Call a thief a thief
Higher education should be subject to the same scrutiny as matric
If corruption in higher education is to be addressed, then we need to call it what it is: theft. This was the consensus reached at a Mail & Guardian Critical Thinking Forum held at Unisa on September 23 on the topic of corruption in higher education.
The panel was moderated by Marius Oosthuizen, a lecturer in strategic foresight at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science. On the panel was Professor Harry Nengwekhulu, director of the school of governance at Unisa; Hugh Amoore, former registrar at the University of Cape Town (UCT); and Jaco van Schoor, deputy vice-chancellor: finance at the University of Johannesburg.
The discussion was centred on the current crisis in ethics in universities, which are faced with an armada of issues that threaten to undermine their reputations, both in South Africa and abroad. Plagiarism among students and researchers, students using online “paper mills” to buy assignments, marks being altered in exchange for favours and questions about the accreditation of academic programmes have all recently come to the fore at institutions.
Amoore’s focus was on the less tangible aspects of corruption: research integrity, the “scourge of plagiarism” and the integrity of the academic record, all of which undermine the standing of educational and research institutions. Amoore also shared ways to address each of these. When it comes to research, the approach is simple: “The best way to ensure research integrity is with peer review,” he said.
In terms of plagiarism, Amoore said, much of the problem at undergraduate level is the result of ignorance on the part of students.
The role of ignorance in the persistence of plagiarism is supported by a 2015 study by Dr André van Zyl and Adele Thomas of first-year students at the University of Johannesburg, which found that the majority of respondents believed that lecturers are “too strict about copying”. Only 67.5% reported understanding how to reference other’s work and ideas correctly.
Amoore considers this to be a serious problem: “Plagiarism at the undergraduate level is sometimes a matter of ignorance but is also sometimes wilful theft of another’s work. At the postgraduate level it should never be a matter of ignorance and no one should get a degree for work that is not theirs.
“The online publication of accepted theses is but one way of countering the temptation to plagiarise: a student who knows that their thesis, once accepted for a degree, will be placed on open access on a website and will know that if plagiarism is not detected in the pre-examination phase or by the examiners, it will soon be post publication.”
Amoore added that the Bill to amend the Higher Education Act that is now before the president would improve institutions’ legal clout in withdrawing undeserved degrees.
Audits and standards
Universities’ reputations hinge on their standards, and curbing unethical practices often comes down to good certification practices. According to Amoore, UCT has implemented an internal audit examining each department’s internal control environment, which has made a significant difference.
To protect against the increasingly common problem of individuals fraudulently claiming to have a certain degree, he maintained “it’s not the degree certificates that are important, it’s the academic transcript”. Transcripts are now sent directly and securely to whoever requests them, so it’s not possible for students to tamper with them.
Reviewing the financial aspects of corruption, Van Schoor emphasised that, at universities, because of their public nature, all processes must be beyond reproach.
“It must pass administrative scrutiny. Because these are government subsidies, it’s essentially public funds that are managed on behalf of the taxpayer,” he said.
Van Schoor emphasised that “it is important that the annual reports of universities are publicly available to increase the level of scrutiny and accountability. These reports should also include financial and non-financial information.
“Universities are expected to tender for big projects through the correct, transparent processes, and annual reports should include the results of all financial procurements as well. As far as I know, the large majority of audit functions are outsourced by the universities, and the auditors need to be approved by the auditor-general. That is the level of scrutiny that is needed at all levels, and I don’t believe that it is currently happening everywhere. If you look at the regulations about financial reporting, you will see that universities are required to maintain a higher level of transparency than most companies.”
“Sometimes you have procurement officers thinking they’re entitled to a reward [because they’ve secured a tender], when they’ve just done their job. We need to call a spade a spade: it’s fraud, you’re stealing, you’re a thief.”
National accountability
A major theme was the public’s interest in holding institutions to account when it comes to problematic practices.
Nengwekhulu pointed out that because universities are staffed with highly educated people, members of the public don’t question them — at least not in the way that schools, municipalities and most other forms of government are questioned.
“When kids don’t pass matric, it’s a national issue, but it’s not a national issue when universities have low pass rates,” he said.
“The drop-out rate is very high, and nobody really knows why. We need to analyse why this is happening. Many students are dropping out due to financial issues, which is a cost to them, to their families and the country. But we don’t have any idea how much it costs us,” he said.
“The public is not interested in knowing what the pass rate and the drop-out rate is for universities. There is a big interest in the matric drop-out rate, and in how schools do in general, but nobody asks about universities. The public needs to start caring. This includes universities.
“What are the barriers that prevent people from asking intelligent questions about financial and asset management at universities?”
Nengwekhulu explained t hat financial management issues at universities trickle down to students, and this requires the kind of national scrutiny that high school education currently experiences from all sectors. “There is so much pressure on students to begin with, including their financial situation. You’ll find that these kids can’t handle the added pressure [of opaque finances and unresponsive instutions] and they drop out.”
In the subsequent discussion, Amoore linked Van Schoor’s point to his own, saying that plagiarism is theft and should be addressed as such.
“The dropout rate [at universities] is an issue we have to be really worried about,” he added.
In his final comment before questions were taken from the audience, Nengwekhulu brought up the language issue as a barrier to access.
“South Africa is one of the few countries in the world where the large majority of students attend lectures and write exams in a ‘foreign’ language. Students first have to understand the meaning of words before they can answer the content of the question. The obligation is not just on government, but on universities to introduce more indigenous languages, and to develop them technically. Afrikaans is one of the youngest languages in the world, but we can now teach science and engineering in those languages. But you can’t do that in Tsonga or Zulu.”