The Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology address at the annual Doctoral Conference Graduate Gala Dinner held at Birchwood Hotel Conference Centre, Ekurhuleni, South Africa
Programme Director;
Chair and NIHSS Board members;
Professor Sarah Mosoetsa NIHSS CEO;
Dr Rene Smith, President of SAHUDA and other representatives from SAHUDA and CODESRIA
Representatives from all spheres of government
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Good evening
Thank you for inviting me to this National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) National Annual Doctoral Conference.
Let me also take this opportunity to congratulate you on your 5th Annual Doctoral Conference, as well as on producing your 3rd cohort of doctoral graduands, and your milestone achievement of your 200th doctoral graduand in only 5 years!
I also hope you have managed to launch your NIHSS Doctoral Alumni forum, as this is an important support structure and ambassadors of the NIHSS going forward. I also hope you are having a successful conference and fruitful exchanges of ideas and information on your projects.
It is indeed a pleasure to be here once more to witness, first-hand, the efforts, impact and change that the Institute is making to the higher education landscape and in the humanities and social sciences in particular.
I must say upfront without any fear of contradiction that as the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, I am still committed to the continuous revitalisation of higher education by strengthening the humanities and social sciences (HSS) in South African universities.
Whilst we do indeed need to strengthen the STEM disciplines throughout our schooling and higher education system, we dare not allow humanities and social sciences to decline.
It remains my conviction that HSS disciplines have a crucial role to play in the development of our country by informing social policy, framing the systems of thought that shape our perceptions of the world, discovering and interpreting our past and our present, stimulating creativity and making widespread the tools necessary for informed debate about ourselves and our society.
On a beautiful and joyous occasion such as this, it is not desirable that I present a long speech, as I do not want to stand between yourselves and dinner, after a long day of conferencing.
However, I am moved by the remarkable progress that I see, so much that it becomes necessary to reflect back where we started, our progress and our future prospects in the advancement of HSS programmes.
Our Department of Higher Education and Training was established in 2009, with its primary goal being to provide education and training opportunities to all South Africans who are out of school (whether they attended or finished school or not and whether they have passed or failed) to acquire further education and skills they require.
In 2010, I appointed the Ministerial Task Team which undertook a wide-ranging consultative process to produce a Charter for Humanities and Social Sciences, which culminated in the two-day conference from 28-30 March 2012.
It is at this conference that I announced the formation of a National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS).
We established NIHSS amongst others:
- to redress the deficits and coordinate the programmes, projects, collaborations and activities in these fields in the tertiary education landscape;
- to promote the integrity of, and recognition by, broadly, the Higher Education landscape, the Science and Technology community and society at large of the HSS fields;
- to enhance undergraduate and post-graduate scholarship through a variety of innovations, including collaborative supervision of doctoral students across our universities;
- to dynamise the fields of research and teaching in the Humanities and the Social Sciences through a range of catalytic projects; and
- to strengthen a student-centred culture in the higher education system and helping create an environment where the critical, analytical and normative capacities of students are enhanced.
Those of you who were present at the establishment of NIHSS, you will recall that I committed to take up relevant recommendations made by the Charter report with the Minister of Science and Technology, particularly on issues relating to the National Research Foundation (NRF) and issues of financial aid for HSS students with the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).
As you might be aware, President Ramaphosa has reconfigured the Department of Higher Education and Training and the Department of Science and Innovation to be under one Ministry. This gives us a better opportunity to implement the 2012 conference resolution with the maximum speed.
Since I have been appointed as the Minister, I have engaged both the NRF CEO and the NSFAS Administrator to develop mechanism to expand the funding for post-graduate studies in all areas, including the HSS disciplines. I will keep all the stakeholders informed of progress in this regard.
Today I can say without any fear of contradiction that looking back, I have no doubt that the Institute has done well towards achieving the objectives that it was established for.
This is the reason that I believe that the Institute’s work must be continuously supported because of enormous challenges it still has to address.
At the time of establishing the Institute, we were under no illusion that it would become a silver bullet to all the problems and challenges that bedevil higher education in South Africa, and that of our country at large.
In other words, NIHSS is not a panacea to all our challenges in higher education, least of all to the entire field of humanities and social sciences.
This conference is held under the theme, “Building and dynamising the humanities and social sciences,”. Part of dynamiting and taking humanities and social sciences to a higher level is a need to take forward a much more dynamic multi-disciplinary approach both within social sciences/humanities and between these and natural sciences.
Technological advances that we are observe today call for such interdisciplinarity. I have no doubt that it is humanities and social sciences that are best placed to take a lead in such an effort.
I would argue that such interdisciplinarity also calls for more theoretical work in the areas of philosophy of science and ethics.
We are also in an era where there are increasing calls for what is referred to as ‘open science’. Is such a science possible in the context of glaring global inequalities in knowledge production and the continued commodification of knowledge and knowledge production? Is open science likely to narrow or widen the global gap in knowledge production, especially between the North and the South, and between knowledge produced in the private corporations as compared to that produced in public sector?
The catalytic projects paradigm that has been at the Centre of the work of the Institute further places it in a unique position to open enquiries into this and other related questions.
The National Development Plan 2030 (NDP) sets our goals for addressing our country’s challenges and articulates the role that higher education has to play in advancing the economy of our country.
Chapter 9, of the NDP positions education, training and innovation as central to the overall NDP goals. These areas contribute to productivity which enhances economic growth.
While not a solution to all problems, education, training and innovation are needed to solve challenges, to develop inclusive economies, and to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality.
It is a well-established fact that Higher education is the major driver of the knowledge system, that must be linked to economic development.
I therefore would like to challenge you today as graduates that you must continue on your path to be producers of new knowledge and high-level skills.
You must continue to assist our country as experts in finding new local and global applications for existing knowledge and innovation that will change our country for the better.
You must make yourselves available to serve in our science councils and research institutes.
On the other hand, science, technology and innovation is also seen as foundational in the NDP.
Compared to the population, South Africa’s National System of Innovation (NSI) is still developing gradually. This was noted by the NDP when looking to international standards.
South Africa also has a lower spend on R&D and hasn’t increased its public sector research personnel, PhD graduates, and research outputs enough.
In order to change this situation, all the sites of knowledge production (including science councils, SOEs and private industry) need to work together to advance innovation.
The NSI needs to be coherent and coordinated with broad common objectives aligned to national priorities.
Ladies and gentlemen
In reference to the mandate of the NIHSS, the NDP, directs that South Africa needs to increase the percentage of PhD-qualified staff in the higher education institutions to over 75% by 2030.
The current proportion is 47%, up from 34% at the time the NDP targets were determined in 2012.
The NDP also calls for the number of masters and PhD students, including those from supporting partnerships for research, to increase.
The NDP posits that by 2030, over 25 percent of university enrolments should be at postgraduate level. It also states that international exchange partnerships should be pursued and encouraged. All these elements form part of the mandate of the NIHSS.
Further, the NDP enjoins us to produce more than 100 doctoral graduates per million per year by 2030.
It is further states that in order to achieve the targets, we need to produce more doctoral graduates per year, against 1 420 produced in 2010.
In line with the dictates of the current and envisaged technological advancements under the rubric of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), we have established a Ministerial Task Team on the 4IR to provide critical policy advice and interventions required to ensure that our post-school education and training system is able to effectively respond and also take a lead in many of the envisaged technological advances.
The outputs from the Ministerial Task Team will constitute a crucial input into both the work of the Presidential Commission on the 4IR.
It is also important that we do not leave such work only in the hands of government. Institutions like the NIHSS needs to catalyse research into the implications of technological advancements under the rubric of the 4IR for humanity and the humanities.
It is also important that in all the work we do, we also advance the transformation of race and gender, not only in terms of demographics of students, academics and researchers, but also in terms of the kind of research we seek to promote, and the research questions we seek to answer, in the humanities and social sciences.
Our humanities and social sciences must also always assist us in understanding contemporary challenges we are facing in society and seek to assist in advancing solutions to those problems. Of course the challenge is how do we do this without sacrificing depth and rigour in the work that we do.
For example our society and indeed the whole of SADC region and Sub-Saharan Africa are faced with serious economic challenges and crises, as well as the crises of social reproduction that this has brought about.
The instances of tensions and clashes between the poor from the rest of the SADC region and poor South Africans, has a lot to do with migration patterns fostered by the crises of social reproduction and the poor seeking ways to make ends meet. These crises are also not disconnected from the increase in violence in society generally, including gender-based violence.
The above challenges and their associated problems also call for the advancement of a social science and humanities for, amongst other things, social and ecological justice and equality.
This is even more important in a world that is increasingly witnessing the resurgence of some of the most regressive societal tendencies like racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, drug and substance abuse, amongst others. These regressive tendencies seem to be related and reinforced by a world that is still in an economic crisis, where inequalities and the gap between the rich and the poor is widening.
Whilst an organization like the NIHSS should foster freedom of choice in the research that is funded, but it must catalyse a social science that seek to foster and support the building of a more just society.
The issues I have just outlined are also closely linked to the debates around the necessity of decolonization our academic and research institutions, their institutional cultures and curricula.
Indeed the NIHSS is supporting a number of such initiatives, and therefore my call is to strengthen these kinds of focus areas.
Another important priority for our higher education sector is that of increasing postgraduate enrolments in our university system.
The gains made by the fees must fall struggles to increase funding for undergraduate students has had the unintended consequence of taking all of student funding into undergraduate at the expense of post-graduate student funding. Yet the very increase in undergraduate students and throughput is soon going to increase the demand for postgraduate student funding, on top of the very existing reality of inadequate funding in this regard.
For that matter, even the demand for decolonization will not be met unless we produce blacker and women (but progressive!!) postgraduates and academics. More doctoral graduates will also increase the postgraduate supervisory capacity that we sorely need in our higher education system.
I would therefore urge you that we work together to identify additional resources to support postgraduate studies in general, and also in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In fact the very significant increase in doctoral graduates between 2011 and 2018 also has to do with the contribution of NIHSS since 2013.
One other challenge that we must confront as a sector is to ensure that we continuously assist our students to perform well academically. At present, only half the cohorts of students who enter our public universities, graduate.
Many students do not complete their studies or take too long to do so. Poor throughput and unsatisfactory achievement at undergraduate level limits the numbers and quality of enrolments at postgraduate level.
Amongst the reasons for this situation include poor career advice; inappropriate curricular pathways; inadequate academic and psycho-social support; alienating institutional cultures and languages of teaching and learning; insufficient infrastructure and facilities; poor living conditions and overburdened staff.
Ladies and gentlemen
We have long identified that the substantial increase in student numbers in recent years has put institutions under immense pressure, effectively reducing their per capita subsidy. Thus, since 2018 institutional government subsidies have been improved, a process which will continue for the next three years to relieve this pressure.
The transformation of the university education system has been part of the Department of Higher Education and Training’s agenda since its establishment in 2009.
Over this period, the university system has become more successful regarding access; student success and its ability to generate research.
Moreover, through the collaborative University Capacity Development Programme (UCDP), the Department provides additional support for initiatives in universities aimed at improving student and staff success, including extended curriculum programmes; student support initiatives; staff development initiatives; and programme and curriculum development initiatives.
The programme has the overarching aim of ‘transforming teaching, learning, researching and leading towards enhanced quality, success and equity in universities.’
The UCDP aims to enhance undergraduate and postgraduate student success; it drives the recruitment of new academics in ways that transform the academic workforce and enable high quality teaching and research.
The recruitment of new academics is done under the auspices of new Generation of Academics Programme (nGAP).
Our target is that we recruit at least 100 new academics annually. The programme also enables further professional development of existing academics.
Approximately 140 existing university academics will be supported to achieve doctoral degrees in four years through projects that involve partnerships between South African universities and US universities.
It is also with these challenges in mind, and the targets set by the NDP, that we have set up other initiatives, other than NIHSS.
Through our National Plan for Post School Education and Training (NPPSET), we seek to have a recruitment strategy to encourage high-achieving postgraduate students to consider an academic career.
We plan to advance the post-graduate teaching and learning through setting and monitoring institutional targets for undergraduate/postgraduate mixes and Honours, Masters and PhD enrolments. We are also investigating new methods of incentivising, rewarding, capacitating and professionalising postgraduate, especially the Doctoral and PhD supervision.
The merger of the two Departments, Higher Education and Training and Science and Innovation, gives us an opportunity to explore the modalities of a coordinated strategy between higher education and science and innovation to improve postgraduate funding and success.
But one of my key objectives is to tackle the institutional inequalities in our university system, especially that between historically advantaged and disadvantaged institutions. But I do not see this task as simply that of less advantaged institutions catching up with the more advanced ones.
The Historically disadvantaged institutions must develop their own niche areas and make new contributions in knowledge and innovation as part of their own upliftment. But of course this will require focused government support, as well as inter-institutional support and co-operation.
I know that this will hardly happen on its own unless it is built into our very university funding formula.
Another related subject is that of the identification and promotion of black and women South African academics in our university system.
This does not and must not mean that we do not value the presence of foreign nationals in our academic system. This we value a lot. However this must not happen at the expense of the production of black and women South African academics. I am eagerly awaiting the report of a Ministerial Task Team I appointed a couple of years ago to give me a report with recommendations in this regard.
I therefore take this opportunity to call upon all the graduates today to join hands with us and ensure that we provide the much- needed participation and support to the key transformational objectives outlined above.
With those words, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for lending your ears. I wish you success with the rest of your conference and all the best with your future endeavours.
Thank you.
