New universities will ‘increase strain’ in South Africa

The South African government has confirmed plans to build the country’s first new universities in a decade, but many fear they are not needed in a higher education system already under “serious strain” financially.

Feasibility studies for the two new institutions have recently been completed, with construction set to begin in the next year or two.

South Africa's president, Cyril Ramaphosa, committed to expanding its higher education sector in 2020 to address skills gaps. One of the new sites is to be known as the University of Science and Innovation and will be based in Ekurhuleni. The other will be called the Crime Detection University in Hammanskraal and is intended to boost the investigative skills of the nation’s police service. 

“I cannot understand the logic for two new universities when one considers the disparities that continue to exist between historically advantaged and historically disadvantaged universities in South Africa,” Nuraan Davids, professor of philosophy of education at Stellenbosch University, told Times Higher Education.

“While policy upon policy refers to a single higher education system, this is simply not the case.”

She said students continued to have widely different university experiences, because the government had not provided enough resources for the massification of higher education in recent years.

“The country does not need a university of science; it needs renewed attention to the existing science faculties at the current universities so that students have access to better resources and adequate academic support and supervision,” said Professor Davids.

She added that a university specialising in crime would struggle to help the country’s police service because its current problems were “not academic” but a “crisis...of lawlessness stoked by a pervasive climate of corruption and political paralysis. A new university cannot fix a political problem.”

The last providers to open in the country were Sol Plaatje University and the University of Mpumalanga in 2013.

Teboho Moja, professor of the higher education programme at New York University, was more positive about the proposed new institutions. She said that transformation – the post-Apartheid process of societal change – could be slow, so creating something new might help to avoid some of the legacy problems faced by the country’s current universities.

And she said that new institutions might benefit from pedagogical and research approaches that were lacking in the current system – such as more field-based learning and interdisciplinary research.

However, she questioned why some of the country’s 26 existing universities were not asked to take on the additional responsibilities or incorporate new specialised areas of study instead.

Professor Moja, also a visiting research fellow at the University of Pretoria, added: “Two more universities would add to the struggling budgets as the new institutions would need major infrastructure, administrative support and leadership as well as the teaching and research staff.”

She said their construction would further divide existing resources, cause increased competition for talent and possibly duplicate some programmes and services.

The latest official figures indicate that recent years have seen a drop in the number of enrolments to both universities and technical and vocational colleges in South Africa, she added.

South African universities continue to face a growing funding crisis – sparked by the pivotal Fees Must Fall protests against tuition fee rises – as well as regular student protests over financial aid.

“The South African government is already under serious strain in trying to financially support poor students at the existing institutions,” said Professor Davids.

“Empty promises of ‘rights to education’ reside at the heart of student protests, which continue to bring universities to their knees on an annual basis.”

Recent disruptions over financial aid rules caused all academic activities to cease at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, and all classes moved online at the University of the Western Cape.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com