
Eastern
Cape University of Technology (Eastern cape Technikon)
South Africa is emerging as one of the world's most exciting
study destinations. This is demonstrated by the rapidly increasing
number of international students, now exceeding 47 000. A large
proportion of these students come from Africa and they are
here to take advantage of the best tertiary opportunities that
the continent has to offer, but many others come from much
further afield. Because of international exchange rates, South
Africa offers real educational value for money.
At the postgraduate level, many international students are
here simply because the most exciting research in their particular
field is being done in South Africa. The country's rich natural
and ecological resources, its multi-cultural population, its
inspiring history and dynamic political milieu, and the vigour
with which South African academics are approaching the world's
most pressing problems, are some of the reasons why international
students and academics are attracted to this country.
South African scholars, often in collaboration with international
partners, are involved in crucial research into the HIV/Aids
pandemic, the epidemiology of tropical diseases, urban renewal
and area-based development, capacity-building and entrepreneurial
skills development, outcomes-based education and the appropriate
application of convergent technologies to developing economies,
agricultural and seed research and many other important research
areas. In all of these fields, academics have the opportunity
to become directly involved with the social impact of their
research, and often make a real difference to the lives of
the people they are working with.
Academic research opportunities aside, there are many other
reasons for choosing South Africa as a study destination. Some
worth mentioning are the long, hot summers and balmy winters
with an average of eight hours of sunshine per day, the nearly
3 000 kilometres of coastline with some of the most beautiful
beaches in the world, the large areas of pristine wilderness
with more animal species than Europe and Asia combined, and
the fascinating mix of African, European and Asian cultures.
South Africa is cheap, easy and fun, especially for those
international students who come from countries with stronger
currencies. The international backpacker scene is highly developed,
the roads are generally good and the financial infrastructure
is excellent, with automatic teller machines (ATMs) everywhere.
The suburban shopping malls in the larger cities are breathtakingly
modern and one could be forgiven for imagining oneself in New
York or Paris.
Once out of the cities, the real South
Africa, with its wide-open spaces – and widespread poverty – becomes
apparent. Here, at the local level, the kinds of inequalities
that exist
between rich and poor nations, and the problems facing Africa
and the Third World generally, are thrown into sharp relief.
South Africans are at the forefront of global awareness of
the need for a more equitable and sustainable world order,
and the experiences of the struggle against apartheid informs
the work of academics, non-governmental agencies and state
institutions involved in these issues. The choice of Johannesburg
as the site for the 2002 World Conference on Sustainable Development
is evidence of the importance attached to the South African
experience by the rest of the world. Similarly, the launch
of the African Union in Durban indicates the leading role played
by South Africa in formulating responses to the challenges
facing the continent.
South Africa's entire educational system, from primary schools
to tertiary institutions, is in the process of being redesigned
for the post-apartheid future. The result of this process will
be a better, more efficient educational infrastructure. South
Africa is a nation at the cutting edge of change. This is why
it is one of the world's most exciting places to be a student.
South
Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki casts
his vote in the country’s third democratic
election held on 14 April 2004.
|
Study South Africa – A
Decade of Democracy South Africa celebrated 10 years of democracy on 27 April
2004, the anniversary of the 1994 liberation election that
ended apartheid and delivered majority rule. It has been a
momentous decade in which South Africans have enjoyed new freedoms,
transformed socially, grown economically, made development
strides and re-entered, after long isolation, a world that
has itself profoundly changed. There is no going back, as former
president Nelson Mandela said on his release from 27 years
in prison on 11 February 1990:
“
Our march to freedom is irreversible. We must not allow fear
to stand in our way. Universal suffrage on a common voters’ role
in a united democratic and non-racial South Africa is the
only way to peace and racial harmony.” South
Africans are proud to be people who, after a lifetime
of brutal oppression, were able to secure peace through negotiation
and reconciliation through forgiveness; to attain what the
world called a ‘miracle’, and what leading Afrikaner
writer Antjie Krog believes is ‘one of the biggest moral
contributions of the 20th century’; and proud to live
today in a vibrant, free and progressive multicultural society
with a rich history, spectacular natural beauty and areas of
excellence – including higher education – that
can compete with the best in the world.
These are interesting times. Change has
swept through every facet of South African life, inspiring
people to believe
that they can make a positive difference to their lives and
country.
Africa’s southernmost country has by far its biggest
and most sophisticated economy, and since the fall of apartheid
South African companies have driven north and invested billions
of Rand, the local currency, in other African countries. President
Thabo Mbeki is leading the New Partnership for Africa’s
Development (NEPAD), a pan-African development initiative,
and South Africa has been involved in peace talks and peace-keeping
across the continent.
South Africa is at crossroads between
the developed and developing worlds, and brings its diverse
economy and strong institutions
to bear on challenges of poor health, poverty and lingering
inequalities that are at the root of crime. Traditional rural
African life coexists with rich natural diversity in nearby
national parks, while the cities are cultural melting pots
of African, European, Asian and ‘coloured’ (mixed
race) influences.
This is a fascinating country to study, and to study in.
It is also an easy place to be, with all the conveniences
of modern
society spiced with varied opportunities for cultural experience
and nightlife, sport, travel and adventure. Despite the marked
strengthening of the Rand on international markets, the country
remains an affordable destination for foreign students, with
relatively low living costs and university fees.
Indeed, South Africa has become a highly
sought-after destination for students from Africa and around
the world. After long
years of international isolation, by 2000 there were 31 100
foreign
students here, or 5% of the total student intake. The number
has risen steadily since then, nearing 47 000 or 7% of all
students, placing South Africa between the United States’s
4% and the United Kingdom’s 11% shares of international
students. Four in five foreign students are from other African
countries. As former Education Minister Kader Asmal1 stated:
“ South Africa has become a major training
ground for countries to the north of the Limpopo River and
is more than fulfilling
its obligations under the terms of the Southern African Development
Community Protocol on education and training.”
During the first decade of democracy, intellectuals and activists
who had led the liberation struggle set about constructing
a stable, free and fair society founded on a progressive
Constitution, the multiple institutions of democracy and
a social democratic
government led by the African National Congress, with its
trade union and communist partners. The priorities of new
policy
were to break with the past, and to encourage democracy and
equity in what had been one of the most unequal societies
on earth.

South
Africa’s
higher education system is increasingly geared to respond to
the high level
learning and research needs
of South Africa, Southern Africa and the African continent.
Higher education
As generators of knowledge and producers of leaders, higher
education institutions played a key role during apartheid,
some in supporting and others in vigorously opposing the
white regime, while students were on the frontline of resistance
to minority rule. The new democracy inherited a large but
inefficient
and starkly uneven sector that was seriously skewed along
race lines, in favour of whites.
Post-apartheid, universities and technikons (now universities
of technology) have a different, less overtly political but
critical role in providing the intellectual foundation for
new processes and policies, seeking solutions to developing
world challenges and themselves transforming into non-racial
institutions that provide equal opportunities, redress past
disadvantages and produce the high-level skills needed in
a competitive technological world.
Institutions have become more accessible
and user-friendly for students and have opened their doors
to the world, forging
international links and attracting foreign students and staff.
The higher education sector has expanded and the government’s
target is to further grow the participation rate – the
percentage of 20 to 24-year-olds enrolled – from 15
to 20 percent in the coming decade, requiring another 200
000
students to enter a system that currently has some 700 000
students.
Higher education has transformed radically in the past decade,
mirroring changes in broader society and aimed at building
a stronger, more equitable and efficient system that provides
quality courses across a full range of fields, both undergraduate
and postgraduate. Dr Nasima Badsha, head of Higher Education
for the Department of Education, explains further:
“
Higher education in South Africa has seen extensive change
in the past 10 years, in response to two main challenges – first,
the need to address the inequalities that are our apartheid
legacy and, second, to ensure that the higher education system
is able to meet the challenges of the 21st century in the
context of a globalizing world.
“
Change was thus geared to meet both equity and development
imperatives. The government’s vision is for a higher
education system made up of diverse institutions that are
able to respond to the high-level learning and research needs
of
the country, region and continent.”
The government set four main goals for higher education post-apartheid:
growing access to higher education and producing graduates
who meet South Africa’s human resource needs; promoting
equity of access and outcomes and redressing past disadvantage
by ensuring that staff and student profiles reflect the demographic
profile of society; promoting institutional diversity to
meet skills and knowledge needs; and strengthening research
and
ensuring that it contributes to development.
|

Above:
Changing profiles: The proportion of African and coloured
as well
as female
students at South Africa’s
universities and universities of technology has increased
significantly.
Left:
Post-apartheid tertiary education institutions play
a crucial role
in seeking solutions to developing world
challenges. |
Positive change
Many more South Africans are completing higher education
than during the apartheid era. In this developing country
of 45
million, the proportion of people with tertiary qualifications
rose from 6% in 1996 to 8% in 2001. The proportion of black
people with tertiary qualifications grew from 3% to 5%:
among coloured people the rise was from 4% to 5%, among
Indians
from 10% to 15% and among whites from 24% to 30%2. Major
strides
were also been made towards other tertiary goals during
the first decade of democracy:
Changing profiles
There has been rapid expansion of public
and private higher education, and the racial and gender composition
of the
student and staff body in the public sector has changed
markedly,
in line with the government’s equity goals. Research
by the Centre for Higher Education Transformation (CHET,
March
2004), a Cape Town-based think tank, shows that:
- Student numbers at public institutions rose from 480
000 in 1993 to nearly 700 000 in 2002. Universities
enrol two-thirds
and technikons a third of public sector
students.
- The proportion of African and coloured students grew from
46% in 1993 to 66% in 2002. The proportion of white students
in public
institutions fell
from
47% to 27%.
- The proportion of female students increased from 43% in
1993 to 54% in 2002.
- The proportion of black (African, coloured and Indian)
academics increased from 21% in 1998 to 34% in 2002. Black
professional staff
grew from
21% to 39%. The
proportion of female academics remained steady at 39%.
Indeed, CHET director Dr Nico Cloete writes that South
Africa has experienced a ‘revolution’ in terms
of the increase in black students in higher education3:
“ By 2000, there was a majority
of African students both in universities (60%) and technikons
(72%). At some
institutions the composition of the
student population
changed dramatically: for example, the University of Port Elizabeth
changed from being 62% white in 1995 to being 87% black in 1999. These demographic
changes
must be some of the most remarkable in the world during the
1990s.”
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme
(NSFAS) is one of the government’s
most successful means of promoting equity and redress in
higher education, through the provision of loans and bursaries
to poor
students. The number
of awards made
by the NSFAS grew from 7 240 grants worth R22 million in
1991, to 93 500 awards worth nearly R600 million in 2001. Today,
nearly
one in five
South African students
receive NSFAS grants, turning dreams of higher education
into reality for the poor.
Changes in further education and training echo
those in higher education, with 152 technical colleges restructured
into
50 stronger institutions
that government
intends to fill the gap between schooling and higher education
for many disadvantaged students, and to open up opportunities
for the
85% of school
leavers not
accommodated in universities. Restructuring and change in
the college sector has already
yielded positive results, with the sector growing by 17%
between 1998 and 2001, to enrol
350 000 students – half of the number in higher education. The government’s
target is for a million students in a further education sector
offering 400 courses by 2010, and 750 000 students in universities.

The uneven school system in South Africa remains a problem
even ten years
after the end of apartheid. Here, a young scholar
from the Northern Province has
successfully passed her matric
for the second time and met the necessary entrance
requirements
which will enable her to attend university.
Success rates and courses
South Africa’s uneven school system, another legacy of apartheid, means
that many bright but disadvantaged students – mostly from poor African
families – are ill-prepared for university. This
leads to high drop out and repeat rates, which are a personal
disappointment
and place
a financial burden
on the system. The country also has a pressing high-level
skills shortage and needs more graduates, especially from
science, engineering
and technology
(SET)
and from masters and doctoral courses. Public higher education
has responded to these demands in the past 10 years, according
to CHET:
- Student success rates improved between 1998 and 2002,
with the ratio of degree credits to enrolments increasing
from
66% to
69%.
- The average success rates of African students rose from
57% in 1999 to 64% in 2002, closing in on the 75% rate
for coloureds
and Indians
and 80%
for
whites.
- The share of SET students grew from 19% in 1993 to 30%
in 2002.
- Graduate numbers grew by 10% in the five years to 2002,
from 89 000 to 98 000.
- The number of qualified postgraduates grew by 40% in
that period. Masters and doctoral enrolments rose by
52% from
31 000 to 47 000 students.
Restructuring
The apartheid regime created different universities for
different race groups, often in close proximity and
offering the same
courses, but
neglected the
development of historically black institutions. In
a country with scarce resources, with
institutions of uneven capacity, there was an urgent
need to cut down on costly duplication and improve
quality across
the
sector.
After several years of investigation and consultation,
the government announced plans to radically restructure
higher
education through
mergers and incorporations
that would be completed by January 2005 and would create
22 institutions out of an existing 36 universities
and technikons. Out of the
36 institutions 22
were selected for mergers, four for major incorporations
(or
loss of facilities), one was being dismantled and its
multi-sites slotted
into
other institutions,
and there are 10 new university names.
Dr Badsha stresses:
“ No site of learning in South Africa has been closed.
The idea of restructuring has been to build a stronger higher
education system
with new institutions that are better able to meet demands of the future,
such as sustaining
student
growth,
creating new programme areas and increasing research
capacity. Students will benefit from the improved capacity and very different
histories
of each
of the
merging partners. We hope to give rise to truly South
African institutions that can draw on the strengths of their partners and
create new
identities that
are
neither black nor white.”
Restructuring, supported by a Merger Unit in the
Department of Education, will create two additional
institutions
in Northern Cape and Mpumalanga
provinces, which currently have no provision. It
also introduces a new type of “comprehensive” university
out of existing or merging institutions, which will differ from “research” and “technology” universities
by offering a mix of programmes. “Comprhensive” universities, said
Dr Asmal, were a ‘creative contribution’ to
higher education, whose transformation and restructuring:… herald
the way for a system that is equitable in its distribution
of resources and opportunities, academically and financially
sustainable and productive so
that it can more effectively meet the teaching, skills
development and research needs of our country. Far-reaching changes will
contribute
to the
development
of new institutional cultures able to nurture the
future generations of black
intellectuals and leaders.”

The Durban Institute of Technology (DIT) was established
when the former Technikon Natal and ML Sultan Technikon
merged. |

Stellenbosch University is being retained
as it is. |
Quality assurance
South Africa’s Council on Higher Education, established to help develop
policy for the sector, has created a Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC)
charged with promoting and auditing quality assurance across higher education
and accrediting its courses. Among the committee’s
criteria are whether courses are: in line with
national priorities and
targets; contribute
towards
differentiation and diversity; offer value for
money; and enhance personal development as well
as social
development and economic
and employment
growth.
The HEQC began conducting audits of public and
private institutions in 2004. All institutions,
strong and
weak, will come under
scrutiny in the
coming
five years to ensure that they are achieving quality
in teaching, learning, research
and community service. The audits will set a framework
and criteria that in future will be used as benchmarks
to measure
quality.
Institutions will
be
held accountable
for improving quality, where it is lacking.
In a country that has until now had no
agreed means of quality assurance, the HEQC’s activities will be key to improving the performance of institutions,
to assuring students of the quality of their courses and in responding to the
globalization of higher education, which has opened doors to an army of international
institutions to set up shop in South Africa and elsewhere. Quality will be assessed
in accordance with institutions’ mission
statements and national policy goals, says Council
on Higher
Education CEO Saleem
Badat4:
" If an institution claims to be a world
class African institution, it must prove that it has the
internal quality management systems
to validate the claim. The
audits are fundamentally about higher education
institutions becoming powerhouses of the production of highly
knowledgeable, skilled
and socially committed
graduates,
and of knowledge and research for reconstruction
and development."

University of Kwa-Zulu Natal |
Planning and funding
Higher education is one area of massive, positive post-apartheid
change, and these are but a few examples of how the sector
has changed. There have been many other developments, among
them:
The introduction in 2002 of a first national higher education management information
system, HEMIS, that enables benchmarks for the sector to be constructed and
institutional performance to be measured through comparisons and over time. The government has adopted a Language Policy Framework
for Higher Education, which supports the widespread use of English in universities
but is an attempt
to nurture South Africa’s rich linguistic diversity, expressed in 11
official languages.
In 2003 government announced new financial reporting regulations that compel
institutions to comply with strict accounting and corporate governance
standards. The regulations will hold institutions accountable for the effective
and
efficient usage of public funds, and will help identify issues that need
urgent
attention.
Plans are afoot for a National Higher Education Information and Applications
Service, which will for the first time supply would-be students with
guidance and information about opportunities across the sector, and enable
progress
in equity to be monitored.
Planning and funding are key mechanisms for steering higher education
towards transformation goals. A new funding system was introduced in
2004, involving
a cyclical process in which state funding depends on three-year rolling
plans developed by universities, their graduation rates, research outputs,
equity
and other targets.
Education consumes the biggest slice of South Africa’s social services
budget, drawing 23% or R76 billion during the 2004-05 financial year. Education
spending will grow to R81 billion in 2005 and R86 billion in 2006. Nearly R10
billion was set aside for tertiary education in 2004-05, with an extra R3 billion
allocated for restructuring and recapitalization over the coming years and
R280 million to replenish the student aid scheme. Resources are scarce but
South Africa’s commitment to education is deep. As Nelson Mandela
wrote in his 1994 book, Long Walk to Freedom:
“ Education is the great engine to personal development.
It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor,
that the son of a mine
worker can become the head of a mine, that the child of farm workers
can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make of what
we have, not what
we are given, that separates one person from another." |