Transformation must not become synonymous with instability
The concept of transformation in higher education needs to transform, itself, if it is not to be made synonymous with instability and unsustainability. Universities also need to examine how they manage notions of quantity versus quality, 30 years since South Africa transformed from apartheid to the democratic dispensation.
These were just some of the thoughts shared by Professor Nomalanga Mkhize (left), Associate Professor of History & Political Science at Nelson Mandela University, during a breakaway session titled The Future of Transformation in South African Higher Education: Looking Back, Going Forward. Held within the recent 3rd Higher Education Conference, this session was led by the Transformation Strategy Group (TSG) of Universities South Africa (USAf) – the event host.
“We know that universities and institutions of higher learning have undergone successful racial and demographic transformations. However, as transformation advances, the sustainability of the system, as it currently operates, is under strain. In addition, the structural transformation of South African higher education has worked in theory; there are now advancing forms of inequality between the different institutional types,” she told delegates.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a university of technology or a comprehensive university, you are all chasing the same thing that the research intensive universities are chasing. Although on the surface, we appear to have successfully transformed structurally, every year, a university such as the University of Johannesburg (UJ) feels the pressure to say ‘Look at us, we are ranked’ but UJ is not the same type of institution as the University of Cape Town (UCT) or Stellenbosch in terms of what the system says.”
Transformation has to transform
This is the time, she said, for university leadership to start taking risks and taking a stand against the things they do not believe in. She said she was proud of Rhodes University for being the only university in South Africa to have taken a principled stand against engaging with international university ranking systems.
Professor Mkhize said notwithstanding the issues, transformation had to be commended: “Demographics and quantity are no longer problems at South African universities. Most universities can now call themselves a black university; gone are the days of being a predominantly white university. Our systems have had to manage quantity and the scale of transformation in student numbers – allowing access to more black, more young, more women students — in some areas we have over achieved, particularly with the high number of female students.”
Quality must matter
However, she warned that South African universities also need to have a quality mandate in order for society to take degrees and qualifications from these institutions seriously.
“Transformation is becoming synonymous with weak sustainability and instability. People are going to tell you ‘I remember when this institution was stable’ or ‘I remember when the institution could pay its bills’. Now we are all chasing the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). My firm belief is that the concept of transformation has to transform.”
This, she believes, is going to require a lot of thinking and debate because all the moving parts don’t stop moving. It also needs reflection because a lot of the issues stem from South Africa’s past.
She explained: “As we encounter new challenges, we’re still dealing with old baggage. What is happening today is the norm for post-independence African countries. If you have studied political science, you will understand that the train we are currently on is one that every post-colonial state has been on. As you move further away from the original colonial infrastructure, power arrangements and setup, you come into a space where your independence agenda – or in this case what we call transformation – comes under this type of strain, and instabilities inevitably show.
“How many people here start the (university) year with shutdown?” she asked the audience.
“We know we start each year with what some people call a poly-crisis but somehow our systems have to continue functioning. This is what every African country, post colonialism, has gone though with a variation of issues. Although we understand why it happens, we must start to address it and look for solutions.”
A quality vs access dilemma

Professor Mkhize said that quality, in the past South African education system, was seen from the perspective that few people had degrees.
“When I grew up, if you had a BA degree you were definitely going to be a successful person. Today everybody has a BA – I have 1000 students in my sociology class. So the credibility of your qualification is affected by how many graduates flood the market.
“The system has become more unstable as it grapples to meet the demand of quantity with the imperative of quality. We need to find the optimal point in our current crisis at which we can deliver the best combination of these two in every South African institution.”
Professor Mkhize detailed other challenges facing institutions including the need for fees and the on-going question of Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs): “The simplest way to solve the problem of FTEs is to massively increase the size of your classrooms — but then, once again, you are faced with a quality problem.”
Reversing the tendency towards homogenisation
She said that universities differentiation also needs to be revisited and addressed. “The idea was for a differentiated system to tailor itself to meet the requirement of different student populations. Instead, what we have now is everyone trying to compete with UCT. Even institutions that are not research-intensive put themselves under strain.
“I am sitting in Gqeberha and my classrooms look nothing like those at UCT; the students, the context and the mandate are different but if I want to go and apply for a job at UCT, they are going to judge me on the basis of a particular set of criteria which I cannot fulfil while I’m sitting on another side of the system,” she said.
“The result of this is that some educators will not go to a certain university and ‘ruin’ their career if their long-term goal to fulfil the apex of their career is to go to the University of Pretoria. We need to change the incentives that compel institutions to produce the same outcomes (even though differentiation says institutions are different – in truth, the race for rankings, postgraduate output, research subsidy is producing homogenisation not differentiation),” Professor Mkhize contended.
Students’ overstay and other issues
There are other issues universities are also having to contend with. There are large numbers of students staying longer at university. In her opinion, they are staying in a psychological state of youthfulness too long – which sometimes renders them unable to accept adult responsibility. She believes this has contributed in some measure to the mental health crisis and strange pathological behaviours coming from some sectors of the student population, which she describes as a type of immaturity.
“We are shocked with the sense of entitlement we see in some students. We also struggle with articulation. We need a Lego block-style articulation across certain qualification domains in the system where you can link programmes and institutions. Students arrive and get locked into one paradigm in the system, sitting there for years and then emerging, hoping to be employed.”
Leadership competence
Going forward, those who move up the leadership ladder are going to have to possess two competencies –a strong academic competence and an administrative competence, Professor Mkhize said.
“Administration-only leaders will struggle to diagnose core academic business problems and will not be able to address the issue of academic quality while those following the traditional academic-only track will struggle with sustainability and administrative challenges. It is imperative that the two competencies converge.
“In order for the system to begin to talk about a genuine transformation that’s not becoming progressively stigmatised as unstable, we’re going to need to produce people who are both academically and administratively strong.
“Unfortunately the system is splintering in two parts. Your academics are like ‘Oh, there’s a protest, it’s not my problem; that’s an administrative issue’ while administrators don’t understand academic issues facing education such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). We can no longer have that. We need to address this post-colonial problem where change becomes a signal of instability and this can only be achieved by fusing the two competencies in the system,” she concluded.
Janine Greenleaf Walker is a contract writer for Universities South Africa.