Republic of South Africa Minister of Higher Education & Training Blade Nzimande is also the Secretary General of the South African Communist Party. Nzimande is being accused of by-passing university officials in developing new bill., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
Universities are important public institutions to our achieving our development priorities
Viewpoint by Blade Nzimande
ANC Today
Since the Higher Education Laws Amendment Bill went to parliament and also since it was enacted into law, there has been a great deal of public debate on the issues of university autonomy, academic freedom and public accountability.
The spectre of state interference in the work of the universities has been raised, generating fears of political interference by a Minister of Higher Education and Training bent on extending his control and crushing any opposition to it. On the other side, some universities leaders have been accused of trying to run fiefdoms, using 'autonomy' to subvert transformation, untrammelled by constraints from government, other university constituencies or broader society.
Universities are important public institutions and must make a contribution to achieving the country's overall developmental priorities. These priorities, defined by our people's elected representatives, are set out in a number of important documents, including the National Development Plan, the New Growth Path, the Industrial Policy Action Plan and the soon to be adopted Human Resource Development Strategy.
While there may be different emphases in these documents, all set out plans for meeting our main developmental challenges, in particular the related, triple challenges of overcoming unemployment, inequality and poverty. Universities have a crucial role to play if we are to reach our national development objectives and have an important responsibility in this regard - as educators of our youth and as key nodes of knowledge creation, innovation and creative thinking.
In order to play their proper role, universities are established and supported by society. Society expects them to carry out their roles responsibly, to use their resources wisely in pursuit of their academic goals, practice good governance and management practices, avoid corrupt practices, uphold our democratic values and contribute to developing the economic, social and cultural life of our country.
This requires universities to avoid becoming the proverbial ivory towers and engage with the rest of society, including with government, civil society, businesses and with other citizens. The resulting relationships inevitably lead to questions about the nature of the relationship between universities and the society, and particularly between universities and the state. It is this relationship that is addressed by the debates about institutional (i.e. university) autonomy, academic freedom and public accountability.
A good place to start in a discussion of the relationship between these concepts is the (former) Department of Education's 1997 White Paper 3, A Programme for Higher Education Transformation. It is worth looking carefully at the outline of these principles in that White Paper. Institutional autonomy, according to White Paper 3 ‘refers to a high degree of self-regulation and administrative independence with respect to student admissions, curriculum, methods of teaching and assessment, research, establishment of academic regulations and the internal management of resources generated from private and public sources.
Such autonomy is a condition of effective self-government.' This recognizes that if universities are to contribute meaningfully to fulfilling their role as academic institutions, they need to be relatively autonomous from the state. Such autonomy is necessary for the effective governance of universities as institutions. The 1997 White Paper goes on to say:
"However there is no moral basis for using the principle of institutional autonomy as a pretext for resisting democratic change or in defence of mismanagement. Institutional autonomy is therefore inextricably linked to the demands of public accountability."
The 1997 Higher Education White Paper defines public accountability thus:
"The principle of public accountability implies that institutions are answerable for their actions and decisions not only to their own governing bodies and the institutional community but also to the broader society. Firstly, it requires that institutions receiving public funds should be able to report how, and how well, money has been spent. Secondly, it requires that institutions should demonstrate the results they achieve with the resources at their disposal. Thirdly, it requires that institutions should demonstrate how they have met national goals and priorities."
Ordinarily the above should have long closed this debate and instead focus on how we achieve both institutional autonomy in an accountable way to achieve our objectives. Could it be that this issue continues to bedevil us because some of our university leaders are trying to stretch the envelope by trying to place universities above society and government?
It is also clear from above that institutional autonomy is not some sort of sacred democratic principle as some have made it out to be. Some of the interventions that I have made as Minister into poorly-functioning institutions and the legislation we have passed to make such interventions effective have been characterised by some as threats to university autonomy and as on a par with threats to our constitutional freedoms.
Jeremy Gauntlett, for example, in a speech at this university in May this year, calls institutional autonomy ‘a subtheme of academic freedom' and he states that ‘Based on a US Supreme Court judgment, American and South African legal commentators concur the right to academic freedom "also includes institutional autonomy".' This line of argument, I suspect is because our constitution guarantees ‘academic freedom and freedom of scientific research' (but not institutional autonomy) and Gauntlett is keen to characterise the Education Laws Amendment Act as unconstitutional and a threat to liberty.
Institutional autonomy and academic freedom are not the same! White Paper 3 states that ‘The principle of academic freedom implies the absence of outside interference, censure or obstacles in the pursuit and practice of academic work. It is a precondition for critical, experimental and creative thought and therefore for the advancement of intellectual inquiry and knowledge. Academic freedom and scientific inquiry are fundamental rights protected by the Constitution.' The White Paper, thus clearly understands there to be a difference between institutional autonomy and academic freedom, defining the two concepts quite differently.
I am aware that there is a relationship between institutional autonomy and academic freedom and that they can reinforce one another. If the state, for example, were to try to dictate what kind of research should be done by academics or how they should interpret their research findings or to dictate what kinds of social science theory or what novels or other works of art should be taught in humanities departments, then one would hope that the institutions would defend the academic freedom of their scholars, using all the powers and resources at their disposal.
It is also true that the principles of institutional autonomy and academic freedom can also be in conflict with one another. Institutional autonomy usually refers to a freedom enjoyed by the councils and senior managers of institutions who take decisions on behalf of institutions as a whole. Academic freedom, on the other hand, is largely freedom for academics, those who are engaged in the teaching and creation of knowledge.
University managers and others in positions of authority could use their power to intimidate academics to reach certain conclusions or to coerce them to promote particular ideologies; or they could use their power to ensure that certain academics are appointed or not appointed because of their views on politics, religion or science. This was clearly the case under apartheid, with leaders appointed directly or indirectly by the state ensuring that their academics were not overly critical of the apartheid policies. This was of course worse at universities for blacks like the one I attended and at the Afrikaans universities than it was at the more liberal white, English-language universities.
Some of the language used to criticise the Higher Education Laws Amendment Act of 2012 as well as interventions at some of the institutions where good governance has broken down, is reminiscent of the language used under apartheid by the white, liberal universities. They used it to defend themselves against encroachment on their ‘space' by the apartheid government, to defend their staff and students against harassment or arrest and to claim the right to criticise the government's racist policies and practices. This resistance - limited as it was - was progressive in as much as it was an attempt to restrict an undemocratic and oppressive state and to keep tyranny at bay.
A similar opposition is mounted by some to limit the attempts of an elected government to intervene to ensure good governance and to fight mismanagement and corruption. This appears to represent a liberal, knee-jerk reaction that attempts to limit the powers of the state wherever it can; and in the process, it (consciously or unconsciously) opposes attempts to transform South Africa in the interest of the less privileged and the poor. This mirrors the struggle of the privileged classes in other spheres of life (especially in the economy) to restrict the powers of state and give the free reign to the market. This was in fact one of the major battles during the constitutional negotiations, that of the powers of the central state vis-a-vis the private market or other 'autonomous' public institutions.
The principle of public accountability places some constraint on both institutional autonomy and academic freedom, and ensures that universities are responsive to society's needs, do not misuse or waste public resources and are accountable not only to their own internal governors, managers, staff or students, but to the wider community as well. Universities should also contribute to promoting the country's democratic values and tackling its main challenges, particularly poverty, inequality and unemployment as part of fulfilling their functions of teaching, research and community engagement.
Institutional autonomy must go along with public accountability. As White Paper 3 notes as quoted earlier, ‘there is no moral [and, I might add, legal] basis for using the principle of institutional autonomy as a pretext for resisting democratic change or in defence of mismanagement. Institutional autonomy is therefore inextricably linked to the demands of public accountability.' Andre du Toit, who will soon be speaking here, raises the issue of co-operative governance as a ‘foundational framework for higher education governance'. I don't want to discuss this in any detail, but I do want to say that I agree with White Paper 3's general conceptualisation of the relationship between the government and universities which is succinctly stated in two paragraphs on page 36. It reads;
3.6 … recognizing the need to transcend the adversarial relations between state and civil society arising from the apartheid era, the Ministry of Education adopts a model of co-operative governance for higher education in South Africa based on the principle of autonomous institutions working co-operatively with a proactive government and in a range of partnerships.
3.7 Co-operative governance assumes a proactive, guiding and constructive role for government. It also assumes a co-operative relationship between the state and higher education institutions. One implication of this is, for example, that institutional autonomy is to be exercised in tandem with public accountability. Another is that the Ministry's oversight role does not involve responsibility for the micro-management of institutions. A third implication is that the Ministry will undertake its role in a transparent manner.
Although the government recognises the importance of institutional autonomy and academic freedom, this does not mean that it has no interest in influencing what happens in universities or what is taught there. Clearly it does, and this is part of trying to ensure that universities are responsive to social needs. But this influence must be exercised by persuasion or through offering inducements such as ear-marked funding. The funding of research is clearly a means that the government has used (quite successfully, I might add) to increase the quantity and quality of research in universities and there are others areas where both financial incentives have been (and will be) utilized.
It is my view that earmarked funding should be increased to ensure that the government's developmental objectives are provided for in our universities. In some cases, the cogency of the government's vision (whether that of the DHET or another department) will persuade institutions to undertake to reflect on certain issues and take initiatives in line with that vision. For example, two universities have on their own initiative decided in the recent past to establish centres for post-school education. I believe that we need to focus our energies and resources on creating a substantially larger post school system that can help cater for the 3.4 million young people between the ages of 15 and 24 who are neither in education, employment or training.
In order to strengthen the post-school system, and especially the university system, we must step up significantly the numbers of post-graduates students, especially at Masters and PhD level. Parts of our post-school system offers education or training of a very poor quality, a problem which is more acute in the non-university sections of the system but also exists in universities and results in very high drop-out rates. In addition we need to ensure that the post-school system is highly articulated so that there are no dead-ends and students can always find it easy to continue their education and improve or add to their qualifications.
The universities have a particularly important role to play in strengthening the post-school system: for example, through training staff for other post-school institutions, through research that will help us to better understand the challenges of the post school system, through developing mutually beneficial partnerships with colleges and through building strong partnerships with employers to promote the opening of workplace training opportunities, especially in those areas where qualifications or professional registration depends on practical workplace experience. Such partnerships can also benefit from the inclusion of SETAs which can assist in brokering university-employer collaborations as well as providing advice and resources to facilitate work-integrated learning.
To do all these things as well as attend effectively to their other ongoing work, universities must function effectively and must care for the resources that are in their charge. This is essential for the future of our youth and our country. If there are any extra-ordinary interventions by government in the work of universities it will be for the sake to ensuring that universities are able to carry out their basic functions and do not misuse the trust that the country puts in them. There will not be political interventions that impact on the rights of universities councils or managers or academics.
To imply that our interventions are in any way comparable to those of the apartheid government is not only an insult to the government and the majority of South Africans who elected it and support it. It also reflects a paranoia that is at odds with reality or an attempt to blackmail government into inaction. Let us discuss the issues frankly, openly and without constraint. Although we may differ, possibly sharply, I hope we can orient our discussions to understanding the issues and deepening our appreciation of them and as well as understanding better the views of each other so that we can better move forward in the interest of the higher education system as a whole.
--Dr Blade Nzimande is an ANC NEC member and Minister of Higher Education and Training
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