Radical proposals for quality university education
Cape Times
28 October 2015
I will not disclose my age, gender/gender role or ‘race’ in
this piece because I believe that readers should assess what is said on
merit. Having said this, here are my credentials.
I am an emeritus professor at the
University of Cape Town who occupied every academic post from junior lecturer
to full professor, always promoted on merit. During my career development, I
competed against applicants from the likes of Oxford and Princeton Universities
for some of these posts. I have mentored
50 masters and Ph.D. graduates, all of whom published their research results
and have successful professional careers.
Four (one woman) are professors (one at world renowned University of
California at Berkeley), two (both ‘black’ women) are senior lecturers, and two
(both black men) are directors of African natural history museums. I designed, launched and taught in a
post-graduate programme that has generated nearly 300 graduates (including many
‘blacks’ from throughout Africa), 80+% of whom are relevantly employed. I have authored 200+ scientific works in
internationally recognized, peer reviewed, journals including Nature, one of the world’s top-ranked scientific
publications. Outside of university life, I served as president of both of the
South African professional societies that reflect my academic interests. One of these honoured me its lifetime
achievement award.
Now my views on university education which I impart to all
of my students.
The B.S. degree is bullshit.
The M.S. is more of the same. A
Ph.D. is piled higher and deeper. The
only meaningful letters to strive for are JOB. Having diplomas guarantees nothing if you are not competitive
in the real world. Getting a job requires
treating Sunday as the day of ‘rest’.
That is, use it as the day on which you do the ‘rest’ of the things you
didn’t achieve during the remainder of the week. Given that the one consistent message given
by students (past and present), university administrators and governmental representatives
is, regardless of the ‘transformation’ that must and will occur at South
African universities, “high quality” education at universities must not be
compromised, I maintain that this is a university’s one non-negotiable goal.
How can “high quality” education be achieved by young people
who have intellectual ability and work ethic, regardless of ‘race’ and
gender/gender role? First, contrary to
the demands that university education should be free to all, the ANC’s Freedom
Charter states that “higher education and training shall be opened to all by means of state allowances
and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit.” Therefore, state-sponsored and other
“allowances/scholarships” for free (covering the full spectrum of costs from fees
to food and university residence accommodation) should go first and foremost to the best, brightest workaholics who
are least able to afford the costs involved, regardless of ‘race’, gender/gender
role, physical ability, etc. To do
otherwise, violates the principles of the ANC and Black Consciousness Movement
and true (not “neo-“) liberalism and the South African constitution. Thereafter, financial support should be
tailored to the needs of those
who have demonstrated the potential to cope with the challenges of “high
quality” university education, but are otherwise barred financially. Awarding financial aid solely on the basis of
reverse-apartheid ‘racialism’ violates the fundamental, non-discriminatory
principles and laws on which post-apartheid South African is based.
But this is not enough.
University-educated South African
students need to be exposed to strategically ‘transformed’ curricula which
equip them to cope with the challenges of competing in, and further developing,
a global, especially Afrocentric, society.
Ignoring or, worse still, unjustifiably condemning views/ideas/historical contributions of
internationally highly regarded people because of their geographical provenance,
religion, ‘race’, gender/gender role, political or temporal origins is poor
pedagogy. At worst, it emulates what occurred
in repressive societies such as Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa. These contributions need to be
assessed/contrasted/debated rationally and critically with those from Africa’s pre-colonial
and modern history. Furthermore, these curricula
should not be restricted to current politico/economic/socially relevant
issues. This is reflected by a quotation
from Prof. Drew
Faust, the first woman president of Harvard University:
“When we
define higher education's role principally as driving economic development and
solving society's most urgent problems, we risk losing sight of broader
questions, of the kinds of inquiry that enable the critical stance, that build
the humane perspective, that foster the restless skepticism and unbounded curiosity from which our profoundest understandings so
often emerge. Too narrow a focus on the present can come at the expense of the
past and future, of the long view that has always been higher learning's
special concern. How can we create minds capable of innovation if they are
unable to imagine a world different from the one in which we live now? History
teaches contingency; it demonstrates that the world has been different and
could and will be different again.”
But this is not enough.
Universities need more than just “high quality”,
globally/African relevant “songs”. They
need vocationally dedicated “singers” (educators/researchers/public communicators)
who understand these (and are capable of developing new) songs. Many of the current academic staff at even highly
internationally ‘rated’ South African universities, regardless of ‘race’ or
gender, act as if their jobs were secure entitlements (through the privilege of
academic tenure) that they need only perform for half the day (during which
they lecture) for not much more than half the year. Absence from work makes them inaccessible to
their students, especially those with poor educational backgrounds and who require
mentoring to make the transition from a pre-university dysfunctional
educational system. It also does little
to develop their potential to be better academics. They are also given every
seventh year free from normal academic duty for a paid-in-full sabbatical. There
is no meaningful (potentially punitive) regular assessment of their job
performance (other than blockage of promotion), despite the existence of independent
national bodies, e.g. the National Research Foundation, that use international
peer review to assess academics every four years. There is no formal requirement for university
academics to stray from the intellectual ‘ivory tower’ to communicate their
ideas/findings to society at large, i.e. become “public intellectuals” or
“citizen scientists”. To transform this legacy
of colonialism, I propose that, through regular supervision by appropriate
members of the university administrative hierarchy, all academics, including
deans of faculties, meet the following requirements:
1.
be present for designated periods of the day to
make themselves accessible to students (for counselling /advice/feedback/mentoring)
and colleagues with whom they team-teach and conduct departmental/faculty
business;
2.
account for time spent away from campus, e.g. by
demonstrating that it involves research or societal outreach;
3.
be responsible for delivering products (e.g.
research publications) during sabbatical leave;
4.
communicate their and their students’ research
to society;
5.
promote national/ international exposure/collaboration
of research (e.g. at symposia/conferences/training sessions) and career-advancing
visits to high quality institutions;
6.
be assessed regularly and transparently (e.g. on the university webpage)
internally (by students that they teach and more senior colleagues) for their
functioning as educators; and
7.
subject to regular, independent,
extra-university, peer review by organizations such as the NRF.
Those staff, especially those who represent currently
demographically underrepresented sectors of the South African community, who
meet and excel in these requirements should be rewarded financially (both in
terms of their pay packets and research funds) and fast-tracked in terms of
promotion.
A concerned university academic
