Keeping pace with change
Business schools must become more proactive to keep pace with changing needs in business and society, says Narend Baijnath, CEO of the Council on Higher Education (CHE), a government body.
Schools, he says, have an important role to play in SA’s economic development but must prove their relevance, value for money and purpose in the “globally competitive and IT-enabled” knowledge economy of the 21st century.
Schools want to carve out a role for themselves beyond their academic responsibilities and traditional provision of management education. However, it became clear during a two-day lekgotla in Johannesburg last week that there is still not unanimity on how to achieve this. Baijnath was keynote speaker at the event, organised by the SA Business Schools Association (Sabsa).
Local academics have often clashed on the role of schools, notably over whether business education should be driven by national development goals. The lekgotla, the first of its kind, was intended to help find common purpose, then ways to put it into practice.
Regent Business School director Ahmed Shaikh says: “The meeting was recognition of the need to recalibrate our sector. I hope there will be further initiatives.” Management College of Southern Africa (Mancosa) director Zaheer Hamid adds: “This dialogue could not wait any longer. We must find a way to respond to national needs.”
Sabsa president Owen Skae says schools must be driven by four goals: to remain relevant in a changing environment; to be accessible and affordable; to contribute to society; and to collaborate.
Relevance, says Skae, who is director of Rhodes Business School, provides unique challenges. “We must recognise we are not only South African but also African, as well as part of the global community. What we teach must reflect all these dynamics.”
Accessibility goes beyond providing traditional business school education to as many people as possible. Jabulane Tshabalala, CEO of the Student Business Council, wants business studies to be part of certain undergraduate degrees.
SA has a horrible record of failure in start-up enterprises but Tshabalala says there’s a good chance that people pursuing degrees in, say, engineering, will want to strike out on their own in business.
“The way it works at the moment is that you go to university, get a degree, work for a company for a number of years and then maybe create your own company,” he says. “We have to move away from creating employees, towards creating employers. We need to bring in a new culture.”
Some academics want business studies woven formally into every stage of SA education, from primary school upwards. They argue that SA’s seemingly intractable jobs crisis and widespread inequality make it necessary to create any kind of headstart for potential entrepreneurs.
Skae says: “We fully understand that the business schools sector has to play a more