P Mlambo-Ngcuka: Opening of Unisa academic year

1 February 2007

Dr Mathews Phosa: Chairperson of the Unisa Council
Professor Barney Pityana: Principal and Vice-Chancellor
Professor Neo Mathabe: Pro Vice-Chancellor
Vice-Principals
Executive management
Council members
His Excellency Mr Aristide and Madame Aristide
Honoured guests, staff and students of Unisa

Introduction

First let me take this opportunity to thank the Council of Unisa for
extending this invitation to us on the occasion of the opening of Unisa's
academic year.

Let me also congratulate Professor Barney Pityana on the extension of his
contract as the Vice-Chancellor of this august institution.

It is perhaps a measure of your hard work, leadership and foresight that the
University Council has deemed it proper to return you to another term of office
to an institution that has stood the test of time, an institution that is very
well positioned to contribute to furthering access to quality education in real
time, wherever it is needed.

We believe you have just arrived back from a Sabbatical leave in the United
Kingdom (UK), where you had the opportunity to refresh your mind and refocus on
some of the academic challenges for the year 2007.

We look forward to the rejuvenated Professor Pityana and wish the
institution a fruitful academic year and all of us trust that you will be equal
to the challenges faced by higher education in South Africa, in particular
Unisa, this year.

Chairperson, the Minister of Education has informed me of the positive
manner in which the merger of the former Unisa, Technikon South Africa and
Vista University has been implemented. There are, of course, many complex
challenges that have arisen from the restructuring process.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Unisa stands poised to expand and continue
its contribution to the human development project of South Africa and our
continent.

The launch of the new campus in Ethiopia recently is a milestone in the
African Renaissance's long road to quality education of which our Department of
Education and our President are champions.

Presidential Working Group and Social Transformation

South African higher education is in the throes of profound changes and
challenges in consonance with the societal transformation engendered by the
onset of democracy.

The Presidential Working Group on Higher Education has identified some of
the knotty challenges confronting tertiary institutions in South African today,
some of them include:

* Higher Education in the context of Africa and the world
* Higher Education and social cohesion
* the responsiveness and intellectual leadership of the Higher Education
sector
* the role of Higher Education in a developmental state.

The above points criticality reside in the symbiotic relationship we are
trying to forge between Higher Education and socio-economic development.

As a developing country with challenges of inequality and poverty we do not
have the luxury of producing graduates who are indifferent to the conditions of
their society.

Issues around cutting-edge research, social cohesion and the intellectual
leadership and insights that Higher Education can offer for the improvement of
the quality of our input into socio-economic transformation, as well as helping
define Africa's identity and role in the world today, should continue taxing
our collective minds all the time.

We are constantly asking ourselves the question: What role are our
universities supposed to play in consolidating democracy, in the development of
our economy through relevant forms of knowledge generation, and through broadly
engaging with society?

Clearly, changes in Higher Education are not only about staff composition,
student intake and gender considerations, but, equally importantly, the
identity, character and role of education in terms of socio-economic
transformation.

As educators you undoubtedly understand the imperative for higher education
to develop and generate the qualifications, competencies and skills that our
nation needs in order to drive its development agenda.

Socio-economic prosperity presupposes a well-equipped and trained source of
human resources capital, capable of facilitating the required development.
Indeed, there can be no doubt that higher education is a national resource,
fundamental to the growth and development of a nation and its peoples.

Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA)/ Joint
Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) and Higher Education

Where previously higher education institutions served as sites of relatively
autonomous knowledge production that may or may not have been aligned to the
country's human resource needs, there is now an urgent call for those same
higher education institutions to respond more specifically to national growth
and development imperatives, especially as articulated in AsgiSA.

While continuing to do the work of education and human resource development
broadly, JIPSA must address specific challenges in the short term with the
broad education framework set by the Department of Education (DoE) and the
agreed protocols with the sectors.

While all other stakeholders must do what they need to do to put our
education on a strong footing in the medium to long term no interventions can
be bigger than or isolated from the core institutions.

What has been done and is being done by our departments, schools,
universities and colleges, who are the custodians of our education system, is
invaluable and must receive our full support.

So how do we achieve the kind of synergy that is required to advance JIPSA?
How do we ensure that our higher education institutions fulfil their core
mandate while contributing in a fundamental way, to the growth and development
of our country?

How do we ensure that Higher Education in South Africa contributes to the
development of all-rounded, conscious citizens with the ability to participate
in and add value to the culture and practice of democracy in society?

These are some of the questions we believe, should take pride of place
during the course of the year as we continuously grapple with key issues
pertaining to the role of education in modern South Africa.

The quality of higher education is clearly in the interests of the public,
and plays an important role in nation-building and national development.

We have raised sharply the issue of unemployed graduates, and it is
important to say that among unemployed youth, the majority are those without
higher education.

Our focus is to ensure that we reduce even further unemployed graduates and
for universities to focus on ensuring our education is in sync with the needs
and skills demands of the economy. Relevance in education is a make or break,
and so are outcomes. Underperformance has to be addressed and the DoE has the
huge task of ensuring that we get good results and the knowledge is
relevant.

The DoE needs your co-operation to succeed.

We cannot underestimate the valuable contribution of higher education in
nation building, in much the same way that a prosperous, stable nation is an
ideal environment for the flourishing of intellectual thought within the
context of higher education.

It is that kind of synergy that we seek. The view satisfactorily postulates
the dialectical dynamic between higher education and government, and this is
evidenced in the undertaking by our Ministers of Education and Labour,
contained in the Human Resource Development (HRD) Strategy of 2001, to "provide
a plan to ensure that people are equipped to participate fully in society, to
be able to find or create work and benefit fairly from it".

The challenge, it would seem, lies not so much in agreeing that education
and development are inextricably linked to the progress of a nation, but in
ensuring that one is not perpetually subordinated in service of the other.

At the same time, a swiftly changing global environment and the concomitant
need to remain competitive and relevant in a global context, together with a
dire need for socio-economic upliftment, necessitates that we continue to drive
development with a sense of urgency.

So it is perhaps inevitable that we should see a shift in higher education,
from the emphasis on the individual and how best he or she can be equipped to
further him or herself - a private good, if you will (that is still evidenced
in most northern countries) – to an emphasis on the sector and the contribution
that it can make to socio-economic progress - the common good - which
characterises societies in countries such as Tunisia, Malaysia, Chile, all
developmental states, like ourselves.

We also have a lot to learn from a recently developed country like Ireland
that used education very effectively to develop into one of the most equitable
societies.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, if education is to serve a useful and
sustained role in South Africa's growth and development, within its own
contextualisation of a developmental state, then it needs to ensure that
education becomes seamless; that there is a discernible continuity from
pre-school to tertiary level, and we must also address illiteracy and conquer
it. In this regard our DoE is seized with an ambitious but do-able plan of
advancing Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET).

I am aware of the tremendous efforts being made by the DoE and by educators
across the educational landscape, to achieve that seamlessness. Those efforts
must be acknowledged, applauded and encouraged.

Ladies and gentlemen, higher education is charged with developing a
citizenry capable of participating effectively in democratic processes; with
producing intellectuals who can engage with the most intractable problems of
society, and with producing high-level skilled graduates and new bases of
knowledge to drive economic and social development, and to enhance the overall
levels of intellectual and cultural development.

In our competitive global environment, higher education must also drive
research and promote innovation and entrepreneurship. Government is aware that
the restructuring process over the past few years may have left some
institutions inadequately equipped to fully address these challenges. We are
also dealing with that. We are working with higher education towards achieving
the kind of security and confidence in their core mandate that will facilitate
even closer collaboration with government on JIPSA priorities.

The following has been identified as JIPSA priorities in the short and
medium term:

* the acquisition of intermediate artisan and technical skills
* the development of ICT (Information and Communication Technology)
skills
* retraining and employment of unemployed graduates
* high level engineering and planning skills for the transport, communications
and energy industries
* city, urban and regional planning engineering skills
* artisan and technical skills - specifically in infrastructure development,
housing and energy
* management capacity in education and health
* mathematics, science, ICT and language competence in public schooling.

I am pleased to say that even as higher education institutions continue to
forge their new identities they are collaborating with the JIPSA task team to
kick-start the areas identified for immediate attention.

Together and under the leadership of lead departments, the DoE in the main,
and the other departments with a responsibility for HRD, the Department Labour
(DoL), Department of Science and Technology (DST), and the Department of Public
Service and Administration (DPSA), we must also forge strong links.

Minister Pandor, myself and the Higher Education of South Africa (HESA) have
indeed been working hard to harvest these experiences for the benefit of both
students and university staff.

In my view as government we need to find a way of supporting more
post-graduate students in critical areas in and out of South Africa and
e-learning at all levels must be seen as a critical opportunity to leap-frog to
the 21st Century.

Our task team is also receiving ongoing reports of progress from all of the
stakeholders in the education and training sector and that is indeed
heartening. One might feel tempted to say that higher education is coping quite
nicely with both the demands for its core mission and the commitment to
providing the necessary human capital for our socio-economic development. I
must however emphasise the critical necessity for ensuring that the "skills
revolution" is successful.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I wish to restate that the role of Higher Educational
Institutions such as Unisa in a developmental state should be viewed against
the background of, one, an understanding of a developmental state, which must
be informed by a Constitutional perspective; and two, the need for partnership
with civil society.

We also need to create a public environment that is supportive and proud of
its institutions; an affirming culture; promoting prestige about and respect
for Higher Education, bearing in mind that Higher Education must be better
governed and managed; and must be more relevant to the societies they seek to
serve.

We remain convinced that, with close and strategic co-operation from all
stakeholders, all these challenges can, with time, be overcome for the benefit
of us all.

I thank you most kindly and wish you a successful academic year.

Issued by: The Presidency
1 February 2007
Source: SAPA