Will there be a need for universities in future, or not?
Two presentations at the breakaway session of Universities South Africa’s (USAf’s) Teaching and Learning (T&L) Strategy Group triggered an informative discussion at the recent 3rd Higher Education Conference in Pretoria. The session was titled Teaching and Learning in the Future University in the conference themed ‘The Future of the University’.
The presentations were led by:

Dr Albert Luswata (left), Senior Lecturer and Centre for Ethics Chair at Uganda Martyrs University, and Dr Mandy Hlengwa (right), Senior Lecturer: Education, and Coordinator of the new Generation of Academics Programme at Rhodes University.
We share below, an edited version of the Question and Answer session that followed. Although not all questions were answered, they provided food for thought nonetheless.
Question: Dr ‘Malineo Mat’sela (left), Director: Centre for Teaching and Learning at the National University of Lesotho: Dr Hlengwa, how do I get my colleagues to embrace continuing professional development ? I lectured in the faculty of education for 20 years before joining the Centre for Teaching and Learning. Since then, I have struggled to get buy in from colleagues. We get grants from state communal learning. There is so much to learn and yet people drag their feet. My department teaches people how to use technology in T&L and I sometimes wonder if it will take another disaster – like CoViD – for people to appreciate that we’re moving into the future.
Dr Luswata: You took me back to the 80s when I was studying in Cape Town and we were being told about diplomas (rather than degrees) because so many people were being educated. Now the currency of the degree is important, as is the university you attend.
Currently, the argument is that knowledge is out there. People using AI in our universities are publishing up to 20 articles a year, whereas in the past you struggled to get out even one. People are going to universities just for the certificate. I can now learn through YouTube, and through AI. All the advanced academic methods we are proposing for the future I am already getting on my phone. How do we navigate through such challenges, because they are real?
Question: Professor Sizwe Mabizela (right), Vice Chancellor and Principal of Rhodes University: I think we should be very careful about extolling the virtues of technology. There WILL be a university, going forward. Technology cannot mediate real learning. Unless you have the requisite literacies, even making sense of the knowledge content that you can access through technology will be difficult. You will not realise some of the incorrect information that ChatGPT produces.
Going forward, we really must ask the question: What will the role of an academic be — in the context where knowledge content will be readily available through tech platforms? That, for me, is important. Technology cannot teach you how to be fully human. You can access knowledge, but it is through interacting and having that properly mediated, that you can develop fully as a caring human being.
Responses from Dr Mandy Hlengwa: On getting buy-in from colleagues, I need to understand what you believe of your colleagues. Do you think they want professional development or do you think they do not care about it?
What we believe about our colleagues in our institutions shapes the type of questions we ask about them. What goes on with colleagues who care deeply about ensuring that their disciplines continue, and that their students understand disciplinary knowledge and what they get beyond the institution? If they care… what enables them to be in professional development spaces and what constrains them?
You have to ask – several times – Who are our staff? What are they busy with that would prohibit interested, caring and enthusiastic individuals from wanting professional development? That will shape the kind of opportunities we offer.
Entrenched practices:
At Rhodes, we recently had our annual sitting of the academic personal promotion process. One of the things we do is to reflect on what we think about personal promotion and how that ensures that our colleagues can demonstrate what they think good learning is, and what good teaching is. How do you get that to ignite staff?
The language that people who are the custodians in our institutions use is suggestive of what people should care about and what they shouldn’t. What kind of message do we impart to early career academics coming into our departments? In orientation, they’re told about the possibilities and when they go to their departments, seasoned professors tell them ‘that’s not important’, saying ‘You can teach; you don’t need to have theory or all that stuff that is on offer.’ What messages are we sending people who are coming into our departments and faculties for the first time because we send signals of what is important, and what is not?
Response by Dr Luswata: I have experience on the issue of buy in. At Uganda Martyrs University we were told how to use learning management systems long before the pandemic. Management did everything they could, including introducing policies, etc., but we did not buy in. We were forced to change during the pandemic. Change was peer driven.
The currency of the certificate is a big challenge we have as academics. Famously, business people don’t even have university degrees. Academics have to remain relevant. Technology is an instrument that can be used, but it cannot replace humans. AI is a tool. You don’t stop using it, but humans need to provide ethical guidance.
There is a lot of resistance to AI. At my university it has been demonised. We need to teach our students how to use it profitably, by guiding them and showing them the risks.
However, those who do not learn how to use the technologies will become obsolete. Those feeling comfortable remaining as before will become irrelevant. We must move with the technology; learn it and decide what is good and what is not.
Question: Ms Nomvuyo Mzamane (left), head of Education and Multimedia Edutainment, Puku: For background, I start up primary and secondary schools around the African continent. So, I come to conferences like this to get reassurance for where I’m sending my students in the future. My question is around universities and basic education. Do you foresee possibilities for Higher Education interacting in equal relationships with Basic Education – such that some of these kinds of things we have tried, some of which have failed and some of which have worked very well – can be explored further? And if yes, how?
Response by Dr Luswata: Higher Education lecturers are comfortable with how they were taught, resisting new things. In Basic Education, there is more openness. In Uganda, we have a big problem where they are changing the curricula at elementary and secondary level without retraining teachers. My elementary school daughter is asking the kind of questions that, I imagine, will challenge those teaching her at university.
Response by Dr Hlengwa: All spaces of education – primary, secondary school, and Higher Education – need to have a relationship. What that might look like needs discussion. If industry expects our graduates to be ready to walk into employment opportunities straight out of university with no additional ‘training/induction’ offered by industry at the start of the job — and if that is our understanding of what Higher Education does, then we have a fault line.
Likewise, if we expect primary and secondary school leavers to all be funnelled into Higher Education, we have missed the boat. Schooling is not a feeder for Higher Education. It provides you with fundamentals that should be able to take you into Higher Education, but also into other spaces.
Professor Mabizela asked what the role of the academic will be in the future. “Think of someone graduating as a historian; the question is what kind of a historian do we need in our society who is not just going to be relevant for the next two years?”
Question: Professor Pragasen Mudali (right), Deputy Dean University Computer Science, University of Zululand: I’m a computer scientist by training so I am for AI. We are grappling with whether there is a need to go to university at all. We need to talk about how we recognise prior learning from informal sources. Many of our students have done self-study, YouTube tutorials. The new learning platforms help people. When a student comes in and says I’ve already done that we currently don’t have the processes in place to accommodate them. The future university will have to recognise that learning will happen through formal and informal spaces.
Response by Professor Andrew Crouch (left), Chair of the Teaching and Learning Strategy Group and VC and Principal of Sol Plaatje University (and Chair and moderator of the T&L session): We have a formal Recognition of Prior Learning policy and it depends on how the different universities handle it. The Council on Higher Education are the custodians of the accreditation process. There is a pathway in place. We are not exploiting it in full and need to rethink that approach if sectors like yours are moving in that direction. More and more micro credentialing, stacking and badging of qualifications are becoming more relevant.
“Because of our education framework in South Africa, we do not recognise it as yet,” Professor Crouch concluded.
Charmain Naidoo is a contract writer for Universities South Africa.