Power Buoy

Trends in South African policy-making and critique mirror the debates taking place in higher education internationally. The main debates revolve around accountability, redefining the role of universities, performance management of institutions, and efficiency and effective measures. International debates on having to contend with massification of traditionally elitist higher education systems with diminishing funds enable South African institutions to compare experiences with the international policy environment. Alternative views were presented by Bundy (2006) who places the SA policy development processes and implementation within the context of world trends in higher education. The UK had also launched into a shift from an elitist higher education system to mass higher education with limited and progressively reducing resources. The same patterns can be traced in Europe, Japan and America. He stated:

Universities across the world have had to do more with less; their internal functions have been subjected to efficiency gains while their relations with the state have been recast in terms of greater accountability and performance audits (Bundy, 2006:4).

Bundy (2006) moved into a critique of the policies, arguing that there is what he terms a ‘convergence’ in the issues that frame higher education and these are not confined to the South African experience. International developments in higher education can be related to the South African context, as the era of symbolism in policy-making in education was replaced by ‘economic rationalist discourse’ (Fataar, 2003:37). This view links international

policy debate to the issue of access, where grappling with more students with fewer resources is determined by what critics term, ‘economic rationalism’. Once again policy analysts use stage analysis to critique implementation of policy. Though it is a truism that economic rationalism is implicit in policy-making in SA, the position adopted by analysts is that such rationality necessarily abandons or sacrifices policy goals. As the focus of this research was on access, which has been central to all major policy initiatives, analysis in this thesis that refers to abandonment of policy goals by implication infers the non-attainment of these goals or the redefining of the goals.

As Bundy (2006) pointed out, the debates prevalent in SA are not unique, as they pertain to higher education internationally as well. Implicit in the literature surveyed are several tensions that, in some cases, demonstrate a belief that having accountability mechanisms signals a shift in the original agenda. Likewise, in relation to widening of access as a goal, the following tensions are implicit in the literature based on the reading undertaken during research for this thesis:

(i) Reduction in fiscal allocation to higher education is not viewed as an efficiency and effectiveness measure, but rather as a lack of commitment to transformation of the state.

(ii) The restructuring of higher education in terms of the landscape has detracted from the transformation agenda by reducing the number of institutions, as well as leaving untouched former historically advantaged institutions.

(iii) Creation of new types of institutions, such as the comprehensive universities and universities of technology and the retention of traditional universities.

(iv) Policy instruments that marginally address equity issues and stress performance, without taking into account the historical context and institutional challenges faced by different universities.

(v) Funding mechanisms and formulae that reward institutions for graduate output, research output and student enrolment plans that curb enrolment.

(vi) Perceived increase in state intervention that is viewed as a threat to institutional autonomy and academic freedom.

These are just some of the tensions that emerge from the literature. Needless to say there are others that will be factored in during the course of this thesis. Some of the above tensions are not peculiar to SA and are evident in reform measures undertaken in the UK and Australia.

Brazil for example, has moved on expansion, not by building on the public sector, but through arrangements between government and the private higher education institutions. McCowan (2004:3), in a review of the expansion in Brazil, suggested that despite the rapid expansion, the poor have remained socially excluded from both the public free higher education system, as well as from the private higher education system with its high fees. This suggests that the expansion has not addressed equity issues such as financial affordability, geographical access and other socio-cultural factors. The ‘pillar of higher education policy in Brazil has been the expansion of the private sector’ (McCowan, 2004:8), through tax incentives. This has resulted in inequitable expansion, as the cost of programmes offered by private institutions has curbed participation by lower income groups. Programa Universidade para Todos (University For All Programme), or Prouni was initiated in 2004 by the Lula government to encourage private universities to allocate unfilled places at no charge in return for tax incentives. In addition, Brazil introduced a quota system to address the problem of disparate opportunities for marginalised communities. Even though the policy has been widely critiqued, it has been accepted that any other strategy would have delayed the required outcomes (McCowan, 2004). McCowan (2004) argued that despite the success of the Brazilian model, there has to be more investment in the public sector.

The Chinese higher education system grew from two million in 1997 to 7,3 million by 2006, with the gross enrolment ratio increasing from seven to 22 percent (Li, Whalley, Zhang, & Zhao, 2008:2). This was achieved by rapid changes in public funding shifting from a model supported by three different levels of authorities to a co-funding model supported by tuition fees. This shift in funding saw resources allocated to universities in key cities funded by the central government and others by local government. This shift brought about some measure of social exclusion, as rural universities were not appropriately funded. In addition, the expansion strategy saw the establishment of campuses in different locations. The Chinese plan included private institutions, the introduction of short programmes and a system of differentiation. It is argued that the restructuring resulted in differential exclusion for the youth, as access to the job market depended largely on the university one had attended (Li, et al., 2008).

Having briefly discussed reforms in Brazil and China, the SA reform measures when subjected to detailed policy analysis have revealed ambiguity, ambivalence, inaction and compromises, as well as firmness, clear agenda setting and goal driven processes. The

vacillation between the two extremes is evident and poses challenges to those on the ground to interpret and enact in a highly subjective way. Levin (2001:8) argued that reform, by its very nature, is political and that ‘one finds a high level of ambiguity and contingency in every aspect of the political process.' It is important to recognise that these contrary features are not unique to this country, but are characteristics of policy-making processes elsewhere as well.