SOUTH AFRICA: A better way to cut up the pie

South Africa has 23 universities with different histories, different capacities, different resources, and different visions and missions. One would think this rich diversity would be used as a strength to promote excellence and global competitiveness. But the country continues to pretend that its universities are the same and therefore treats them the same, without differentiating, focusing and providing resources each to its comparative and competitive advantages. This failure to differentiate, and the continuation of functioning contrary to and denying factual evidence, characterises much of present-day South Africa and has led to a decline in academic productivity, new knowledge production and innovation relative to the rest of the world.

Irrespective of whichever current indicator or criteria one chooses to assess - world rankings, research productivity, contribution to global knowledge, research and development investment, market employment patterns - as a country we now have at most five institutions that can compete globally and perform at the norm level of a university as it is generally understood in the modern world. They are the universities of Cape Town, the Witwatersrand, Kwazulu-Natal, Pretoria and Stellenbosch.

These sobering facts are the hard realities the new South Africa should confront and use as a basis to take tough decisions to differentiate and fund the system to guarantee global competitiveness. The entrenched, and growing, culture of denying such glaring facts can only be pernicious to South African society in the long term.

The US higher education system, regarded as the most successful and vibrant, is differentiated. It has 3,300 universities of which only 215 are accredited to award postgraduate degrees, and less than 100 within this system are research-led. It is subject to the annual - and cleverly constructed - US News & World Report analysis and ranking.

Australia has eight 'great' research universities that are specially funded, and they all feature highly in the world university rankings. India has nine out of 367 universities which receive special, strategic government funding to ensure they are globally competitive. The UK has the traditional Golden Triangle of Cambridge-London-Oxford which, with the newly merged Manchester University, has changed to become the 'Golden Diamond'.

In contrast, the European higher education system, which treats all universities 'the same', has 2,000 universities, all of them doing the same things - teaching, research and providing community services. The result has been mediocrity all round and, through the Bologna Declaration, Europe is fast waking up to the notion that it is "unwise and a mistake to treat and fund universities the same".

Although it is important to harmonise and promote quality assessment in higher education, it is even more important to differentiate and award resources accordingly. Treating universities the same not only destroys academic innovation, creativity and merit, but produces equal misery and mediocrity.

Evidence shows that those countries whose higher education is differentiated are able to compete, adapt and provide a vibrant system that underpins GDP. Equally, evidence - particularly from Europe - is emerging that undifferentiated university systems are disastrous.

Where are South Africa's strengths in knowledge production and wealth creation? In the humanities. We have produced 10 Nobel laureates, or so we pride ourselves. But like all the globalisation trends and pressures that we follow blindly, we believe that science and technology will be the panacea to our developmental challenges.

The facts and experiences on the ground are quite different:

* Six of the 10 laureates we pride ourselves in are broadly in the humanities fields; in other words, literature, politics and peace.
* Six of these laureates' seminal work was done in South Africa and generally related to the human condition our country faced.
* The four laureates in the sciences did their seminal work in countries other than South Africa - the US and the UK. Claiming them as our own is like claiming Roger Federer's exceptional achievements in tennis because his mother is South African. One can honestly and accurately say that as a country we have never trained or produced a laureate in science, physiology or medicine, who did his or her opus magnum in South Africa - but we have produced six in humanities-related fields. Our science education system is only competitive up to the level of a bachelor's degree and, in contrast, our postgraduate environment and infrastructure are too weak to compete globally.
* There is so much innovative and unexplored knowledge embodied in our indigenous languages, histories and cultures which only the humanities can explore and exploit.
* The common problems encountered by our society - crime, poverty, violence, corruption, moral degeneration and unethical conduct - are challenges whose analysis and solutions are more appropriately located in the humanities.
* The areas in which we as a country excel and are strong - international mediation, non-racism, reconciliation, justice, equity and even xenophobia - are all within the humanities domain.
* Our icons and role models, such as Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, FW de Klerk, JM Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer, are all strong humanitarians.
* Our central value, ubuntu, is anchored philosophically and strongly on humanism.
* Finally, the raison d'être of our struggle was, fundamentally, to create a humane and just society. The priority in the creation of such a society is largely a humanities project based on sound societal values, morals and ethics.

For the above factors, I want to place the humanities as our priority national knowledge project for which we have an unparalleled history, icons and a social laboratory of unique values that should be exploited by scholars. Confronting the above, we would need more government investment that is specifically earmarked to strengthen the humanities field in higher education.

Lest I am misunderstood, I do not wish to underplay the well-established role of science and technology in development and in the assault of ignorance in society. All I wish is to state that which is obvious: we are all human first, before we become scientists, and the best science and the best scientists thrive and flourish in societies whose human values are strong and solidly grounded in people's culture.

In fact, it is when the human sciences are strongest, and underpinned by sound ethical standards and moral principles, that scientific and technological ideas and innovations are born and better shaped, better communicated, and translated for the betterment of society.

Which hungry child is going to aim to become a great scientist?

It is common knowledge and experience throughout history that science and technology thrive in societies that are highly organised and not torn by destructive tensions. Investing in science and technology for the greater public good and for future generations is noble. It is a great strategic choice, but this investment has to be understood and balanced within a context of on-the-ground reality and in the long-term scope of our broader development.

The place and location of higher education is a matter of debate in many countries. Should it be part of the Department of Education or a separate entity; should it be integrated into Science and Technology or should it be incorporated into the economic cluster?

These are major and important issues. These debates are taking place because a consensus has evolved globally that higher education in any society is the driving engine and shaper of the economy - it powers global competitiveness, it drives and promotes the values and cultures of society and it shapes trends in globalisation.

South Africa is a developmental state. In such a state, one would prefer a location for higher education that gives it a freer mandate to play a greater and leading role in driving the economy and the values and culture of our democracy, without being constrained. Higher education would take advantage of many fields, including science and technology, to play its rightful leadership role.

The higher education of our country must now, as a matter of priority, be differentiated and funded adequately for the reality of global competitiveness and economic development.

This differentiation and funding must be performance-based - the humanities in our country are our greatest comparative and competitive advantage and asset in knowledge production and wealth creation, and higher education should be appropriately located and explicitly mandated to play a greater leadership role in our economic, scientific and technological, intellectual and cultural developments.

* Professor Malegapuru Makgoba is vice-chancellor and principal of the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

* This article was first published in The Sunday Times, Johannesburg. It is reproduced with permission, and with gratitude.
Original report on The Sunday Times site