“An Overview of the Higher Education and Training System Achievements and Challenges”
Programme director
Chair of SARUA and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Pretoria, Professor Cheryl De la Rey
Vice Chancellors present and their representatives from all SADC Region universities
Chief Executive Officer of SARUA, Ms Piyushi Kotecha
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
This is an event that I have looked forward to and I thank you for the invitation. The topic for this year’s dialogue, Building Regional Higher Education Capacity through Academic Mobility in Southern African Development Community (SADC) resonates with our concerns in this country as we confront critical issues related to the building of our capacity. I am reminded that the key objective of the SADC Protocol on Education and Training, signed in 1997, is to provide a framework for regional cooperation in addressing regional educational needs.
I have been asked to provide an overview of the Higher Education and Training System Achievements and Challenges. This topic in itself is challenging and merits a longer sustained discussion. I trust that this evening will be an appetiser for further engagements on higher education, milestones reached and the obstacles and hurdles that still confront us. I am of course conscious that I stand between you and the dinner so I will reserve my remarks to some critical issues. There is critical consensus that as a region we have much in common and as developing countries confront the same demons or challenges. It is vital that we engage in such a dialogue to discover and showcase some of our successes and perhaps create a learning community. It is perhaps the only way that as countries on this side of the Sahara, that we can work as a regional grouping and develop a common strategy to ensure that higher education serves the developmental needs of our respective countries and strengthens our region.
As you may be aware, right at the outset of my term as Minister, I initiated a Higher Education Summit which brought together all stakeholders in education. 16 years into democracy, I thought that it was absolutely imperative for the sector to come together and share our achievements, our pressure points and areas which we had to address as a matter of urgency. It was clear that as much as South Africa had a unique set of issues that had to be dealt with there were higher education trends that clearly impacted on us and had to be confronted. Along with the much dreaded term managerialism, consumerisation or McDonaldisation of higher education – the knowledge economy and globalisation, we in this country have had to deal with the major crisis in our university education system, and that is a serious shortage of capacity.
As we attempt to reverse the skewed skills set in our country and commence the work of defining what is responsiveness of our sector to society and the economy, it is clear that we need to build future generations of academics. Our current backlog and uneven higher education landscape point clearly in the direction of building capacity. As a Minister, I am conscious of the need to expand and widen access both in the college sector as well as the university sector. This can only be feasibly done, if the backbone and engine of the system is strengthened. For instance, in 2009 in the university sector there were only 33% of academics who had PhD qualifications. This means that the burden of producing high-level skills (Masters and PhD graduates) for the country rested only with 33% (or just about 5 500) of about 17 000 academics in the system. This is an untenable situation as if South Africa is to contribute meaningfully to knowledge production, then you will agree that this situation has to be reversed.
The whole of SADC region needs to increase postgraduate student production. A study released by South African Regional Universities Association (SARUA) in 2008 showed that, of the total enrolments of 107 million students, the region enrolled only 1% PhD students1. Clearly, our goal of shifting from resource-based economies to knowledge-based economies requires high-level skills. If we do not pay attention to this end of higher education then we will be in dire straits. The Presidency recognising this and in consultation with me has set a Performance Monitoring and Evaluation (PME) target of producing 5356 doctoral graduates for the period 2011–2014. Our energies are directed at achieving this and working closely with all partner organisations in order to achieve these targets. I would like to make the connection between the quality of our education system and the need for well-qualified academics.
As you know, access to higher education in sub-Saharan African remains our biggest challenge and though much progress can be recorded, the journey is still very much at the beginning phase. The gross participation rate in tertiary education in sub-Saharan Africa is only 6.1%, whereas that of North Africa is 26.6%. The average SADC higher-education participation rate is approximately 5%. This merits our attention and it reinforces my earlier statement that the objective of shifting from resource-based to knowledge-based economies in our region will remain a dream, if we do not improve the state of our post-school education systems.
So, what are we doing in South Africa in order to address these and other challenges we have identified? I shall confine myself to three broad operational frameworks which are our steps towards finding sustainable solutions.
In South Africa we commenced with the new configuration of government departments established after the last election. An example, has been the establishment of my own department which brings together all education and training of the post-school system. This provides us with immense opportunities as we work at building synergies among all components of the system.
As much as this configuration enables us to focus on our specific domains within the education system, the challenges should not be dealt with in isolation to the bigger challenges of the country. For instance, the New Growth Path in South Africa prioritises job creation, thus challenging our higher education institutions to be innovative in their research and training programmes in order to produce graduates able to get and create jobs. This has raised the question quite validly, what kind of a graduate do we need, what is the skills/attributes set required and how do we ensure that our graduates achieve the outcomes of the qualifications as envisaged? In fact, the fact that as developing countries we are shifting to knowledge-based economies, the burden is on the education systems to produce the requisite graduates and skills in order to drive such a shift. This is not simply to reduce our education system to a narrow instrumentalist view but to interrogate in quite a deep way what actually transpires in our educational processes and how we link this to our own development path as a country.
Second, we have begun to define the parameters of our system and its depth so as to assist us with knowing the tools we have and that we can use to address these challenges. So, we define post-school education as all formal teaching, learning and training that takes place in the system beyond the formal schooling sector and leads to a qualification. That is, education and training to people who have left school or to adults who have never been to school. It is not a post secondary system, although it obviously includes post-secondary and higher education and training. I have just commenced the process of developing the Green Paper for our post school system and am conscious that as look at the inflows into the system and outflows into society and the economy, each component needs special and specific attention.
In institutional terms, the post-school institutional infrastructure includes universities, colleges (including Further Education and Training (FET) Colleges and various specialist colleges such as agricultural and nursing colleges), adult education centres and the skills levy institutions: the SETAs and the National Skills Fund (NSF). The skills levy institutions are not educational institutions, but are nonetheless an integral part of the post-school education and training system. They channel resources from employers to provide education and training opportunities to both workers and the unemployed.
In a way, this configuration alludes to a diversification of post-schooling education system which is necessary to produce different levels and types of skills required in our society. It has been said numerous times that no country in the world can expect to successfully benefit from the 21st century economy without a well educated work force, and diversification of the post-school education system seeks to address such a challenge.
Thirdly, improving infrastructure in our system is an imperative that we all should focus our energies to. There are different components to this concept which include physical buildings, internet connectivity and road networks. We have begun to address infrastructure in our system and, as I kept saying with other challenges, this is not just a challenge for South Africa but for the region as a whole and many other countries. An improved infrastructure in the region would benefit us all, both individually and as a collective.
In 2009, South Africa was a home to more than 83 000 foreign students, of whom 70% were from the SADC region. Our planning, therefore, cannot falter as we carry the aspirations of not only our citizens but of many from the region. Discussions such as the one that SARUA has brought you to are very important to guide and steer our system. The SADC Protocol on higher education provides a frame for the development of higher education in the region. Specifically, it seeks to “progressively achieve equivalence, harmonisation and eventual standardisation of the education and training system in the region”. The Protocol is useful in that it provides the foundation and frame within which to work, however, it is limited in that it does not provide any details specific to the priorities we have and the choices we need to make as a region. I would like to end by suggesting that there is a need for the development of a strategic plan for higher education in the region.
I am aware that the priorities and focus of such a plan have emerged through the research undertaken by SARUA over the last four years, as well as the strategic
conversations the organisation has facilitated among the regions higher education leadership. When the SADC Ministers of Education met in Kinshasa in March 2010 they considered the findings and recommendations from the research undertaken by SARUA and agreed to adopt the report with the five priority areas for revitalising higher education. These priorities include improving the data collection and statistics, strengthening coordination between planning and funding, increasing the use of
ICTs; developing the science system in the region; and ensuring effective quality assurance. These priorities can serve as the basis for the formulation of a plan that clearly shifts our thinking about higher education beyond the boundaries of our individual to conceptions of a regional higher education system.
This will involve the formulation of a strategic vision for higher education in the region over the next 10 – 15 years. I think that the issue of capacity development as well as the development of good strong visionary leadership and governance in higher education should be more assertively focused on or we will be on a slow boat going nowhere. I know that the SADC Secretariat was urged to work with SARUA to establish a Technical Committee on Higher Education to lead the development of such a regional plan of action for revitalisation of higher education. The establishment of such a committee presents an enormous opportunity for providing decisive leadership. Our role as higher education leaders is to engage with the leaders of higher education institutions and the political leadership in SADC.
I trust that this evening will be the beginning of many such interactions with our regional leadership.
Thank you.
