‘Adopt student-centred institutional cultures’ – Expert

African universities should adopt student-centred institutional cultures and modes of teaching in a bid to produce a cadre of ‘organic intellectuals’ who can change the ways in which society thinks about itself, according to Yunus Ballim, who recently completed a six-year term as the founding vice-chancellor of Sol Plaatje University (SPU) in Kimberley, South Africa, and a former deputy vice-chancellor at the University of the Witwatersrand where he was responsible for the academic programme.

Noting that there has been little reflection by higher education leaders about the nature of the university on the continent, he said: “A university must always be more than a place that develops students’ ability to pass exams.

“Universities should also be developing critically engaged citizens who will go out and ask the difficult questions.”

Drawing on his own experience at SPU, Ballim says that higher education institutions must seek to enhance students’ learning in any way they can – including through their approach to inculcating knowledge and through their management of operations.

Advocating that “the whole institutional effort should be focused on the students’ learning needs”, he argues for a new approach to teaching and learning at universities, with the aim of fostering students’ intellectual competencies rather than focusing on “mere [academic] content”.

“Although it is important for those designing undergraduate curricula to introduce qualifications in the academic mix as a response to national socio-economic challenges,” he said, “they must also maintain their focus on fostering students’ fundamental competencies and habits of mind in order to produce the organic intellectuals of the future who will be capable of engaging in society’s development”.

Breaking the mould

Adopting this perspective, Ballim describes how SPU broke the mould by refusing to establish bridging courses as a means of inducting new students from deprived economic and educational backgrounds.

Instead, as part of efforts to craft “an early identity for [SPU] as a site renowned for its teaching ability”, the emphasis was placed on “addressing learning needs and holding effective tutorials rather than on the issue of content transfer” during the students’ first year.

“In this way, the lecturers were charged with identifying and taking responsibility for the competencies that they were fostering in their students as they taught the content of their particular courses,” he said.

Ballim also describes how students’ personal and intellectual development can be inhibited by institutional cultures of neglect – “the uncut lawns, the unpainted walls and the slum-like student residence area”.

He recalls entering the electron-microscope unit of a university where the floor was covered in dust, preventing its effective operation; and notes that such neglect is a product of a management failure to instil an ethos of care among staff.

“When a floor is improperly cleaned, that represents a negative learning opportunity for the student. Similarly, when a cashier at the canteen speaks rudely to a student, that is a negative learning opportunity, inculcating an attitude that may shape the student’s behaviour,” he said.

“In this context, it bothers me that vice-chancellors rarely acknowledge the contribution of the cleaning and other support staff at graduation ceremonies.”

Producing ‘organic intellectuals’

Reflecting on how universities may best produce a cadre of “organic intellectuals”, Ballim contends that it is generally a lack of capacity for learning among students that impedes their education rather than a failure to understand the language of instruction, which may be different from their home language.

“As South African educationalist Chrissie Boughey has shown, the impediment is … a lack of familiarity with the discourse of knowledge,” he said. “It is about an ability to use words to externalise ideas.

“In this context, my sense is that, even if I set my exam in isiZulu and ask students to answer in isiZulu, they will probably fail.”

He notes how SPU sought to foster a “discourse of knowledge” among students by promoting wide-ranging discussions and debates.

Alienation

However, even as Ballim describes the language of instruction as a secondary concern, he stresses the importance of teaching staff being “open to the possibility of other ways of knowing” that may derive from a particular student’s background.

“There should be co-creation of knowledge that is of value to everyone,” he said. “Otherwise, the only way of knowing that will be communicated is that favoured by the monocultural group from which the teacher hails, while the students who come from other groups and class backgrounds which have their own epistemologies will be alienated from the ‘education’ they are receiving.”

Unfortunately, Ballim says, “such alienation is, at present, commonplace”.

“If a middle-class student acquires a degree, they become more affirmed in their community. If a poor rural working-class child acquires a degree, they become alienated from their community.”

Addressing this challenge, he says that universities may achieve greater relevance by attending to local development needs; promoting greater interdisciplinarity; and fostering respect for African culture.

Local development

In relation to supporting local development, he asserts that “many South African universities have perhaps been negligent about, and incapable of, developing a positive and engaged relationship with the local people on whose behalf they speak and whose support may be necessary to their success”.

In this regard, he describes how national governments may exert pressure to shape curricula that fail to address local employment and development requirements. In the case of SPU, he says, he had to resist calls to introduce qualifications in mining engineering, which were, anyway, surplus to national requirements.

Instead, the university focussed on agriculture – “25% of people in Northern Cape work in the agricultural sector” – and data science following the establishment of the Square Kilometre Array, or SKA mega-science telescope project in the province.

“I think that Sol Plaatje University’s mission benefited from its close engagement with broader society and the community in Kimberley,” he declared.

Interdisciplinarity

Ballim is a great supporter of interdisciplinarity as a means of promoting “human-centred development”.

“The administrative logic that has led to the separation of the humanities and sciences into separate faculties and departments has, arguably, shaped the intellectual development of students in a number of constricting ways,” he said, citing the past production of “mindless technocrats … who failed to understand the environmental, social and communal damage that their purely technical solutions created”.

Instead, he says, “the goal should be to ask students to be open to the possibility of other ways of knowing, without which there will be many problems that cannot be solved”.

Ballim further notes how the drive for relevance at African universities may be advanced by efforts to promote indigenous value systems and pride in local culture.

Citing the work of Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui, he notes a legacy of cultural humiliation in Sub-Saharan Africa and describes how this has been perpetuated in South Africa through the marginalisation of African languages.

He gives warning that “unless African languages are codified through creative writing – which is better than textbooks and dictionaries as a way of defining a language – the value systems that are communicated through these languages will be lost”.

He describes how, in response to the problem, SPU established a masters programme in creative writing in African languages and introduced a focus on heritage studies at undergraduate level.

Decolonisation

At the same time, Ballim argues that the debate on decolonising the curriculum that has taken place among students in South Africa has been quite unhelpful although there have been some intelligent contributions.

“It has generally adopted a parochial approach to the relevance of curriculum content, for example, arguing that Shakespeare should no longer be taught – which indicates a failure to understand that good literature travels across cultures and languages, speaking to fundamental questions about the human condition,” he said.

“The idea should rather be to undermine the imaginary barriers of nationality and ethnicity … The aim, as [Kenyan writer and public intellectual] Ngugi wa Thiong’o wrote, should be to decolonise the mind rather than merely the content of the curriculum.”

This article is based on an interview conducted by Professors Crain Soudien and Thierry Luescher for ‘The Imprint of Education’ project, which is being implemented by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), South Africa, in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation. This project, which includes a series of critical engagements with experienced scholars and thought leaders on their reimaginings of higher education in Africa, investigates current and future challenges facing the sector, including best practices and innovations. Mark Paterson and Luescher edited the transcript for focus and length. Features already published in the series can be downloaded from the HSRC’s website.