SA universities are facing implosion, warns Jansen
A DIRE warning on the future of South African universities has been sounded by Professor Jonathan Jansen, former vice-chancellor of the University of Free State. He is now in the Faculty of Education at Stellenbosch University.
With the second release this week of his book, As By Fire, which takes a critical look at the state of the country’s universities, Jansen said forces undermining campuses are leading to the end of South Africa’s universities.
“It’s the end of our universities as we know them. I’ve looked at forces that have brought down universities in Africa, including Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.
“They include chronic underfunding by the state, chronic instability on campuses and attacking the autonomy of universities where the state takes over the core functions. When these conditions prevail, it doesn’t take long for universities to collapse.
“And with a president who says there’s free education, it is very dif- ficult to predict a stable year ahead,” said Jansen.
Since the book was released in July last year, unrest on campuses has continued to simmer.
President Jacob Zuma upped the ante on the eve of the ANC elective conference when he announced that free education would be available in 2018 for “students currently enrolled in TVET colleges or university students from South African households with a combined annual income of up to R350 000”.
This was quickly followed by the EFF urging prospective students to arrive at campuses for registration, despite tertiary registration taking place via an online process.
Across the country, hopeful students for med long queues outside tertiary institutions as the academic year opened this week. In Durban this was compounded by strikes involving Unisa and Durban University of Technology staff.
Negotiations to resolve the strikes at both institutions collapsed this week, but are due to continue next week.
Jansen’s book includes interviews with 11 vice-chancellors from the country’s top universities. He added that turmoil on the campuses would lead to the loss of paying students from the middle class, resignations from highly qualified academic teaching staff and a decline in valuable research output.
Highlighting that students do have legitimate concerns about the affordability of tertiary education, Jansen said the NFSAS (National Student Financial Aid Scheme) plan to assist poorer students was simply not sufficient in terms of the “explosive growth” in the numbers and needs of students over the last 15 years.
Looking ahead to the 2018 academic year, he said: “The students are not yet back in full force, but there is a constant rolling national protest of student demands.
“We need a political leader in the country to settle down our public institutions. A lot depends on whether Cyril Ramaphosa’s leadership is able to offer us some kind of respite. We need a political settlement between the leadership and student bodies. Don’t burn the house we live in,” he said.
In the book, Jansen considers the social, economic, political, cultural, historical and economic issues within student activism. And while he has empathy for the power of the student voice, especially during the 2015 protest when there was also support by broader South Africa, he is outspoken about activists’ unwillingness to engage in debate.
In his interviews with vice-chancellors such as Wits’s Professor Adam Habib, UCT’s Max Price and Rhodes’s Professor Sizwe Mabizela, challenges such as funding, housing, race and class come under the spotlight, while the rise of what Jansen calls “the welfare university” is also examined.
As By Fire is published by NB Publishers in Cape Town.