For sustainable funding and fees, the undergraduate system in South Africa must be restructured

Abstract

South Africa has the most diverse and differentiated higher education system in Africa-despite some persistent attempts at academic drift and mimetic normative isomorphism. Globally, in the 2008 country system ranking by the Shanghai JiaoTong Academic Ranking of World Universities, the South African higher education system was placed in the range between 27 and 33 along with the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Ireland. It is well known that South Africa consistently has four of the five African universities that appear in the Shanghai top 500. Even more impressive is that The Times Higher Education 2016 ranking of BRICS and emerging economies1 places three South African universities in the top 12: the University of Cape Town (UCT) 4th, the University of the Witwatersrand 6th and Stellenbosch University 11th. Brazil and Russia each have only one university in the top 12, and India, with a billion people, has none. China, with their differentiation policy aimed at producing 30 world-class universities, has six in the top 12. In the Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in Africa research programme, which consists of seven African flagship universities, UCT, the only South African university, published 2390 articles in 2014 journals that are listed in the Web of Science with the other six universities combined publishing only 1476. Similarly, in terms of doctoral production, UCT produced 205 graduates in 2013/2014, while the other six universities combined produced only 207 (Figure 1). However, it is not only in terms of growth that South African universities have excelled in relation to those in the rest of Africa. There have also been considerable efficiency increases. Figure 2 shows that while the number of academic staff increased by 26%, publication output increased by 150%. The doctoral supervision load increased from 4600 academics supervising 5100 students in 1996 to 6700 academics supervising 13 900 students in 2012. In addition, in terms of years to graduate, South Africa did not perform as well as countries such as Norway, the USA and the United Kingdom, which have large proportions of full-time doctoral students. However, in terms of part-time students, South Africa was comparable to the United Kingdom.2 In a book on the doctorate in South Africa, Cloete et al argue that the model of doctoral education requires a radical change that would include moving from 40%full-time students to over 60%, different types of doctoral programmes and full-time students being employed as 'pre-docs', similar to post-doctoral students.2 One of the most vocal criticisms against the South African higher education system at the postgraduate (doctoral) level has been the charge of a lack of transformation.3 The term 'transformation' has become so ideologised that it has little research or policy value. Perhaps one of the most inappropriate ways to use transformation is as a static concept; for example, to demand that universities must reflect, 20 years after apartheid, the demographics of the current population.4 What we should learn from this charge of a lack of transformation at postgraduate level is that bad policies have long-lasting consequences and cannot be redressed or wished away in a decade or two.