South Africa: 15 institutions to be axed

Now the technikons strike back.

 

RSA Higher Education

In its attempts to reorganize the higher education system in South Africa, the current Minister of Education has only succeeded in alienating the student population and the administrations of the universities involved.

Since the Minister has promulgated the "way ahead" for higher education, the new institutions are to be an amalgam of techikons and universities, at times assimilating older universities into new institutions. This has not gone on without protest. Perhaps the reasons for forcing mergers is laudable in order to redress the greviences towards the universities' aquiecence of apartheid policies, the destruction of internationally recognized universities is not.

Currently the students at the University of South Africa, for instance, have become involved in writing in support of keeping the name and image of Unisa since it has been a recognized university since 1873 and is recognized by the Association of Commonwealth Universities. As well, since Unisa is to be merged with the Technikon SA and the DL arm of Vista University, Unisa forms the largest part of the proposed university with 200,000 students and should therefore have the greater part in chosing a name (or keeping its current one).

It appears that the Minister was pushing through the Unisa merger with the name chosen by himself in time for the forthcoming meeting of Commonwealth Education Ministers where he could show the "developments" in RSA.

 

I agree that this consolidation is unfortunate, for the reasons that Bill, Dennis, Tom, and Brad have outlined. To be fair, we should note that the number of campuses (including those in rural areas) will not be decreased -- and in fact may be increased. To play devil’s advocate, some of the reasons given by the Department of Education for the consolidation are:

• Integration of universities so that the formerly “white” universities become more representative of the population as a whole.
• Economies of scale.
• Economies of scope -- so that the range of courses available to any student is broadened.
• Increase portability of qualifications -- by blurring the distinction between technikons and universities.

Of course, other countries have tackled goals such as these in different ways.

There are additional reasons for the consolidation of distance education. Many people in South Africa cannot afford personal computers, internet connections, etc that we take for granted. Consequently, the government needs to establish a network of educational centers distributed across the country to allow people to participate. In this context, consistency in technology and educational methodology is desirable. Of course there are many ways (other than mergers) to encourage consistency.

One issue that has received little discussion but that may ultimately be more significant is the government’s stated intent to shift “the balance in enrollments over the next five to ten years from 49% to 40% in the humanities; 26% to 30% in business and commerce; and 25% to 30% in science, engineering and technology.” (I’m not sure where degrees in education or law would fit into this scheme.) The government has many tools available to pursue this goal, most particularly through control of funding. This may prove to be bad news for those interested in areas other than business, science, engineering, etc.

 

I'm not sure about the Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (the last of which was, I believe, held in Halifax a few years back). But I think Brad may have a point here. The Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning is being held in Durban, South Africa from 29 July to 2 August 2002. The conference theme is "Open Learning: Transforming Education for Development." Could it really be that this is why Asmal wants Unisa to be renamed the "Open Learning University of South Africa"?

 

Asmal 'not convinced' over varsities' will to merge.

Snippets:

• Higher education institutions cannot be left to undertake mergers among themselves voluntarily, Education Minister Kader Asmal said on Friday.
  ...
  "Although all institutions claim to support restructuring, few institutions support mergers... The commitment of institutions to structured collaboration is itself in doubt."
  ...
  On Friday Asmal said the substantive integration of different institutions would take between three and five years.
  ...
  Asmal earlier said public comment on the plans could be made for three months after they had been gazetted. He said he intended to complete that process by September this year, and begin the merger process by June next year, unless he was convinced otherwise.

The proposed mergers have now been officially gazetted.


Gert Potgieter, ignorant gadfly

 

Mergers

I wonder if that means that all the letters written to him, the RSA government and letters to High Commissioners of South Africa abroad have been in vain thus far.

 

The South African Department of Education has posted their request for comments on the merger proposals: To invite Representations regarding the Proposal to Merge Certain Public Higher Education Institutions. Closing date: Friday 4 October 2002.

 

Big Brother Barney is keeping an eye on staff. Story about ongoing unpleasantness between academics and administration at Unisa.

 

Mergers Not the Answer.

Snippet:

• Prominent educationists doubt that simply merging tertiary institutions will attain the government's policy goals for higher education. They argue that increased access to and participation in the tertiary system are especially unlikely to be achieved if proposals the Cabinet recently endorsed proceed.
  ...
  There is also "a strong concurrence" among the 10 educationists that the proposals "are less consistent with the stated goals of higher education transformation, and more fundamentally a reflection of political pressures, on the one hand, and global economic pressures to downsize social services, on the other".

 

A few recent articles on languages used for instruction at SA universities:

Leon criticises education bill.
Snippet:

• Leon also criticised Education Minister Kader Asmal's intention to impose dual-medium tuition at all Afrikaans-medium universities across the country. "This obsession with uniformity, and misconception of the needs of transformation, runs completely counter to the spirit of our Constitution, which consciously promotes the usage of all of South Africa's official languages. Bear in mind that, out of 22 universities in the country, 17 conduct their business exclusively in English ...there is no shortage of English-medium institutions to cater for those who prefer not to be taught in Afrikaans," Leon said.

Afrikaans in Decline At Maties. (Maties = Stellenbosch.)
Snippet:

• The use of Afrikaans at the University of Stellenbosch is declining, and doing so sharply at postgraduate level, according to the results of a survey released on Thursday.... The university, historically a bastion of Afrikaner nationalist culture, was designated last year in a report by academic Prof Jakes Gerwel as one of only two of the current five Afrikaans universities where Afrikaans should be promoted. ... Mechanisms should be put in place for encouraging lecturers to use Afrikaans, and the university should promote Afrikaans as a scientific language.

Business Leaders Could Do More to Shape Education.
Snippet:

• Referring to government's plans to increase the proportion of blacks and women participating in higher education, Asmal said that institutions would have to develop strategies to meet graduation rate targets and language should not be a barrier to access. Technikons and universities should develop language policies that provide for parallel or dual medium instruction in key programmes, he said. He also said the education department was planning to draw up mathematics and science examinations in African languages. He said new words should be created for domestic languages which lacked expressions for scientific terms.

 

More embarrassment for Unisa (sexual harassment case against University Council chairperson): Sex and the (univer)city.

 

As a partial counterbalance to my last post (about embarrassment for Unisa), there's a front-page story in the New York Times (NYC edition, at least) about a Unisa study:

Rich, but Not Comfortable, in South Africa's Black Elite

 

Unisa council to discuss merger.

Snippet:

• The council of the University of South Africa is expected to confirm on Wednesday an in-principle decision to withdraw a court application to prevent its merger with two other institutions (Technikon SA and Vista University's Distance Education Campus). ...

 

Well, McCaps Motimele is gone. Some articles on this:

• Time runs out for McCaps to cough up.
  Sheriff to demand payment from Motimele.
  Orr greets McCaps resignation with tears.
  Unisa staff want to get rid of McCaps now.
  Motimele resigns as Unisa refuses to pay.
  Motimele resigns from Unisa
  

 

UDW staff reject proposed merger. UDW = University of Durban-Westville (originally established during apartheid era to serve people of Indian descent).

Best of luck to them. LOL.

The official comment period for the South African university merger proposals ends Friday October 4.

 

amaNdiya zindabad!

 

Inquilab zindabad!

 

Right! The chessboard approach that Asmal seems to be using
looks like a prescription for sowing havoc. I have to wonder what this rush to amalgamate says to the thousands of staff (let alone the students) who worked under difficult circumstances for so long in the "non-advantaged" universities and technikons. In my book, the UDW staff are really heroes of self-determination and community dignity. I can imagine the uproar here in the States if the historically black colleges/universities were told, under the guise of enhancing equality, that they *had* to merge with larger and wealthier institutions, and so end up obliterated. Conversely, pasting an ethnically different top management on, say, RAU (as an example) for the sake of political correctness seems like an assault on academic freedom. If the long-range goal is to set the Afrikaans or dual-medium universities at a disadvantage out of some sense of linguistic triumphalism, I think it would be a disaster and an impoverishment of a distinguished and diverse academic culture.

 

Bringing urdu out of chaos is surely the better part of valor!

 

Varsities get ready to rumble.

Snippet:

• Massive resistance against the government's programme to restructure tertiary education is mounting at institutions as the 90-day period for comment on the plans nears closure. ...