What makes a world-class university? Money is not enough.

What makes a world-class university?  Money is not enough.

This is a commentary on an article by Prof. Danie Visser

Underfunding, not protests, is driving South African universities down global rankings published in the UCT IN THE NEWS on 28 September 2016 and in The Conversation on 26 September

http://www.biznews.com/thought-leaders/2016/09/29/what-makes-a-world-class-university-money-is-not-enough-prof-tim-crowe/

First, I believe that Prof. Danie Visser has been an outstanding professor of law and the deputy VC responsible for promoting research at University of Cape Town.  Moreover, no one cannot dispute the fact that the South African government has failed to give tertiary education the financial support it needs to function adequately, let alone to make the most of opportunities created by innovative university academics.  However, one performer does not make a university executive ‘band’ and a handful of relatively highly funded universities does make an internationally competitive system of tertiary education. 

Two things are key to demonstrate a university’s academic success (however ranked/assessed): production of graduates who become leaders in all sectors of society, and production and development of outstanding researchers who can drive innovation and compete on the same stages as the best in the world.  But, I do not agree with Prof. Visser’s recent article that attributes the academic ‘slippage’ of South African universities in international ranking to “under-funding” and not student protests.   Quite to the contrary, I maintain that a primary cause of the decline in research is how South African universities allocate their funding, despite its magnitude.   Furthermore, it was the university executives’ ignoring of initial legitimate protests by students that led to a failure to deliver vis-à-vis education.  For complex reasons and the limited word-length of this piece, I can’t elaborate on the tragic hijacking of education-related matters by provocateurs.  I will do so in another piece.  In this article, I focus on how UCT is slipping on the side of research.  To do this, I have to go back 30 years.

In the 1980s, the then South African Foundation for Research Development (FRD) introduced a radical way of developing sustainable excellence in research: a funding system based on rating individual researchers through assessment by international epistemic peers.  The history and implementation of this process is outlined in detail in a hot-off-the-press book On the Shoulders of Oldenburg by eminent UCT Emeritus Professor Christopher ‘Kit’ Vaughan, published by the National Research Foundation, the ‘decolonized’ FRD.  The initial effects of the rating system were disastrous for many ‘prominent’ researchers, especially those at the Universities of Stellenbosch, Pretoria and Free State.  UCT and the University of the Witwatersrand were big ‘winners’. 

The long-term effects of the NRF rating system have been a dramatic increase in the number and dispersion of rated researchers (especially of young researchers) throughout South African universities and funding thereof.  UCT reaped the benefits of this system enormously for two decades; hence catapulting its world ranking.  But, there was no direct financial reward to academics for obtaining an NRF rating.  UCT also benefited enormously from governmental subsides for researchers’ publications (currently R120 000/publication) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3721321/ and for graduated students and their publications.  None of these funds revert directly to the researchers/supervisors. [Recently, the UCT Faculty of Science instituted a modest reward system for students’ publications.] These subsidy funds are used to cross-subsidize the costs of less productive sectors within UCT.  A consequence of this has been the departure of many rated or ratable young academics to institutions that give such rewards.  In his comments on Visser’s piece, Prof. Jonathan Jansen, eminent educationalist and ex-rector of the University of the Free State, concurs.

Nevertheless, some faculties at UCT began to use NRF rating and other measures of publication ‘impact’ (e.g. h-indices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index ) as criteria for hiring and ad hominem promotion, especially to full professor – the highest paid internal reward for academic excellence.

Another, admittedly implicit, criterion some faculties implemented for promotion to full professor is what I call ‘Darwinian academic fitness’: the number of supervised graduated students who achieve professional success.  I, for example, was only successful in applying for promotion to full professor when I had earned: an NRF ‘B’ rating as an “internationally acclaimed researcher”, an h-index of 22 and graduated 30 students who found employment.  This took 25 years of hard work after obtaining my Ph.D.   By the way, like controversial UCT sports physiologist, Tim Noakes, Danie Visser has earned the NRF’s top ‘A’ rating.

What’s happening now?

Over the last decade, there has been heavy pressure at UCT to abandon or “counter-balance” these abovementioned criteria and to rapidly ‘groom’ academics in-house towards academic excellence. http://www.uct.ac.za/dailynews/?id=9837   My critiques of this ‘micro-waving’ of professors http://www.uct.ac.za/dailynews/?id=9843 http://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/the-real-state-of-uct?utm_source=Politicsweb+Daily+Headlines&utm_campaign=b2afbc9f6f-DHN_13_May_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a86f25db99-b2afbc9f6f-140202025 have received no substantive response from the UCT executive.  There also are calls for ‘public intellectual’ pieces such as this to qualify as ‘research’.

For example, in the last round of ad hominem promotions at UCT, the implementation of “new processes” resulted in the ad hominem promotion of at two questionable applicants to full professor.  Both have been employed at UCT for less than 10 years.  One has no NRF rating, an h-index of zero and lists no graduated post-grads in his CV. The other has a NRF C (the lowest) rating (characteristic of lecturers), an h-index of 6 and also lists no employed graduate students.  Notably, both ‘publish’ conspicuously as ‘public intellectuals’. 

On top of all this, even the best financial scenarios will require a ‘downsizing’ of academic staff at UCT, implemented by offering generous retrenchment ‘packages’.  I maintain that likely takers of these packages will be highly NRF-rated researchers who can easily find employment elsewhere.

In sum, I argue that, from a research perspective, UCT and other top South African universities are ‘slipping’ academically because they no longer require academic excellence in their professors and, when it is achieved, it is not rewarded.