technology (UoTs). Study supervisors at UoTs often lack sufficient experience and capacity to guide doctoral students to timely and successful completion. This article explores one such case as an example of critically assessing the capacity, quality, and effectiveness of supervisory development at a UoT. Our valuational stance involves observing aspects of institutional support to grow supervision capacity, comparing research performance to peer universities in the UoT cluster and engaging the South African university system as related to relevant literature on doctoral supervision and graduation. The selected institutional case revealed that supervisory capacity and subsequent graduations have improved significantly over time. However, the challenge remains to graduate increasing numbers of doctoral students, hence the need for further enhancing supervisory capacity. The inquiry also points to the need for increasing throughput figures and graduation in meeting institutional targets. The UoT under scrutiny had introduced several strategies to capacitate doctoral supervisors, including promoting relevant supervisory skills, scientific writing and communication. It also promoted research dissemination, incentives to support research capacity development, and policies to enhance quality supervision. Since the range and scope of developmental actions and activities at the selected UoT were too broad to evaluate in one project, the focus was on one aspect of supervisor support, namely an institution-wide postgraduate supervision developmental programme. Programme results for the period 2017 to 2021 were critically evaluated, addressing two key dimensions: enhancing doctoral supervision capacity and trends in doctoral graduations. These dimensions are discussed against the background of relevant literature on supervisory capacity, peer UoT cluster trends in South Africa, as well as trends related to the whole public university system in South Africa. The article concludes with important lessons learnt from the institutional case and suggestions to enhance research into doctoral supervisor developmental interventions within an UoT context.

Practical Theology and Social Just Pedagogies as Decoloniality Space

Higher education institutions in South Africa are still dominated by colonial traditions, course content, staff with colonial privileges and attachments, and discriminatory structures and systems. Practical theology and theologians are no exception. This article seeks to investigate the correlations between social just pedagogies and social justice. Social just pedagogies consider the role of the students, lecturers, and non-human phenomena as contributing to epistemology and agency formation. Normative pedagogies remain important criteria for knowledge production and graduate attributes within the South African higher education landscape. Within practical theology, the pedagogies that are used to form students and impart knowledge are still dominated by classical teaching methods that are power-centred and biased towards the privileged. The aim of this article is thus not to replace the normative pedagogies but to challenge the normativity and essentialism that has characterised colonial, race-related, and top-down knowledge production. I will introduce a social just pedagogy of teaching practical theology that critically engages and challenges the privileged normative position of classical practical theology. A social just pedagogy will bring the centre of learning and teaching into the structure of the lecture room, a participatory method of knowledge production, students, and the lecturers. The hierarchical structure of the South African university system will be engaged with as an instrument of traditional classical knowledge production systems. Teaching practical theology through social just pedagogies will also contribute to social justice within democratic South Africa. The question that I will address is how teaching practical theology at higher education institutions can contribute to the agency of social justice in South Africa.

Contemporary Campus Life: transformation, manic managerialism and academentia by Keyan G Tomaselli

Reviewed by: Contemporary Campus Life: transformation, manic managerialism and academentia by Keyan G Tomaselli Robert Morrell (bio) Keyan G Tomaselli (2021) Contemporary Campus Life: transformation, manic managerialism and academentia. Cape Town: HSRC Press Keyan Tomaselli has written an unusual book that focuses on the state of universities in South Africa and in this respect, builds on a recent literature that includes Jonathan Jansen’s As by Fire and Adam Habib’s Rage and Rebels. Tomaselli draws on his work experiences of campus life at Rhodes, Wits, UKZN and the University of Johannesburg. His book is partly satirical, largely anecdotal but there is no doubting its intention – to identify, highlight and critique the many processes in universities that are the bane of academics’ lives. Michael Chapman in his Foreword identifies the paradox that exercises the author: ‘Tomaselli asks, implicitly, why the aspirations of new beginnings – the end of apartheid, the end of the Cold War – so easily permitted our entrapment in new bureaucratic “structures with no soul”’ (no page number). The book is concerned with changes in and to the South African university system. Tomaselli’s location as a cultural studies and media scholar is evident in his reflections both in the style of writing and the selection of evidence. The book is based on pieces he wrote primarily for the UKZN Griot over the period of a decade. His column took the voice of a commentator writing as ‘a West African poet, praise singer and wandering musician’ who is the repository of oral tradition (10). This enabled irreverence and seems to have provided a cloak of protection from official censure. Tomaselli begins with a prescription: ‘The academy anywhere should be a dialogically managed, open-ended organism, open to reset, rather than managed as a homeostatic machine-led factory production line’ (11). This identifies the academic labour process as a key focus of the work. What [End Page 87] follows are keen insights but often delivered in a language that labour sociologists may not find immediately accessible. The title of the book both conceals and reveals. The book does not contain ethnographic description and first-hand accounts from students and staff, descriptions of campus activity – from lecture halls to sports fields, from pubs to internet cafes. It does, on the other hand, have some of this description but not in a concentrated way that enables a big picture of South African universities to emerge. The sub-titles of the book are eye-catching but not necessarily revealing. ‘Transformation’? The book does indeed reflect on how ‘transformation’ has become a frequently used and abused term that dominates debate and is at the centre of a decolonisation politics. ‘Manic managerialism’? Management is generally treated as a destructive force, the binary opposite of academics and Tomaselli does discuss the capers of management in terms that invite speculation of irrationality. The final sub-title, ‘Academentia’, a word unknown to me before reading this book, draws on a similar trope, of madness, of being out of control. Tomaselli uses this term to refer to the current state of universities while signalling his suspicion of the direction that universities are being taken by Management. The titles of chapters are like newspaper headlines – designed to grab attention. They don’t always alert readers to the exact domain of the chapter. Here are the titles of the book’s ten chapters. ‘Hacking through Academentia’; ‘Cash Cows, E-Cow-nomics and branding’; ‘The backlog syndrome’; ‘Of science and souls’; ‘Of Bulls and Bears’; ‘Publications, Rankings and Abacus management’; ’Writing Africa and Identity: shifting (our)selves’; ‘Of Colonialism and Capture: cartoons’, ‘Blackface and social critique’; ‘Culture can kill’, and ‘The academentia sunrise’. There are no holy cows for Tomaselli. This book is therefore a commendably fearless engagement with many prickly contemporary issues. Tomaselli’s engagement also displays his lifetime attachment to radical views and his rejection of policies that entrench inequality (and stupidity). Managerialism is a constant focus of Tomaselli’s critique. He laments the decision-making powers now taken by Management and efforts to control all aspects of university life. He quotes a correspondent from UKZN who defines performance management as a ‘nasty corporate American import which in reality only...

Comments: Development of an early career academic supervisor in Statistics - a discussion on a guiding rubric

The authors are commended for highlighting a South African university system problem that has grown steadily over recent years. Much has been written about the dearth of academic statistical expertise in South Africa. In her Presidential address at the 2010 South African Statistical Association conference (see [1]), Ms Yoko Chhana, highlighted two reasons why statistical capacity building was severely restricted in South Africa. Retaining statisticians in academia was highlighted as a key concern, a point which lends support to the crux of this paper. The shortage of experienced staff to mentor and train the next generation of academic statisticians is a result of poor retention policies which therefore impacts on the development of early career supervision skills.

Transformation impossible: policy, evidence and change in South African higher education

A quarter of a century after South Africa’s transition to democracy, the rhetoric of ‘transformation’ remains firmly ingrained in its higher education policy and discourse. In many of the reviews, reports, proposals, and frameworks on the transformation of the South African university system, one thing stands out: an oversupply of rhetoric and a dearth of empirical data. This article is a direct response to how infrequently data has been used and seeks to reveal the actual quantum of change, albeit with a focus on an admittedly singular element on the transformation spectrum but one which nevertheless preoccupies South Africans: equity (or race). The evidence presented in the paper shows that the absence of a clear articulation of transformation, accompanied by a lack of indicators and targets to track progress over time, hinders the progression of the discourse to equally important dimensions of performance such as efficiency, success and productivity—all of which are critical in determining the university’s role in national development. The paper goes on to show that based on the data available, the public university system in South Africa is transforming given the increases over time in the number of black students and staff. However, without a clearly articulated idea of what constitutes change, one cannot claim a transformed system, and the political narrative of no transformation is likely to prevail.

Language, Ethno-nationalism and the South African university

This article presents a conceptual analysis of the relations between language, ethnicity, and nationalism – within the domain of the university. While an analytical distinction is commonly madbetween “ethnicity” and “nationalism,” here “ethno-nationalism” is used to highlight aspects of cultural continuity between these constructs and to draw attention to problematic “telementational” assumptions about the vehicular role of “languages” in influential modernist theories of nationalism (notably Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson). The empirical focus of the article falls on long-run institutional changes in the South African university system; and on the deployment of ideas about ethnicity, nationalism, language, and race. While assumptions about the vehicular capacity of languages have deep roots in the colonial and apartheid periods, these also feature prominently in post-apartheid debates on the transformation of the university system.

Case, J.M., Marshall, D., McKenna, S. & Mogashana, D. (2018). Going to University: The Influence of Higher Education on the Lives of Young South Africans. Cape Town: African Minds

Higher education in South Africa is in a state of turmoil. Student protests, increased state intervention, uncertainty and surprises around government funding of the sector amidst increased massification of universities, pressure on institutions to insource staff, calls to diversify both student and staff bodies, demands for decolonisation of university curricula (or Africanisation, as Msila and Gumbo (2016) choose to position these debates), and substantive changes in national policy directives have created a sector in constant flux. It is thus no surprise that a variety of authoritative authors within the South African higher education context have taken a rather dim view of the current situation. While Adam Habib (2016) focuses on re-imagining the future of the South African university, he acknowledges the stark current reality that the South African university system is not on par with its counterparts in other developing countries and that it shows limited transformation after more than two decades of democracy in South Africa. Cloete (2016a) similarly points to inefficiencies within the system (particularly at the undergraduate level) that are amplified by under-funding of the system as a whole.

The Presence of postcolonial academics in South African universities

Cognizant of the expansiveness of the African continent, our interest is in identifying the size and shape of African academics from beyond South Africa, across a total of 44 countries attracted to the South African university system. More specifically, and against the backdrop of the structural reforms in the South African higher education system, we examine the size and shape of the African academic cohort in relation to the South African and international cohorts. Following this, we disaggregate the specific African academic cohort in relation to their postcolonial formations, and we do so in relation to the distribution of African countries of origin. This is conducted in twenty-three universities, which are officially subdivided into the institutional types of Research University, University of Technology, and Comprehensive University. In effect, we provide an empirical snapshot of the 2014 African academic cohort in the South African university system. In light of this, we consider how one might take up a deeper engagement with the theoretical and paradigmatic dimensions of emergent African epistemes as a means of analyzing this relatively new segment of the academic cohort in the South African university system.

Do or die: student support interventions for the survival of distance education institutions in a competitive higher education system

ABSTRACTDespite numerous supports for undergraduates, low success rate has been a growing concern in the South African university system. Guided by Moore’s [1993. “Theory of Transactional Distance.” In Theoretical Principles of Distance Education, edited by Keegan, 22–38. London: Routledge.] transactional distance theory, this mixed-methods study measured suppositions that providing support to undergraduates result in continued survival of open and distance learning (ODL) institutions and promote student success. The study wanted to develop a support framework that will reduce attrition and maximise retention and success and to enable ODL to gain ‘fit’ within the competitive higher education terrain. The study is significant for ODL institutions to enhance an understanding of support for undergraduates, address attrition and ensure retention. While thirty-five undergraduates completed questionnaires, module coordinators’ perceptions were determined using in-depth interviews. Analysis amalgamated thematic categorisation and descriptive statistical examination. Results indicated that supports offer ODL a competitive advantage, reduced attrition, escalated retention and success rate. These results highlight the importance of support in ODL in South Africa.

Beginning with Property? Hegel and Unfolding Freedom in a South African Academic Context

Academic freedom is one of the most needed of all rights for a university to fulfil its mission to educate and uplift its students and, by extension, the society in which it lives. However, the question of what this freedom is and what it entails constantly unfolds as universities evaluate, critique, and educate society and this is at present under the microscope in the context of the #feesmustfall campaign and other the student protests over social transformation. In the article I critique Hegel’s concept of freedom, often considered one of the cornerstones to the philosophical foundation of Western society’s concept of freedom, which was also employed within a South African context. From this, it is possible to gain a sense that this freedom entails a mutual recognition of the other and a responsibility to restrain one’s own determination (or will-to-power) in order to ensure that the other does the same. Hegel reaches a stage where individuals mutually relinquish certain freedoms (like the freedom to kill or enslave another), and thus they create a space of mutual recognition where each sees the other as an individual self. This concept of freedom allows the university to remain solely on its own in the name of its academic freedom. The state recognizes this freedom as long as this relationship is mutually beneficial. The interference in the university’s right to self-determination is indicative of a much larger issue. Although Hegelian freedom enjoins a respect between individuals within society, it can also be used to separate society; the ‘we’ disintegrates in light of so-called ‘respect’ when one wants to exert their right to autonomy at the expense of others. What I attempted to carve out is a critique of Hegelian freedom and its underpinning of the basic concept of freedom for both the Western and South African societies. By adding four more pillars to the Hegelian three – democracy, equality, reconciliation and diversity – South Africa has already begun to see that the issue could resolve itself with beginning to understand itself through more responsibility, respect, freedom and so forth. Akademiese vryheid is een van die noodsaaklikste van al die regte wat ‘n universiteit nodig het om sy missie te vervul om sy studente op te hef en deur ‘n uitbreiding hiervan die gemeenskap waarin hulle hulle bevind ook op te hef. Die vraag is nou wat hierdie vryheid behels soos wat universiteite evalueer, kritiseer en opvoeding bied aan die samelewing. Dit is tans onder die loep binne die konteks van die #feesmustfall veldtog en ook ander studente-proteste oor sosiale transformasie. In hierdie artikel ondersoek ek die konsep van vryheid soos deur Hegel gekonseptualiseer, aangesien dit dikwels gesien word as een van die hoekstene van die filosofiese fondamente van die Westerse opvatting van vryheid, wat ook binne die Suid-Afrikaanse konteks toepassing vind. Hieruit is dit moontlik om ‘n wederkerige erkenning van die ander kry, en dit behels ‘n verantwoordelikheid om mens se eie wilsdeterminasie te beperk om sodoende seker te maak dat die ander dieselfde sal doen. Hegel bereik ‘n stadium waar individue gelyktydig sekere vryhede afstaan (soos die vryheid om ‘n ander in slawerny te neem of dood te maak) en dus skep hulle ‘n ruimte van wederkerige erkenning en sien mekaar as ‘n individuele self. Hierdie opvatting van vryheid laat die universiteit toe om op sy eie te bly staan in die naam van akademiese vryheid, en die staat laat dit toe solank hierdie Vryheid wedersyds tot voordeel strek. Die inmenging in die universiteite se reg tot self-determinasie is ‘n aanduiding van ‘n veel groter probleem. Hoewel Hegeliaanse vryheid poog om respek af te dwing tussen individue binne die samelewing kan dit ook gebruik word om die samelewing te versplinter sodat die “ons” disintegreer in die lig van sogenaamde “respek” as die een party sy reg tot outonomie wil afdwing tot nadeel van ander. Wat ek probeer uitwys het is ‘n kritiese beskouing van Hegel se konsep van vryheid en die onderliggendheid daarvan aan die basiese konsep van Vryheid vir beide die Suid-Afrikaanse en Westerse samelewings. Deur vier meer pilare toe te voeg tot die Hegeliaanse drie – demokrasie, gelykheid, versoening en diversiteit – het Suid-Afrika reeds begin sien dat begrip kan manifesteer deur verantwoordelikheid, respek, vryheid ensovoorts.

Internationalization of Higher Education: A South African Perspective

The evolution of South African universities continues to be shaped by both apartheid and more recent post-apartheid policies. Yet the South African university system is mainly an elite, low participation and high attrition system, offering a medium quality education. Moreover, there is uneven attention to the opportunities that internationalization might bring to South Africa. The paper explores South Africa’s position in a global, African and regional perspective, and looks at post-apartheid trends in the internationalization of higher education. Finally, it provides an analysis, looking forward, of the essential conditions for more beneficial internationalization. This will include addressing “brain drain” and “brain gain,” global dialogue and mutual learning, and collaborative partnerships, marked by a common commitment to sound academic values, scientific integrity, ethics and social responsibility.

A new look at demographic transformation: Comments on Govinder et al. (2013)

I noted when I read the draft of Govinder et al.'s paper on equity indices that it equated equity with transformation, and delinked equity from development and performance. This draft version of the paper fell into the trap of a prevailing South African condition: using transformation as a code word for race. Furthermore, the formula used in the paper produced a result in which several of the most equitable institutions were those being run by a government-appointed administrator. By this, the authors implied their promotion of high equity, yet also regarded the existence of dysfunctional institutions as a given in their proposed model for the South African university system.

A Caledonian college in Cape Town and beyond: an investigation into the foundation(s) of the South African university system

Adopting a historical approach, this article traces the origins of key features of the South African university system, viz the general nature of its undergraduate degrees, its heavy reliance on lectures to convey information and its extensive use of examinations to assess levels of student achievement. This historical investigation finds the roots of these features in the unreformed Scottish university system which was enthusiastically embraced by South Africa's first two teaching universities, UCT and Stellenbosch, in 1918, and which then was adopted by those universities which were set up in their image during the next 70 years. The article suggests that any attempt to reform the country's university system today must take account of the historical circumstances which produced it originally. (South African Journal of Higher Education: 2003 17 (3): 122-128)

A social contract between the public higher education sector and the people of South Africa

The South African university system is facing a crisis as the new policy period unfolds. This crisis stems from factors which are particular to South Africa and others which are due to the transformatory pressures on the nature of universities globally which are a result of salient changes to the processes of knowledge generation and dissemination. This article argues that the resolution of this crisis requires the establishment of a process that is led by the higher education sector that would lead to the development of a social contract between itself and the people of South Africa. It is argued further that this approach differs in very fundamental ways from the policy process that has been engaged in since 1994. South African Journal of Higher Education Vol.15(3) 2001: 10-16

Toward Conceptual, Policy, and Programmatic Frameworks of Affirmative Action in South African Universities

Debate surrounding the concept and goals of affirmative action is growing in the United States and other countries. This article explicates and compares the conceptual tenets of affirmative action as they have been operationalized in the U.S. and South Africa. It critiques the positions on equity and affirmative action stated in South African policy documents and by key government policymakers, university executives, and faculty. It also presents case study data on the relationship between affirmative action and institutional change at four South African universities, identifying emerging paradigms for democracy in that nation's higher education system. INTRODUCTION Much of the development of affirmative action concepts, policies, and programs-along with much of the debate-has been centered in the United States. However, other countries have used this mechanism to redress societal inequities. In South Africa, the transformation from apartheid to democracy has highlighted the roles of institutions of higher education. The development of a critical knowledge base and the preparation of students to assume key professional and policymaking roles in various sectors are central purposes of universities. Unfortunately, the presence of Blacks (Africans, Indians/Asians, and Colored groups) and women of all races and ethnicities in South African universities as students, faculty, and professionals is still limited in various disciplines, faculties, and administrative areas. Herman (1995), for example, reports that 51 out of every thousand in South Africa's White population were enrolled in postsecondary institutions in 1991 compared to 35, 13, and 9 out of every thousand for the Indian/Asian, Colored, and African populations, respectively. The 1996 Green Paper on Higher Education Transformation, one of the South African government's major working policy documents, details staff composition trends showing that Whites and men still hold those positions with the greatest prestige, status, and influence in the nation's academy (National Commission on Higher Education, 1996b). The Green Paper further reveals that in 1993, South Africa's historically White universities (HWUs) produced 83% of all research articles generated by the nation's scholars and 81% of all master's and doctorate graduates. To change these realities, redress or affirmative action has become a salient mechanism. Increasing the percentages of underrepresented groups and women is a primary emphasis of affirmative action in higher education. Other prominent ways to redress inequities and to diversify colleges and universities include: professional development for junior professionals, academic bridge programs for students who are underprepared to engage in university work, and the equitable distribution of financial resources to the historically (Black and) disadvantaged universities (HDIs) that have served the nation's Black populations. Various levels of resistance have been encountered in the implementation of such changes in South Africa. Several reports and pieces of legislation written or passed since the 1994 democratic elections have articulated rationales and ways of ensuring fairness and equity throughout the South African university system. After presenting a brief glimpse of the disparate education provided to South Africans of various racial/ethnic groups during the apartheid era, the present article explicates and compares the conceptual tenets of affirmative action as they have been operationalized in the United States and South African contexts. It also critiques the positions on equity and affirmative action expressed by various South African educational policy documents and government officials. To portray the relationship between affirmative action policy and institutional change in the nation's HWUs and HDIs, this article presents relevant findings from the authors' qualitative study of the history and goals of four South African universities. …

The State and the South African University System under Apartheid

This paper is offered as a contribution to the larger task of providing a comprehensive study of South Africa's universities during the era of apartheid (1948-1990). Because of the centrality of the state to apartheid, the focus adopted is that of the role of the state in university affairs. The inadequacies of state theory in general are acknowledged, but, it is argued nonetheless, that the state warrants special consideration, provided the limits of this type of approach are firmly grasped. It is also suggested that the state's actual relations with the racially fragmented university system are best conceptualised in terms of Neave's notion of 'boundaries' which implies flux. Indeed, the interactions between the state and universities in South Africa were more volatile than is generally portrayed in the literature and were especially so during the 1980s as the state struggled unsuccessfully to overcome the popular challenge to White domination in general and to apartheid university education in particular.

Foreign students at South African universities

This study provides an assessment of the potential impact of foreign students on the South African university system through an analysis of data on foreign student enrolments between 1986 and 1992. In 1992, there were more than 4 600 foreign students registered at South African residential universities. Of these 52 percent were from southern African countries. Since 1986, the proportion of foreign students from Africa has increased, while that from Europe has declined. In South Africa all university students irrespective of their nationality receive the same government subsidy. In 1992, the cost of subsidising foreign students was about R60 million. Policy on foreign‐student access will have to be formulated in the context of demand for equity in the South African university system, which is racially skewed, and where resources for redress are limited. The activities of universities, government departments and funding bodies concerned with foreign‐student entry, enrolment and support must be coordinated. ...