Minister Pandor's speech to University of Pretoria education-faculty students, Pretoria
Topic: ‘Motivation, empowering and academic excellence’
We have had a year of intense protests by students and workers challenging government, higher education leaders, the private sector and our entire society to concretely respond to the funding needs of poor students and to address demands for intellectual relevance and responsiveness to the assertion that universities remain spaces of colonised and undemocratic practices.
Responses to the demands that are on the streets, in lecture halls and in boardroom will have to come from government, parents and higher education leadership.
All of us have a part to play. The most justifiable demand is that the poor must be supported to access quality higher education.
The more difficult and one that will be an ongoing and challenging national debate is that of the de-colonising tertiary education. The conclusions of that challenge must be driven and shaped within the academy as it would be tragic to allow governments to determine curriculum renewal and processes of knowledge production. This still to be determined decolonization will demand much of you the students and academic leaders in higher education. You will have to provide ‘content’ to exactly what the demand for di-colonisation entails. It is a legitimate and critical call but left as a concept that sounds revolutionary, it is rendered meaningless and empty rhetoric.
This is one of the most important challenges tabled by young people in South Africa today.
As many have asserted, our institution seem to have continued to affirm conservative colonial norms of what constitutes knowledge and have allowed the fossilization of notions that Africa has very little to offer knowledge institutions and the disciplines they teach in a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programmes.
I assume by decolonsing, it is the intention to change what is taught, how it is taught and who teaches it.
All of this leads to the interesting question of how do we derive greater positive outcomes from the victories our new democracy has achieved up to this point?
In reflecting on these victories it is always useful to begin by considering the numbers.
The numbers
In 1994 we began the process of transforming our universities, and it is true to say South Africa has made remarkable progress in black participation, black enrolment and gender equity.
Here are the statistics:
- student headcount enrolments of 1 000 328 in 2015 up from 495 348 in 1994.
- university participation rate of just under 20% in 2014 up from 15,4% in 2003.
- a student population in 2014 of 72% African, 15% white, 6% coloured, and 5% Indian enrolments in the system up from 62% African, 25% white, 6% coloured and 7% Indian in 2003.
- female students in the higher education system up from 43% in 1993 to 54% in 2014.
- TVET enrolments in 2015 of 800,000 up from from 345,566 students in 2010.
- R60 billion in loans and bursaries via NSFAS - for all needy students, from all races in our country.
- doctoral graduates per annumup from 1052 in 2003 to 2258 in 2014.
This is the statistical evidence that our universities have been the site of significant change in the past 22 years.
The vast majority (over 80%) of the students in higher education are black and almost 60% are women. And there has been considerable investment in institutional recapitalisation and in new infrastructure across the system, including student accommodation and the creation of two new universities. However, as we all know this process of change has not been enough.
The DST's contribution to this success is mainly discharged through the National Research Foundation (NRF) whose primary function is to promote and support research through funding postgraduates and the provision of necessary infrastructure facilities.
The NRF promotes the development of high-level research skills through funding postgraduate studies (Hons, Masters and Doctoral). In 2014, the NRF supported 11 335 postgraduate students; covering 5.9%, 7.9%, 15.8% of all enrolled Hons, Master’s, and Doctoral students, respectively. Despite these small percentages, the NRF is the largest funder of postgraduate studies in the country.
A study recently completed by the DST on the retention and conversion of students in the postgraduate study pipeline shows that inadequate financial resources are the biggest contributor to students taking ‘gap’ years in between study levels, and to postgraduate students’ attrition in general.
In response to the need to attract world class researchers and scientists to South Africa’s higher education system, the DST conceptualised the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI). SARChI is aimed at reversing the brain drain out of the public universities and out of the country.
The research chairs under SARChI are full-time researchers tasked primarily with postgraduate training and conducting research. To date, a total of 198 research chairs have been awarded to universities and even though the chairs are awarded to universities the research chairs may operate from a science council, a national research facility or an academic health complex.
As a response to the challenge of upskilling graduates, the DST introduced a DST-NRF internship programme as a workplace preparation in 2006. The internship programme places graduates (Bachelors, Hons, and Masters) in more than 70 host institutions comprising science councils, businesses and corporates, universities, and other national research facilities and laboratories, with the DST providing monthly stipends for a period of 12 months. The expectations of the host institution are that of providing mentors and (research) running costs with the host institution also encouraged to consider the intern for employment at the end of the internship.
A number of workplace preparation programmes have since been added to the DST-NRF internship programme. In 2014/15, the DST committed more than R110 million supporting more than 1 300 interns, including support for the placement of Universities of Technology (UoT) students who need work experience to complete their degrees.
The success of the workplace preparation programme is demonstrated by the fact that of the 2 821 interns supported since the inception of the DST-NRF Internship programme (one such work preparation programme) in 2005/6, 1 210 (42%) interns secured employment during or immediately after the year of the internship, and a further 753 (26% of the 2 821) interns took up further studies through bursary support from the NRF.
The demand for supporting interns has been increasing. The DST-NRF Internship programme had an intake of 720 interns in 2015/16 with more than 14 000 graduates having applied.
It is clear from our experience that there needs to be improved support for and resourcing of post graduate education.
Many of our struggles tend to focus on undergraduate education, but if South Africa intenteds to be a global player, greater attention should be given to postgraduate education.
Fortunately we are making good progress in several critical disciplines, for example, the University of the Western Cape has been rated by the journal Nature as the top African university in the physical sciences, in some measure due to the university's involvement in the global Square Kilometre Array initiative. We have also recorded notable success in health sciences research globally.
2 the next part: choices, challenges
One of the sectors in which Africa has not yet made significant advances is that of science technology and innovation. Africa must focus on these sectors to ensure we end dependence on the West and develop the skills to lead our own industrial and technological development. In South Africa, we have devoted much attentional to developing Science technology and innovation and to creating an interconnected coherent National system of innovation.
In 2008 the DST chose five priority areas – or "grand challenges" – identified in South Africa’s Ten Year Innovation Plan. The grand challenges relate to, one, our investment in bio-sciences for public health and food security; two, better understanding and mitigating the impact of global change; three, achieving energy security; four, optimally exploiting the potential of space science and technology; and five, using science and technology to fight poverty and exclusion in our society.
With regard to the bio-sciences, South African scientists have for years been at the forefront of the fight against infectious diseases such as HIV-Aids, malaria and tuberculosis. Our goal is now to ensure our scientific excellence will translate into the development of South Africa’s own pharmaceutical industry, which will create jobs and manufacturing opportunities.
In the area of global change, South African scientists are making critical contributions to global work, for example, in the International Panel on Climate Change. Whether it is in the field of protecting biodiversity, or the development of more efficient management systems for natural resources, such as water, South African scientists count among the best.
Energy security is high on the world’s political, economic and environmental, but also scientific agenda. For South Africa, our undisputed flagship success story is our hydrogen and fuel cell programme. We have developed novel metal catalysts for fuel cells from the platinum group of metals, with exciting opportunities for commercialisation. It is an excellent example of the beneficiation of our raw materials through science and technology.
With regard to space science, the South African National Space Agency (SANSA) is continuing its impressive progress with plans well advanced for the construction of a new South African satellite.
Last, South African programmes to lift people out of poverty especially in remote rural areas through science- and technology-based interventions have attracted huge international interest from respected partners, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. South Africa is now at the forefront of innovative programmes to provide decent sanitation service delivery to impoverished communities.
Out of these choices have come significant challenges in additive manufacturing, bigdata, astronomysciences, and health innovation.
Finally, why should weconcern ourselves with science and innovation?
It is a significant path to decolonisation; it encourages the development and retention of human capital; it increases our competitive edge; it provides a firm role in determining access to our natural resources; and it promotes knowledge creation and innovation in Africa.
Half our population is under twenty-five, and they make up much of the 8 million currently unemployed. The critical link between poverty and inequality is in unemployment and that's why government sees in science and technology SMMEs the keys to the future employment of many young adults.
We are an innovative African nation.
Four of the ten nominees for the 2016 Innovation Prize Africa, the premier innovation initiative in Africa, were South African.
We are developing new markets for our products especially on the African continent that has just become our biggest trading zone.Although there has been strong growth in the domestic consumer market,South Africa is a relatively small market,particularly when compared to its partners in BRICS, thus effective trade partnerships are an urgent necessity.
Africa has a billion people and is one of the fastest growing regions in the world. We need to intensify our efforts of working to achieve greater economic integration and diversifying the range of goods and services that we export.
Faster growth is essential if we are to realise the vision of sharing our country's wealth.But it is not sufficient.We need to ensure that growth is also inclusive.The benefits of growth need to be more equitably shared.
The most important instrument to achieve this is faster job creation. In our situation,where some sectors of the economy already provide decent jobs,we need to combine mass absorption in to the labour market with a determination to protect and expand access to these decent jobs.We have to promote and grow industries that are labour absorbing, such as mining, agriculture,construction, hospitality and small businesses.We also have to grow the more advanced sectors of the economy, such as manufacturing, financial services,tele-communications and businesses services.
For that we need high skills, science and innovation.
Thank you.
