Fixing higher education key to

University of Cape Town Upper Campus on the slopes of Devil’s Peak

Fixing higher education key to progress: SA moots a four-year Bachelor’s

Leading universities have clubbed together together to write the roadmap for higher education in South Africa’s immediate future. The key proposal: deal with the achievement level of South Africa’s matrics by lengthening undergraduate degrees by a third

Fixing higher education key to

University of Cape Town Upper Campus on the slopes of Devil’s Peak

University of Cape Town Upper Campus on the slopes of Devil's Peak
University of Cape Town Upper Campus on the slopes of Devil’s Peak

South Africa’s historically white universities have long enjoyed facilities and research outputs comparable with first-world institutions. Leading historically non-white universities, especially older ones such as Fort Hare, also have a history of producing outstanding critical thinkers and activists as well as more traditional alumni. But have universities truly faced up to their potential as South African and African institutions? In the wake of a Council on Higher Education (CHE) report released last Tuesday, the answer must be ‘no’: fewer than 1 in 20 black and coloured South Africans ever graduate from a university, while more than half of all those entering higher education never graduate at all. This means that those whose parents were railroaded into Bantu Education are still themselves being discarded, unequipped for basic work, by state education. Meanwhile, according to the CHE report, white graduation rates remain 50% higher, on average, than that of black and coloured South Africans. These inequalities in labour supply will, while they persist, continue to postpone the advent of transformation in the formal economy.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) concurs: in a 2013 report, it mentions education outcomes first in a list of challenges the economy must overcome if it is to grow at anything like the rate required to end poverty. Quoting the report, “many labor market entrants [in South Africa] do not have the basic skills sought by potential employers.” The CHE, a statutory body composed of industry leaders, places the blame squarely at the door of the basic education system, but has also been careful to point out the turning a ship the size of Basic Education will take years or decades. This, according to the CHE, is time South Africa doesn’t have, and so urgent remedial action is planned at tertiary level. These changes are particularly urgent in light of the report chaired by Professor Njabulo Ndebele, former rector of the University of Cape Town, which showed that graduation and drop-out rates in higher education have remained static for as long as they’ve been measured in a democratic South Africa.

The flagship proposal by the CHE is a move from three to four-year Bachelor’s degrees at all universities and universities of technology in South Africa. The extra year aims at raising incoming first-years to the level that the State Senior Certificate (the old Matriculation Certificate) is supposed to guarantee. Bachelors which currently take four years to complete will also be lengthened by a year. However, to acknowledge the excellent quality of a minority of students – those mainly coming from historically privileged schools as well as a few centres of excellence in formerly disadvantaged and low-income areas – anyone capable of completing a degree in the usual amount of time will be able to do so. Critics may balk at the effect this lengthening will have on cost, but the CHE report anticipates a long-term savings – coupled with a very moderate short-term rise – in the cost of a degree. This is because the half of first-years in 2014 who will never graduate, stand to waste a large amount of money in tuition fees that will never lead to a paper qualification.

Reduce that number by even a little, and the country as a whole saves money. In the same year in which the University of Cape Town, the only African university ranked within the Top 200 of the Times Higher Education supplement’s globally-respected list, dropped 13 places to 126th, the stakes could not be higher: an ambitious young continent such as Africa is, should insist on seeing all its universities moving up, not down, in the world.

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