South African universities need to make difficult decisions to sustain the system

Published On: 14 October 2024|

Delegates at the 3rd Higher Education Conference engaged robustly over all the topics presented at the event. We present below, an edited version of the debate that followed Professor Adam Habib’s keynote address of Professor Adam Habib, Vice-Chancellor of the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) of the University of London

Question One: Professor Francois Strydom (left), Senior Director: Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of the Free State, asked about the erosion of trust between higher education and the society itself. “How do you suggest we rebuild trust?” 

Professor Adam Habib: The relationship and broader trust between universities and the public has become a global challenge. Why?

  • One, politicians have started attacking universities – particularly in the UK and many parts of the US – for short term political gain. 
  • Two, universities have become very expensive. A master’s degree in the US costs between $70 000 and $90 000; students owe $200 000 when they qualify, even before they start working. Many are burdened with that debt for decades. We’ve marketised higher education to the point where people are asking if it’s worth the cost. Yet every elite family sends their children to elite universities as it is the pathway to the future. 

To deal with trust we need to start doing two things:

  • Disrupt the model which charges £90/£100 000. If an international student went to Oxford or Edinburgh, tuition fees for a Masters in Engineering are £42 000 and £20 000 for sundries. That’s R1.6m for one year. Is that a worthwhile investment? Unless we create a more publicly driven model, we are in trouble. 
  • Fight the politicians back. Take the three presidents in the US unravelled by Congress – they used a legal brief to have a political fight when they should have taken the gloves off and had a public brawl. *NB: Harvard’s President, Claudine Gay, University of Pennsylvia’s Liz Magill and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth appeared before the House Committee on Education about the steps their institutions were taking to protect students from antisemitism on campus and encouraged to resign. We need a way to manage short term interests of politicians.

Question Two: Professor Peter Mbati (left), Vice-Chancellor (VC) and Principal of the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University:  “If you look at the issues of autonomy and accountability of institutions, at what point do the executives or VCs have an opportunity to engage with the leadership, particularly in the Department of Higher Education and Training? When tensions build, it’s important for a VC to raise issues quickly so there is appropriate intervention. 

On historically black universities (HBUs), it is my experience, having been at two such institutions, that we produce better graduates and more impactful research. Based on data from those institutions, I know there has been value for investment. I think it depends on the quality of leadership, the governance structure, and the available resources geared to the business of the university. 

Professor Habib: We used to have better relationships as VCs – you could get the DG or deputy on the line if you needed them urgently. That’s broken down and has to do with who is appointed to those positions. 

If we do a collective analysis and we are producing more graduates, with more confidence, with more research, then R125b is well spent. If we’re not, we have to ask what we’re doing. 

Government is allowing inflation to erode the NSFAS grant just as it did between 2002 and 2015 when it exploded. Do this for another five years and you’re back to #FeesMustFall. We need to figure out a sustainable solution to finance higher education because if you want to achieve social mobility, higher education is one of the pathways. 

Question Three: Professor Thandwa Mthembu (right), VC and Principal of the Durban University of Technology (DUT):  I hope I misunderstood you when you suggested that HBUs and Universities of Technology have had their bank accounts swollen by NSFAS money. All that has happened is the change of the source of student tuition fees, from parents to the State. HBUs charge a third of what the Historically White Universities charge. Their only resource is government – they do not get additional money. Resources of parents, the private sector, everyone who contributes towards the education of black children at HBUs, are subsidised by government. I don’t see how we could call that more funds. 

The funding formula is still the same. It advantages historically white institutions. I don’t even know why we are engaging in these kinds of arguments about the historically white or black universities. You have always preferred the elitism of the research-intensive universities. By suggesting that South African institutions are treating institutions elsewhere on the continent similarly to how institutions in the Global North treat universities in Africa, you are contradicting what you are saying about other levels of discrimination.

I wish you could tame down this very discriminatory approach between historically black and research-intensive universities, especially since you are a product of such a university, just as I am. Your attack on these universities and their quality begins to question the quality of your education and mine. I am a graduate of the University of Fort Hare – and so are many of the people here. Without saying their quality is the best in the world, those universities have produced excellent graduates, including yourself.

Professor Habib (right) taking questions while Professor Rushiella Songca (left), VC of Walter Sisulu University and the Deputy Chair of the USAf Board, chaired this conference  session and moderated the discussion. 

Professor Habib: Thandwa, you are absolutely right. I’m a product of – and spent most of my early career in what would be seen as an HBU and I wouldn’t be where I am today without being nurtured in that system. I’m committed to ensuring that more resources go into HBUs. The question is what are we getting back, in return? The debate on quality in the system as a whole is not introduced by me but in policy papers and reflections at the Council on Higher Education (CHE) and the multiplicity of research documents around Higher Education. Part of that is perception.

Here’s my question: We have R25b additionally coming into the higher education system through NSFAS. What are we getting in return for it? If we are getting better quality graduates, more stable institutions then I can hold the view that R100b is money well spent. 

Research that I looked at, from Jonathan Jansen to the CHE reports suggests there is enormous instability in the system. USAf should do a comprehensive analysis of what has played out.

Question Three: Dr McEdward Murimbika (left), Wits Business School: When you mentioned entrepreneurs in your speech, referring to members who are on boards for the money – they are not entrepreneurs but thieves. Do you see entrepreneurship as a challenge or an opportunity? 

Professor Habib: We need an enormous amount of work on the curriculum of entrepreneurship. Ecosystems are critical. Where did the largest number of start-ups emerge in the last 30 years? Stellenbosch. Why?

  1. Because they have built an ecosystem
  2. They have relations between the institution and the broader market
  3. They were delinked from the state and created an ecosystem with venture capital systems, innovation labs, academics. Stellenbosch has the kind of networks that surround MIT or Silicon Valley.

Question Four: Mr Ntsundeni Mapatagane (right), Director of Institutional Research and Planning at Walter Sisulu University:  You said the plan was to have differentiation in the system but the idea has dissipated because funding and rankings have universities competing for the same funding and students. How do we then go back to 2005 and rethink this? Our funding issues would be solved if we were differentiated as we wouldn’t go after the same students and sources of funding.

Professor Habib: I have always been a differentiation champion. We are allowing the homogeneity in the system to be defined by a series of rankings and we want to be like each other. We agreed in 2000 on programmatic (I preferred functional) differentiation. 

Differentiated systems work, whether in Western Europe, or the top 200 universities in the US. Wesleyan College is not trying to be Harvard. It’s figured out its own institutional mandate and succeeds on its own terms. And that is what we have to figure out. We think research-intensive is status, and quality, but it does not guarantee quality.  A teaching-intensive institution can be as quality driven. Their mandates are different. If we want to do better at teaching, then restructure the funding formula to drive those institutions and rethink a new funding for the research-intensive system that brings in the private sector in a much more extensive way. 

Question Five: Dr Phethiwe Matutu (left), CEO USAf: This issue of funding and the fees: within Higher Education we have two main sources of funding – Government and tuition fees. The UK has introduced fee regulation for local students to lower student fees and encourage social mobility. The cost of producing a graduate is higher than your subsidy combined with fees. So, to remain sustainable, universities have realised the necessity of importing students and overcharging them to make up for students who cannot be catered for. 

Your system has fewer students – we don’t have that luxury in South Africa. How would this work in the SA environment? Government is in a tight corner – more than 60% of the students are being funded through NSFAS so Government wants to regulate fees to keep the NSFAS budget in check. 

Professor Habib: Stay away from the funding formula of the UK. SOAS, at the University of London, gets zero subsidy and is funded by fees – which is why you charge international students three times the amount to subsidise domestic students.

If the Chinese and the Indians closed their taps, 80% of British higher education would be bankrupt.  We need to think about partnerships. SOAS has one with Wits and the University of Johannesburg. A joint transnational programme lowers costs. A PhD at SOAS costs £4 500 for a domestic student, £25 000 for an international student. That same degree with Wits drops to £3 000.

Charmain Naidoo is a contract writer for Universities South Africa