Lis Lange

Evaluating the MBA in South Africa

The Higher Education Quality Committee of the Council on Higher Education in South Africa recently carried out an evaluation of all MBA programmes offered in the country by South African as well as foreign higher education institutions. The MBA review is located within the context of the implementation of a comprehensive external quality assurance system in South African higher education, which is itself in a phase of radical restructuring. The article sets out the rationale for evaluating the MBA as well as the process and methodology that was followed by the HEQC. It also indicates some of the follow‐up steps that are being taken by the HEQC beyond the accreditation process, for example, the preparation of an analytical report on the State of MBA Provision in South Africa. The article concludes with reflections on some of the political, methodological and educational issues relating not only to the MBA but to quality assurance in a developing country context.

Thinking academic freedom

This lecture argues that the politicisation and instrumentalisation of the university caused by neoliberal frames has as a result the depoliticisation of knowledge and of the academic as individual. This depoliticisation has turned academic freedom into a right to disengage not only from the political fight around these issues but also from the deliberation about knowledge. The lecture uses the thinking of Arendt and Bourdieu to propose a different approach to the conceptualisation and practice of academic freedom.

10 – External quality audits in South African higher education: goals, outcomes and challenges

: This chapter focuses on the implementation of external quality audits in South African higher education during the post-apartheid period. The authors point to the difficulties of establishing direct correlations between external audits and their supposed impacts, both as a general methodological challenge as well as the fact that the introduction of quality assurance was part of wide-ranging reforms that impacted on all aspects of the higher education system in the country. Drawing on research commissioned by the national agency itself, as well as other research analyses of the external audits, the chapter concludes with an assessment of the outcomes to date. The authors offer some reflections on old and new challenges to thinking about the impact of external audits, especially in trying to establish a connection between making institutional quality assurance more efficient through audits and actual improvements in the quality of teaching and learning.