Article in Mail & Guardian: Technikons may go. Snippets: On the eve of a Cabinet meeting at which the "reconfiguration" of higher education is to be discussed, technikon heads on Tuesday expressed concern about rumoured plans to do away with their institutions. "Rumoured moves within certain circles within the Department of Education seek to obliterate the technikon system by proposing that all technikons merge with universities," the Committee of Technikon Principals said in a statement. Education Minister Kader Asmal first presented his proposals to Cabinet two weeks ago. In a statement after that meeting, Cabinet said it was in broad agreement with the proposals, but wanted more work done on some matters. This included addressing the matter of "structural reconfiguration". ... Even more alarming is a view floating around the Department of Education to wipe out technikons by merging all technikons with universities, and thereby creating a new higher education landscape consisting of 12 to 14 universities in total ...
Greetings. The May 2, 2002 issue of The Economist magazine (or is it a newspaper?) had an article on the status of higher education in South Africa. Their opinion, as I dimmly recall it, seemed to be that education in SA would benefit from extensive consolidation of universities. Why do you consider consolidation "alarming"? Cordially, Richard Kanarek
Decision on higher education delayed. Yet another delay -- this time because the SA Cabinet meeting ended early when President Mbeki left to meet a delegation from Qatar.
As one who is very interested in how things work out in South Africa, this is all driving me crazy..... It probably won't affect me, but the instability is aggravating, to say the least. Thanks for keeping us updated. clint
Judging from what I read about SA, the country seems to have a tremendous need for adult education of the trades and vocational type. That means relatively open admissions sub-university-level institutions similar to American community colleges and British further-education colleges. So these proposals to abolish the Technikons seems to be precisely the wrong course to take. If these schools didn't exist, there would be great demand to create them. What they could do is have the universities absorb the Technikons' degree programs. I gather that some of the Technikons offer degrees up to the doctoral level in applied and vocational fields. But who is in a better position to offer advanced education in these subjects, the technikons which teach this stuff every day, or more ivory-tower universities? So the best thing might be to leave the instruction for these programs in the technikons, but have the degrees granted by a cooperating university through some British-style validation arrangement. That way the technikons could concentrate on educating a less academically prepared market segment that nevertheless needs useful job skills ASAP. Bottom line: South Africa should be diverting recources to BUILDING UP the technikons as the core element and front line of the nation's post-secondary education system. By threatening all of the country's post-secondary administrations with draconian reorganizations and by making everyone in the nation's educational system fear for their jobs, they are making any kind of substantive changes that might improve service to the country's people virtually impossible. Everyone's attention will be glued on redrawing internal organization charts rather than on creating new programs. How can an administrator plan a new service if that administrator may not even have a job in six months, and if the institution he works for may not even exist at that time?
I don't think we should read too much into these stories. There's a lot of political positioning going on, and so we should be skeptical of claims that Asmal is trying to shut down the technikons and/or to shut down all the predominantly-black institutions. I really shouldn't post these links, but I'm a linkaholic -- I can't stop myself.
I appreciate the articles that you post for us. I certainly don't have time to go look for them. Since you apparently do, I am glad that you place them here for us to see. So I guess I am saying that I am glad you are a linkaholic clint
