Nico Cloete

Global Reform Trends in Higher Education

Towards the end of the 1980s the contours of a ‘new world order’ became more and more visible. Its rise was marked by the collapse of communist regimes and the increasing political hegemony of neo-liberal market ideologies. These established an environment for socio-economic and political change during the 1990s that would assert considerable reform pressures on all sectors of society, higher education included. South Africa’s negotiated settlement (Kraak, 2001) or ‘implicit bargain’ (Gelb, 1998, 2001) in 1994 must not only be seen as an isolated moment of a ‘miracle transition’ at the southern tip of Africa. It was also part of a political and economic transition process on a planetary scale that a large number of analysts have tried to capture as globalisation (Castells, 2001; Held et al., 1999). Even though globalisation is a far from uncontroversial concept, there is general agreement that most nation states are going through a transformation process that is strongly affected by global trends and pressures. These trends and pressures form, for example, an important basis for national public sector reforms with respect to higher education. Globalisation impulses stem from financial markets that started operating on a global scale and from the explosion that occurred in international ‘connectedness’ – both virtual and real – mainly through the internet, mobile telephony and intensifying travel patterns. Simultaneously global and regional free trade agreements proliferated and expanded. The most important examples of these are the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Common Market of the Southern Cone (Mercosur in Latin America), the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), and the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum (APEC). These trends are also promoted through international agencies such as the United Nations and its organisations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. All these ‘planetary’ changes created environments within which nation states had to consider a reorientation and repositioning of their still predominantly public higher education systems. This did not mean that governments were looking for alternatives to higher education. Instead the higher education institutions became a part of the national development policies in countries all over the world, with Finland, Ireland, and the East Asian Tigers as the prime examples. In South Africa a senior official in the new

Transformation in Higher Education

This article is a reflective analysis of articles published in the journal of Transformation in Higher Education (THE) (2016–2020). It is a reflection on how transformation in higher education is enunciated by authors publishing in this journal. The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and global economic recession unfolding during 2020, situate this reflection in time-place-space. Although the pandemic has impacted everyone, it has put the spotlight on the consequences of global economic and political power, capitalism and neo-liberalism (Peters et al. 2020). These consequences have been particularly stark in South Africa.

Towards New Forms of Regulation in Higher Education: The Case of South Africa.

The paper reflects on the prospects for higher education reform in a country - South Africa - lodged within a sub-continent not noted for successful reform. The argument is that much of the policy debate is conducted in a way that dichotomises the issues: control versus autonomy; freedom versus regulation; state versus civil society. This dichotomous construal is unable to deal adequately with recent work on the changing forms of the state and changing state-higher education relations. The paper develops a distinction between administrative and political forms of control; and broadens the state control-state supervision distinction from one based solely on models to one based on the specific quality of inter-organisational coordination, connectivity and regulation. The paper concludes by spelling out what such a connective conception of organisation and regulation could mean for South African higher education.

Modes of Governance and the Limits of Policy

The preceding chapters describe the various efforts, initiatives and policy attempts to realise transformation in the South African higher education system from 1994 up to 2000. Chapter 12 (New South African Realities) is to some extent a summary assessment of the findings and discussions of chapters 4 to 11. As these chapters show, and as we will argue here, transformation in higher education was seen by politicians and laymen, policy specialists and ordinary people as an indissoluble part of moving away from apartheid as a state form to a more open, inclusive, equitable and democratic society. This book describes how the transformation project was launched, with great acclaim, consensus and fanfare – through a series of founding documents such as the National Education Policy Initiative (NEPI, 1993), the ANC Policy Document (Centre for Education Policy Development, 1994), the report of the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE, 1996), and even the first Higher Education White Paper of 1997 – only to seem to veer off track. A loss of course was detected in at least three areas. First, it seemed as if, after 1997, the policy process gradually became less participatory and democratic, and it even seemed to some that we were returning to something of a top-down style of policy imposition reminiscent of an earlier era. Secondly, it seemed as if the state was forsaking the values of equity and social justice in favour of the values of efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness. Thirdly, even where policy had been implemented as intended (in the National Student Financial Aid Scheme [NSFAS], for example), it was producing effects different from the ones expected and desired. What was producing these contrary effects? Why had the transformation project in higher education come to be so widely seen as an unpleasant surprise and distasteful disappointment?

Great Expectations, Mixed Governance Approaches and Unintended Outcomes: The Post-1994 Reform of South African Higher Education

The title of Cerych and Sabatier’s seminal book on higher education policy implementation, Great Expectations and Mixed Performance, reflects also in many respects the feelings of a considerable proportion of the actors involved in the South African higher education reforms since 1994. The transition from a closed state ideology with higher education as part of the state structure, to a more open, democratic society has seen remarkably little dissent over both the new vision on higher education and the implementation of the higher education reforms. Nevertheless, the outcomes of the reforms are in many ways not in line with the reform aims. Very characteristically, this gap between expectations and performance has been characterised by the South African Minister of Education as being the result of an ‘implementation vacuum’ (Department of Education 2001). In this chapter we will examine some of the underlying dimensions of this socalled implementation vacuum. We will do so by discussing the higher education reforms implemented since 1994 from the perspective of the shifts in governance introduced by the new, democratic South African government. We have decided to focus on the new governance approach because it provides the framework within which the higher education reforms had to be implemented. The starting point for our examination is the governance approach that the new government inherited from the apartheid era. We will discuss how the new government ‘distanced itself’ from this governance approach, amongst other things, by formulating policies that were intended to ‘redress’ some of the injustices of the apartheid regime.

SOUTH AFRICAN HIGHER EDUCATION REFORM: WHAT COMES AFTER POST-COLONIALISM?

Since the fall of the apartheid regime South African higher education has begun to undergo a process of fundamental transformation. First-world universities, which were beneficiaries (however unwilling) of past racial inequalities, have had to adapt to the urgent needs of what is a post-colonial and, for the majority of its citizens, a third-world society. South Africa, therefore, provides a particularly sharp example of the encounter between a higher education system established within the European tradition, in terms of both its institutional and its academic culture, and a society in the process of radical change. This encounter has been mediated through the work of the National Commission on Higher Education which attempted to produce a compromise that would enable South African higher education to be both ‘Western’ (in terms of academic values and scientific standards) and also ‘African’ (in terms of its contribution to building the capacities of all the people of South Africa). The tension between the universitys claims to represent universal knowledge and the counter-claims that ‘local’ knowledge traditions should be accorded greater respect, therefore, is much sharper than in Europe.