Compassion in the context of higher education transformation in South Africa

Abstract

Transforming higher education in South Africa since apartheid is a mammoth task involving the length and breadth of higher education provisioning. The task includes developing a new policy ecology on higher education, governance, curriculum, human resources and student demographics. In this chapter, I explore how compassion permeates through the structures, processes and personal engagement with students within the higher education environment. Through a case study of a higher education institution in KwaZulu-Natal, I explore through three examples how compassion is infused in the structural arrangements (through policy and processes) of the university, the programmatic interventions to widen access to previously disadvantaged populations groups and student experiences of undergraduate studies. The chapter concludes with an argument for a humanistic discourse within higher education institutions that considers who the students are, their biographies and the sufferings they have experienced as a result of the apartheid past. This chapter is grounded within a transformation discourse and is deeply rooted in the ills of apartheid on the majority of people of South Africa.