Penultimate draft.
Final version published in Bowen, W., Kurzweil, M., and Tobin, E. (eds) (2005) Equity and Excellence in American Higher
Education. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Equity and
Excellence in Higher Education: the Case of the University of Cape Town
Ian Scott, Nan
Yeld, Janice McMillan and Martin Hall
In the apartheid period, South Africa’s higher education
sector was highly fragmented. In addition to a distinction between universities
and technikons (vocationally-orientated higher education institutions), the
institutions were divided by race. Among the universities intended only for
white students, there was an unofficial but firm division between the
English-medium and Afrikaans-medium institutions. The English-medium universities
followed a broadly liberal tradition, and preferred to be known as the ‘open’
universities because of their own commitment (constrained in practice by
apartheid legislation) to admitting students on academic merit, regardless of
race.
As one of the English-medium, ‘open’
universities, the University of Cape Town (UCT) resisted the 1959 legislation
that imposed racial segregation on the higher education sector. Subsequently,
and particularly under the leadership of Dr Stuart Saunders as Vice-Chancellor
through the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, UCT had a strong
anti-apartheid record, including stretching the bounds of apartheid law in
admitting black students in increasing numbers when opportunities to do this
started to arise in the late 1970s, and opening residences to students of all
races in 1981 (Saunders 2000). Financial aid was made available to support
talented but indigent black students and a range of initiatives were put in
place to assist these students academically. While focusing on equity through
means such as these, UCT retained a central commitment to academic excellence
in its teaching and research. Consequently, the university’s equity-related
initiatives have often been controversial, resulting in both tensions within
UCT’s academic community, and the need to balance, and where possible
reconcile, the tensions between equity and excellence.
This tension is widely characteristic of
contemporary South Africa.
The idea of ‘transformation’ – involving breaking decisively with the
inequalities and divisions of the apartheid past and fostering a social and
economic dispensation in which all sections of the population can share – is a
dominant one. The essence of transformation is changing the distribution
benefits to include historically excluded groups. For higher education, this
means widening participation, but also that this is not in itself sufficient.
Unless the quality and the relevance of higher education are maintained and
improved, the ‘benefits’ it provides will lose value. Moreover, the benefits
obtainable from higher education extend well beyond the interests of those
directly involved in it. Thus the nature, forms and intent of knowledge production in the higher education
sector, which have a material effect on the society at large, represent as much
a transformation issue as who participates, and raise important questions about
different forms of excellence.
One of the key implications of this is the
importance of examining traditional structures – in the case of higher
education, particularly the structures of provision – inherited from the
exclusionary past, and being willing to change them. In relation to access to
higher education, this raises the key question of the extent to which the
institution should adapt to meet the needs of the students as opposed to the
students simply being required to meet the traditional demands of the
institution.
The apartheid legacy
In the late 1950s and early 1960s
universities in South Africa
had faced many restrictions in terms of whom they could admit. In 1953 the notorious ‘Bantu Education Act’
was passed, which restructured schooling along racial and ethnic lines, and in
1959 the ironically named ‘Extension of University Education Act’ extended this
restructuring to higher education. This
ensured that there was a mechanism for excluding students on racial grounds, in
line with the increasingly pervasive system of apartheid.
By its nature, apartheid ideology produced
compartmentalisation of all structures in the socio-political order, not least
in education. The evolution of ‘grand apartheid’ required there to be separate
education authorities and institutions for each race or ‘population group’, the
main categories being White, Coloured, Indian and Black (African). When ‘homeland’
territories were established for the black ethnic groups, each had its own
education structure as well (though the central government’s black education
authority, which became known as the Department of Education and Training,
remained dominant).[1] Higher
education did not escape these divisions, and institutions fell under one or
other of the race-based departments. The apartheid legislation and structures,
and the inequalities they entrenched, profoundly affected all the higher
education institutions, not least with regard to access, as outlined below.
In the wake of the Extension of University
Education Act, from 1959 to the late 1960s, there was a considerable decrease
in the numbers of black (particularly African) students at residential
universities. These numbers, however, had never been high. By 1969 there were
only 4 886 African students in ‘white’ universities, compared to 68 559 white
students in these institutions (Christie 1986).
In the 1970s, however, black enrolments
began to increase at the English-medium universities, whose administrations
went to great lengths to obtain permits for prospective students. Permits were
usually only granted if students registered for certain courses (such as
Italian, or Biochemistry) which were not available at the few institutions set
aside for black students. This permit
system, while inimical to academic planning, was fairly easily manipulated by
institutions and students, as once they had been admitted, students could
transfer to other courses (usually in their second year) and then continue
studying while the institution embarked on a series of lengthy appeals.
In the 1980s the State established several
new universities in the so-called independent ‘homeland’ areas, such as Bophuthatswana, Transkei,
and Venda. These new institutions were intended to
accommodate the needs and aspirations of the great majority of black students,
of whom only a very small number would be allowed to register at the white
institutions. This small number would be
admitted via a proposed new regulatory mechanism of quotas, which would replace
the old permit system. In essence, this
would force the white institutions themselves to assume responsibility for
excluding black students. UCT led concerted resistance to the ‘quota bill’, and
a key battle against apartheid in higher education was won in that the quota
system was never implemented (Saunders 2000), though it remained, somewhat
threateningly, on the statute books until 1994.
During the early 1980s, then, institutions could,
to some extent, manipulate the permit system and admit students on merit. However, the Committee of University
Principals, comprising the vice-chancellors of the historically white
universities, became increasingly alarmed at high and escalating failure rates
and very low throughput rates at all levels of the system, and in 1985
recommended that universities raise the level of their admissions criteria.
Coupled with the already very low levels of performance of black students in
the school-leaving examinations of the Department of Education and Training
(which was responsible for the public education system reserved for Africans
and by far the largest and most poorly resourced education department in the
segregated system), as well as the growing crisis in black schools, this meant
that the great majority of places at white universities continued to be filled
by white applicants.[2]
In addition to the problem of the very
small numbers of black students meeting the open universities’ entry criteria,
there were major obstacles to accurately identifying black students who would
be likely to succeed. A key obstacle was the unreliability of the
school-leaving examinations of the Department of Education and Training (DET)
as a measure of achieved performance or academic capacity.[3] The consequence of this lack of predictive
validity, and the ensuing difficulty of selecting on any principled basis, was
that many black students who might have had the potential to succeed were
denied access, and the universities were thus the poorer. Conversely, many
students were admitted who did not have the ability to succeed, with obvious
negative consequences for the institutions and for the students themselves.
The combined effect of these circumstances
was expressed in the concept of ‘educational disadvantage’. Hofmeyr and Spence (1989) argue that this
concept developed from deficit-based views prevalent in the 1980s, when
students were characterised as cognitively deficient in some way. However,
while the issue is still sensitive, educational disadvantage is now generally
accepted as referring to the outcomes of the long-term under-resourcing,
mismanagement, and deliberate oppression of the education system designed in
the years of apartheid for black learners.[4]
Thus, rather than being due to some lack of capacity within the individual,
educational disadvantage is clearly attributable to the environment in which
the individual has been forced to undergo her or his educational experiences.
As Ndebele (1995) states, failure to specify this leads to a conflation of
black with disadvantage, falsely implying that black people are innately
disadvantaged.
Findings on the impact of educational
disadvantage on future academic performance are somewhat difficult to
interpret. However, what is generally accepted is that in poor communities,
with illiterate or poorly educated adults, the quality of the school has a
greater influence on the life chances of a learner than it has in more
privileged communities (Crouch & Mabogoane 1998, Muller & Roberts
2000). In such a context, if schools are of poor quality, learners are further
disadvantaged. Since it can be considered a general truth that school quality
closely reflects a community’s access to and ownership of wealth, it is obvious
that precisely where school quality could make the greatest positive difference
to the lives of learners, it is likely to be poor. In South Africa,
where ‘race’ and resource allocation were inextricably linked, this was starkly
obvious.
The consequences of prolonged exposure to
poor and chaotic learning conditions have been widely researched. As might be
expected, they are not different in kind in South
Africa than they are in the United States. They do, however,
differ in severity, as can be seen by South Africa’s very poor
performance on international benchmark tests. Some of the characteristics of
educationally disadvantaged students can be seen in a tendency to apply surface
learning approaches to learning tasks (Marton and Saljo 1976) and to view the
essentially ‘ill-structured problems’ typical of higher education as ‘puzzles’
with a pre-determined outcome that can
be reached by using a specific procedure or approach. Additional
characteristics are the application of tacit (often incorrect or misleading) rules
which tend to override the appropriate rules needed to approach and analyse
ill-structured problems, and a tendency to accept text as ‘given’, not to be
criticised.
In addition to these ‘contentless
processes’, students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds have severely
limited content mastery. Among the factors contributing to these poor general
conditions are the preponderance of poorly qualified teachers, the high
reliance on rote learning and consequent passivity of learners, the unavailability
of appropriate learning materials such as textbooks, and the widespread,
ongoing chaos in the school system (Kapp 2000a&b, Plüddemann et al 1999,
Vinjevold 1999, Macdonald 1990).
Given these circumstances, the challenge
for admissions and selection into higher education was clearly to increase the
numbers of black students while minimising risk in terms of academic
performance. The need to increase numbers is clearly illustrated in Table 1,
which gives the number of students in 1988, classified by ‘population group’
(the current formal South African measure of equity in terms of race), at all
residential universities in South Africa.
This shows the very low numbers of black students in the system as a
whole, particularly at the historically white universities, and that the only
real opportunities for black students to gain access to historically-white
institutions were in the four English-medium, ‘open’ institutions.
|
Students
|
Enrolment at English-medium historically white universities
|
% of enrolment at English-medium historically white universities
|
Enrolment at Afrikaans-medium historically white universities
|
% of enrolment at Afrikaans-medium historically white universities
|
Enrolment at all other universities
|
% of enrolment at all other universities
|
Enrolment at all
universities
|
% of enrolment at all universities
|
|
African
|
4 759
|
10 %
|
673
|
1 %
|
84 913
|
51 %
|
90 345
|
32 %
|
|
Coloured
|
2 384
|
5 %
|
1 497
|
2 %
|
14 285
|
8 %
|
18 166
|
6 %
|
|
Indian
|
3 969
|
8 %
|
91
|
0 %
|
14 988
|
9 %
|
19 048
|
7 %
|
|
White
|
36 655
|
77 %
|
65 844
|
97 %
|
53 265
|
32 %
|
155 764
|
55 %
|
|
Total
|
47 767
|
100 %
|
68 105
|
100 %
|
167 405
|
100 %
|
283 277
|
100 %
|
Table 1: Student Headcount Enrolments by
Race at South African Historically White Universities: 1988 (Adapted from
Cooper & Subotzky 2001)
The way in which this challenge was taken
up at UCT is discussed below.
Widening access at UCT: Facilitating equity in selection and admissions
In 1986, only 350 students out of a total
of 12 500 registered at the University
of Cape Town were black.
Several approaches could have been adopted at this stage to address the
situation and increase black student numbers. One approach, for example, could
have been to increase the size of the student body as a whole, but the limited
capacity of the campus prevented this. Another possible response would have
been to lower admissions requirements. However, in addition to the high
probability that this could have led to the admission of an increased number of
white students with mediocre Senior Certificate (SC) results (Cloete and Pillay
1987), moving the ‘bar’ for admissions could not deal with the central
selection problem: namely that the SC results of the great majority of DET
students who succeeded in obtaining a matriculation exemption fell within a
very restricted range of results. This made selection extremely difficult, as
there was little to distinguish between applicants using aggregate scores
alone.
A further policy could have been a try-out
period of admission. In such ‘fail-first’ approaches, selection is delayed.[5]
However, delaying selection does not lessen the impact of rejection and may
make it more difficult (for example, students will have accumulated fee debt).
The use of expensive Higher Education resources in the form of places in
programmes is an inefficient approach to selection. Teaching students with
little chance of success does not make economic or educational sense.
None of these options, then, met the
requirement that access be widened without undermining quality. It was thus
important for innovative strategies to be developed that could go some way
towards balancing the demands of equity and excellence. Consequently, UCT’s
policies came to be based on the early successes of the Academic Support
Programme, which had been established in 1980 and was beginning to achieve results
in developing educational interventions for educationally disadvantaged
students. These successes indicated that special admissions procedures were
necessary to make possible the admission of students who did not meet the
standard entrance requirements, and approximately 155 places were initially set
aside for this purpose (University of Cape Town 1986). At this stage, the
criteria used in the selection of students for special admission included the
position of applicants in their last year at school, school reports on their
performance in the last three years of schooling, and subject-by-subject
analysis of their examination results. However, it rapidly became obvious that
the conditions in the DET made any reliance on school-based results problematic,
and the university concluded that alternative selection criteria and procedures
that did not depend on the dysfunctional school system needed to be developed.
The objectives of this alternative
selection system were twofold. First, accurate assessment of the achieved level
of skill and performance of applicants with less than a C aggregate in the
Senior Certificate was required. Since 95% of DET students obtained results
below a C, this meant that virtually all black students would be assessed in
this way. Second, it was necessary to gauge the extent to which applicants
could benefit from the kinds of academic support that could be offered at the
university. Implicitly, this represented a move towards attempting to test
potential rather than manifest achievement. This system of assessment and
evaluation came to be known as the Alternative Admissions Research Project
(AARP). It proved to be a viable means of enabling UCT to admit not only
students whose results indicated that they had achieved the required level of
performance but also students who, despite not meeting regular entry criteria,
had the potential to succeed provided they were given appropriate support
(Barsby et al 1994).[6]
With the demise of apartheid came hopes
that conditions in South African schools would rapidly improve and the need for
alternative admissions procedures and educational development programmes would
steadily diminish. Despite considerable
efforts, however, it was clear that no quick fix would suffice to undo the
educational destruction wrought by apartheid. Indeed, the very low proficiency
levels revealed by South Africa’s
participation in the 1999 Third International Mathematics and Science Study
(TIMSS) tests attested to the fact that schooling in South Africa remained very troubled. Of the 38 countries that participated in
TIMSS 1999, South Africa
obtained the lowest scores (Mullis 2000).[7]
Under these conditions, the validation of
the Alternative Admissions testing system became even more important. Figure 1
shows the number and distribution by race of all students who wrote the AARP
tests and subsequently registered at UCT (AARP started offering testing to
non-DET students only in 1997).
Figure 1: Total numbers of AARP Test
writers who registered at UCT 1988 - 2003
Figure 2: Survival of ex-DET students by
school achievement or AARP Test
‘Survival analysis’ research adapted from
actuarial techniques has shown AARP to be a better predictor of the academic
performance of DET students than the school-leaving results alone. Figure 2
depicts the successful ‘survival’ over time (in semesters) of categories of
ex-DET students at UCT. ‘Non AARP’ refers to those ex-DET students who did not
write AARP tests for admission to UCT. ‘PTEEP Top 30%’ refers to those ex-DET
students who wrote the AARP ‘PTEEP’ test and obtained a score in decile 1 – 3
for the cohort. ‘PTEEP Bottom 30%’ refers to those ex-DET students who obtained
a PTEEP score in decile 8 – 10 for the cohort. Figure 2 shows statistically
significant differences in progression for ex-DET students who have written the
AARP tests and done well versus those who have not done well, and also for
those who have written the AARP tests and done well versus those who have been
admitted on the basis of school-leaving results alone. Good performance on an
AARP test is clearly related to better progression through the curriculum than
is poor performance, and good AARP test performance is better related to
progression than is conventional school achievement. AARP tests thus seem to be
better at identifying talented but educationally disadvantaged students than
conventional measures.
As its validity and effectiveness have
become known, AARP has been contracted to undertake selection and placement[8]
testing for an increasing number of other South African institutions, including
a consortium of leading medical schools. AARP staff have also led a major
USAID-funded project[9]
that has established placement testing in historically black institutions.
Testing venues have been established across South Africa and in several other
African countries to allow the recruitment net to be spread wide. The now
extensive AARP database on student assessment and performance provides material
for research that can make an important contribution to national policy on
entry-level assessment and access.
It is evident that the Alternative
Admissions project has made an important contribution to enabling UCT to widen
access without compromising its exit standards. Innovative selection would not
have been successful, however, without complementary initiatives in curriculum
reform, as discussed below.
Who succeeds in higher education? The tension between equity and excellence in the curriculum
An essential condition for promoting equity
is ensuring that talented students, irrespective of their background, should
have a fair chance of succeeding in their studies, as access without success is
largely a hollow concept. In the current South African context, providing
conditions in which students from different backgrounds can succeed may be a
key means of promoting excellence as well as equity, through developing the
talents of all communities.
As outlined earlier, apartheid legislation
had excluded black students (and staff) from the white universities, and thus
from the established centres of excellence, throughout the 1960s and much of
the 1970s. During the 1970s, then, when opportunities arose to exploit the
anomalies of the ‘separate but equal’ ideology, the challenge for the ‘open’
universities like UCT was seen as being principally to provide access, in the
sense of places in the university and the material support needed to give
disadvantaged students equal opportunity to compete academically with their peers.
The poor learning conditions in black schools were also acknowledged, and
provided the justification for the establishment of the Academic Support
Programme (ASP) at UCT in 1980, with the brief of gaining an understanding of
the obstacles faced by black students, organising study-skills and additional
tutorial support, offering language classes for those black students (the great
majority) for whom English was a second language, and co-ordinating material
support systems. A similar unit was established at the University of the
Witwatersrand at the same time, and the other two open universities, Natal and Rhodes, soon
followed suit, albeit with somewhat different emphases.
The ASP was influenced by affirmative
action and minority access programmes at a range of leading universities in the
USA
(Saunders 2000: 76, 85). The early initiatives of the ASP were modelled partly
on such programmes and were funded primarily by US charitable foundations and
multinational corporations. They took the form mainly of what came to be known
as ‘concurrent’ or ‘add-on’ activities: supplementary tutorial support systems
that were designed to help disadvantaged students within the regular first year
courses in key subjects. The central aim
was to enable talented-but-disadvantaged students to meet the demands of
excellence as embodied in the traditional ethos, approaches and structures of
provision of the university.
The university placed great store on its
quality and the international comparability of its standards, and was sensitive
to any developments that might, or might be seen to, erode these. The admission
of ‘non-traditional’ students, particularly via the affirmative-action special
admissions policy implemented in 1987, and the introduction of intensive
tutorial programmes, which were vulnerable to being negatively construed as
‘coaching’ or ‘spoon-feeding’, were seen by a range of faculty and staff as a
threat to excellence. Even among staff who were strongly supportive of
broadening access, there was unease about the implications of affirmative
action. The customary tension between excellence and equity that these
developments aroused was deepened and complicated by the political and racial
conflict that came to a head in South
Africa during the 1980s, and the Academic
Support Programme became a lightning conductor across the political spectrum.
A key feature of the policies of the early
1980s was that the university’s traditional approaches and curriculum
structures were taken as a given. Maintaining the status quo was generally
equated with maintaining standards. Policies of the time determined that there
should be clear limits on how long students would be given support, and that
support tutorials and coursework outside the established curriculum – classified
formally as ‘preparatory and remedial instruction’ – could not be counted as
credits towards a qualification and had
to be externally funded. The ideal around which the Academic Support Programme
was originally designed envisaged exceptionally talented students who, with
material and some initial academic support, would be able in a short time to
overcome the disadvantaging effects of their educational and social backgrounds
and ‘come up to speed’ with the traditional student body. While there certainly
were, and have continued to be, students like this, the ideal model was to
prove inadequate.
By the mid-1980s, criticism of the original
ASP approach had emerged from various quarters, and notably from ASP
practitioners themselves. Although the use of supplementary tutorials had grown
in sophistication, it had become apparent that this system was effective only
for those students who were marginally underprepared (such as black students
from the small number of independent non-racial schools). For the majority of
the students from the black sectors of the public high-school system,
particularly the DET, the progress they achieved was not enough to overcome the
severely disadvantaging effects of their educational background, which included
inappropriate approaches to learning (such as over-reliance on rote-learning)
as well as flawed conceptual knowledge (see for example Hunter 1989). The key
problem was that the concurrent system was bound by the parameters of
traditional university courses – particularly the assumptions about students’
prior learning on which traditional university curricula were based – which
were substantially out of alignment with the black students’ educational
experience. Particularly in the natural and economic sciences, it was evident that
first-year supplementary tutoring, even when the students’ standard course
workload was reduced, was not sufficient to provide equal opportunities for
students from such disparate backgrounds.
The fact that the problem was affecting the
majority of the black student intake, even though this was still very small and
was drawn from the top-performing echelons of the black school system,
indicated the extent of the racial disparities in primary and secondary
provision. More radical responses were needed to address inequalities, not only
to enable the current black student intake to realise its potential but also to
facilitate growth in successful black student participation, the key equity
goal (Scott 1986). It was equally important, however, that appropriate quality
and standards should not be sacrificed in the process: it would be a sad irony
if, just as higher education was becoming more accessible to black communities,
the currency were to be devalued.
At the same time as these educational
issues were coming to the fore, political critique of the higher education
system was intensified by anti-apartheid organisations and individuals.
Criticism of the open universities focused on the continuing lack of
representivity in their student and staff structures (despite their public
commitment to non-racism), their institutional culture (which was experienced
by black people as exclusionary), and the relevance of their curricula and
research to the majority of the South African population (see for example Khanyile
1986, Mboya 1986, Perceptions of Wits 1986). Such criticism included challenges
to the traditional concept of excellence that the open universities were seen
to espouse, with direct and indirect allegations that it, too, was unfairly
exclusionary.
This starkly highlighted the central point
that, in South Africa,
inequality in access to higher education is not a minority problem. This in
turn raised the key tension between making the students fit the university and
making the university fit the students. Vilakazi and Tema (1985:3) captured the
essence of the critique of the status quo in this way: “to gain insight from
the study of the experiences of black students in white universities, we have
to turn the matter around … The correct starting point should be the
realisation that the problem is, first and foremost, not the black student, but
the whiteness of the university itself”. Leaders of the open universities
recognised the pressures and some of the broad implications. For example, as
early as 1980 the University of the Witwatersrand’s Academic Plan had acknowledged that ‘we have
historically served predominantly the white middle-class community …’ (Nabarro
1980), and the 1985 UCT vice-chancellor’s mission statement encouraged the
university to ‘plan forward … so that the University of Cape Town of the future
will not merely be a projection of its past but will be in tune with and
reflect the changing environment in which it functions’. In practice, however,
the pressures on the institution were widely seen as a contest between equity
and excellence, involving deeply-held views on the identity of the university.
The challenge for those who accepted the
need for change was how to extend participation without compromising, or being
seen to compromise, traditional standards. It had become apparent by the
mid-1980s that no significant progress with equity could be made without
changes in the structures of provision – that is, without finding alternative
routes to reaching the required standards. ASP staff identified the structure of standard South
African undergraduate curricula as a central obstacle to access and success for
students from the mass black school system (Scott 1986: 21-22). This carried
significant implications and raised sensitive questions concerning policy,
practice and values in the university.
There were (and still remain) two broad and
interlinked areas of contestation. First, given the university’s faith in the
quality of its provision, there were major concerns about the effects on excellence
of any substantial modification of traditional core structures. Second, there
was deep-rooted dispute about whether redressing educational inequalities is
the responsibility of higher education. A point of view commonly held among
academic staff was that, as the root of the problem lay in inequalities and
dysfunction in the school system, it was neither productive nor cost-efficient
for redress to be attempted at the level of higher education. The argument was
applied particularly to leading universities like UCT, which, it was said,
should concentrate unequivocally on maintaining internationally-recognised
excellence. Equity initiatives were seen as bringing a low return on investment
and, by drawing away scarce resources, detracting from excellence.
These issues crystallized in what became
known as the ‘articulation gap’ – the gap between students’ prior learning and
the assumptions underlying the university’s traditional undergraduate curricula
(Scott 1995). The articulation gap was
complex, involving approaches to learning and academic skills as well as
conceptual development and content knowledge. It was manifested in students’
underpreparedness for their courses and consequent resorting to surface
learning, which undermined their ability ever to gain mastery of their studies.
It principally affected black students, and was a key obstacle to equity. The
case was made that, while the articulation gap resulted largely from the
deficiencies of the school system, it was also attributable to higher education
curriculum structures inherited from the colonial past, and was thus
essentially a systemic problem for which the higher education sector had to
share responsibility.[10]
Most informed parties accepted that in the
medium term the school system would not improve sufficiently to ensure a
reasonable supply of traditionally well-prepared black students. While there
were debates and some isolated initiatives concerning the possibility of
establishing an intermediate or community college-style layer that could serve
as a partial corrective to the deficiencies of the school system (Fisher and
Scott 1993), lack of resources and political will indicated that this was not a
realistic prospect, at least in the medium term. The open universities were
thus faced with the choice of no progress with equity or implementing more
substantial and systemic educational development initiatives. The UCT
leadership’s anti-apartheid commitment meant that the former was not an
acceptable option. It did not mean that the university was willing at that
stage to consider any significant change in its mainstream educational
structures, but there was high-level support for programmes designed to
substantively address the articulation gap through curriculum development.
The main curriculum-related initiative
developed at UCT in the 1980s was the ‘foundation programme’ model that came to
be introduced in various forms in all the faculties that had large
undergraduate enrolments. These programmes had their origins in non-credit introductory
courses, of half- or full-year duration, that were devised by ASP Science staff
in core subjects where black students experienced particular difficulties,
including mathematics, physics and chemistry. These courses were pragmatic
responses to the inadequacy of supplementary support, designed by skilled
educators who were familiar with the demands and assumptions of the regular
first-year courses but based their own courses on a realistic understanding of
the strengths and weaknesses of their students. They thus, wittingly or not,
engaged directly with key structural challenges.
In the mid-1980s, because of promising
outcomes of these initiatives and growing recognition of the need for more
systemic responses, the ASP focused its work on developing the early foundation
courses into comprehensive foundation programmes, designed for talented but
disadvantaged students who were considered to have the academic potential to
complete a degree but were not formally qualified, or sufficiently prepared,
for direct entry to the regular undergraduate programmes. The pioneering
programme in Science was followed over three or four years by like developments
in Engineering, Commerce and Medicine, with less comprehensive variants in Law,
Arts and Social Sciences. Broadly similar programmes were introduced at other
open universities and one or two technikons at this time, mainly in Science and
Engineering. In most cases, their central components continued to be innovative
foundational or ‘bridging’ courses in core subjects, but these were
complemented by integrated approaches to developing what have come to be known
as key ‘literacies’, particularly academic literacy related to language. Such
elements were essential; not only were most black students not mother-tongue speakers
of English but the greatest deficiencies of black schooling were in mathematics
and language development, key building blocks for the majority of UCT’s most
sought-after programmes.
The main foundation programmes were
strongly contextualised within their ‘home’ faculties in both the design of the
curriculum and the academic level at which they were pitched, reflecting the
importance of linking them as effectively as possible with the regular
curricula, and they were incorporated into the university’s administrative
structures (see for example Sass 1988). What they all had in common was that
they represented an embryonic but purposeful effort to address the structural
problems and inequalities of the education system that were most clearly
manifested in the articulation gap. In this way, they were intended to meet the
two interlinked challenges of access and success. They enabled talented but
underprepared students to be responsibly admitted to the university, in
contrast with the ‘revolving door’ approach of admitting such students to rigid
traditional programmes from which they were soon excluded through failure; and
they were designed to give the students the academic foundations and confidence
they needed to realise their potential.
While the foundation programmes and the
‘special admissions’ project had a key role in enabling a fourfold increase in
African student enrolment in the latter stage of the apartheid period, numbers
were not then the main concern. The central aim was rather to demonstrate, to
sceptical faculty, the university community, sponsors, and the students
themselves, that the theory was valid - that academic potential was
distinguishable from ‘achieved performance’ (Shochet 1986). Given foundational
provision that articulated appropriately with their educational background,
talented students from disadvantaged backgrounds could succeed in the full
range of degree programmes at a selective university like UCT.
The aim was realised in that the small but
growing number of graduates who had come through the foundation programmes
would not have qualified for admission on the regular criteria but had met the
traditional exit standards. The students’ achievements certainly did not
convince the academic community as a whole of the validity of the equity agenda
– there were, and still continue to be, strong criticisms of affirmative action
– but were effective in opening up new perspectives on the issues, especially
among the university’s leaders. The most effective contributions to changing
attitudes arguably came from the performance of particular individuals or
classes, as when a rural Science Foundation student, whose school grades were
too poor for regular admission, became the first African student to gain an
Honours degree in mathematics, or when the Engineering Foundation mathematics
class outperformed the regular first-year class in two consecutive years.
There was, however, a considerable price to
be paid, particularly by the students. As there was no fast track to overcoming
their prior disadvantage, the students had to contend with extended academic
programmes, high levels of stress and the risk of stigma, and many failed or
dropped out. The ironies inherent in high achievers from the majority school
system being the disadvantaged minority in the university took their toll. It
became clear to the ASP that the performance of many talented black students
would be severely constrained by various forms of alienation (see for example
Badenhorst, Foster and Lea 1990) until such time as the institutional culture
and practices came much closer to reflecting the diversity of the population as
a whole. In the absence of substantive political change, a key means of
progressing towards ‘normalisation’ was ensuring that there was a growing number
of black students at the university who would be able to hold their own
academically and who might in themselves be the most effective agents of
positive change (Scott 1986: 22).
Post apartheid: The challenges of transformation
In the early 1990s, the end of apartheid
introduced major change in the significance of equity and the redress of
historical inequalities. Those involved in educational development, having
previously experienced only opposition from government, were invigorated by the
prospect of equity-related work gaining recognition from the state and hence
greater support from the institutions. The public discourse, in and outside the
institutions, rapidly appropriated concepts and terms related to
‘transformation’ that had formerly been frowned on in many universities. It was
clear that the opportunity for influencing developments and relating to the
state in a new way should not be missed, so a number of educational development
specialists needed, for the first time, to divide their time between the
institutional and national levels.
In the latter half of the 1980s, the term
‘Academic Development’ (AD) had come to be used in most South African higher
education institutions in preference to ‘Academic Support’ as it better
indicated the purpose and compass of the field and because ‘support’ had
negative connotations. AD became broadly accepted as comprising four
inter-related areas of focus: student, staff, curriculum and institutional
development. There was a common aim of improving the effectiveness of the
educational process in higher education, to the benefit of all students but
with special reference to promoting equity and redress.
The changing political dispensation added
new dimensions to AD work. The analysis of what had to be done to achieve
acceptable levels of equity in higher education, and how equity could be
balanced with other imperatives like excellence, now had to be undertaken at
national rather than only institutional level, and carried added significance
for two inter-related sets of reasons. First, South Africa had to come to terms
with its position as an independent developing country responsible for its own
future. Solutions had to be comprehensive, long-term and sustainable, in
comparison with the severely constrained compromises that often had to suffice
under apartheid. Second, while equity had been a dominant demand of the
anti-apartheid movements, the same movements, coming into government, now had
to consider equity in relation to other, potentially competing requirements of
national development.
In AD analysis, a point of departure was
the recognition that social and economic inequalities of the kind that were the
source of the major educational problems of the apartheid period would persist.
This was of course due to the embeddedness of the apartheid legacy, but it had
also to be acknowledged that South Africa was a ‘less-industrialised country’
and would have to contend for the foreseeable future with characteristic
developing-country features, including very limited availability of
good-quality educational provision and an overarching need to develop latent
talent in all communities.
The structural faults in the education
system that had been identified in the 1980s, particularly the discontinuity
between the secondary and tertiary sectors, remained a key obstacle to
inclusiveness and increasing participation in higher education. Ample evidence
of the articulation gap was identified, including severe shortages of qualified
candidates for key programmes, high first-year failure rates, low throughput
and graduation rates resulting from inadequate foundations for learning, and a
proliferation of (often ad hoc) foundation and bridging programmes introduced
in response to the mismatch between traditional programme demands and the
students’ prior learning (SAAAD 1995). The problems and inefficiencies were
most marked in subject areas where there was most need for improved output,
that is Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) and high-level management and
economics, which were and have continued to be identified by Government as key
requirements for national development. The waste of resources and talent
resulting from the poor performance of the system carried a high cost,
estimated by the Ministry of Education at well in excess of ten per cent of the
state higher education budget (MoE 2001: 2.1.3).
The new dispensation enabled the arguments
about sectoral responsibilities that had begun tentatively in the 1980s to be
reviewed and strengthened, on pragmatic and principled grounds. In the first
instance it was increasingly evident that, despite the political transition,
the school sector would not be in a position to produce the required numbers of
traditionally well-prepared students for years or decades to come. The school
sector was justifiably pre-occupied with addressing the gross inequalities of
the old segregated system and with expansion aimed at achieving universal
primary education, and could not reasonably be expected to deliver substantial
improvement in output quality at the same time. Since it was evident that
improving equity in higher education would be a major policy driver, it was in
the higher education sector’s own interests to take action to address the
structural problems that were undermining its performance.
Aside from the pragmatic considerations, it
was argued that it was unrealistic to expect a mass school system in a
developing country to articulate effectively with a higher education sector
that had been designed for completely different conditions. The origins of the
higher education framework in South
Africa’s colonial and apartheid past
reinforced the argument that it was important for the sector to be prepared to
review its own mainstream structures and assumptions in relation to the country’s
changing needs. Educational inequalities were not a minority issue nor a
short-term phenomenon, and ‘normalising’ the system called for productive
alignment with the realities of the students that the sector should be expected
to accommodate. However, greater responsiveness of the institutions to the
students must not mean erosion of essential standards. On the contrary, it had
to be expected to improve student responsibility and performance. In summary,
it was argued that ‘… it is incumbent on the HE sector to take its full share
of responsibility for deracialising and normalising the access pathways from
lower educational levels’ as a key element of its contribution to
transformation (Scott 1995:11).
At UCT, the ASP evolved into the Academic
Development Programme (ADP) in the early 1990s to take up the broader
post-apartheid challenges. As had been the case since the mid-1980s, the ADP
saw the educational process, and the curriculum in particular, as the key
factor in fostering access and success for talented students from disadvantaged
backgrounds. Ensuring productive continuity between secondary and higher
education – that is, ensuring that entry-level demands were strongly
intellectually challenging but not out of reach – remained a prerequisite, both
for enabling disadvantaged students to be admitted to higher education in a
responsible manner and for ensuring that they could establish the academic
foundations for mastering their disciplines. The continuing inequalities in
primary and secondary provision meant that the students who needed and deserved
to be given access would be highly diverse in terms of their preparation for
higher education, and this in turn called for curricular flexibility,
particularly the provision of differential entry levels to match different but
legitimate learning needs.
The decade of experience with foundation
programmes had also shown, however, that the curriculum had to be seen as a
whole, that foundational intervention had to be reinforced by sound educational
practice at higher levels. For this reason, the concept of the ‘extended
curriculum’, in which essential foundational provision was integrated into the
mainstream curriculum and influenced its structure, was developed and
successfully implemented in various settings, notably in the ASPECT Engineering
programme at UCT.
While there had been no prospect of the
calls for equity-related curriculum reform being heeded in the 1980s, the
importance attached to equity in the post-apartheid dispensation encouraged AD
staff to take the argument to the National Commission on Higher Education
(NCHE) in the mid-1990s, through submissions, commissioned papers and
participation in task groups. The case was presented that key equity goals
relating to access and success depended, in the medium term, on comprehensive
review and redesign of the higher education curriculum framework in relation to
required participation rates and representivity targets, and, in the interim,
on state recognition and funding of the provision of extended curricula in
selected subject areas (SAAAD 1995, Scott 1995, NCHE 1995). The NCHE accepted
the main line of the argument and included some appropriate recommendations in
its final report (NCHE 1996). Some two years later, after various setbacks and
revivals, the Ministry of Education’s 1997 White Paper on Higher Education (MoE
1997), the first major higher education policy statement of the new era,
supported the AD position in broad terms. The White Paper was historic for AD
as it represented the first ever state recognition of equity-orientated
developmental work and, as importantly, included a commitment to funding
equity-orientated provision.[11]
A further challenge for educational
development at national level in the new dispensation has been the challenge of
balancing equity with other imperatives such as excellence. In the early 1990s,
when the political transition was in train, there was an exponential increase
in the numbers of black youth seeking, and often demanding, access to higher
education. The demand for ‘equality’ was at times aggressive, as a result of
pent-up need and new expectations, and a number of institutions had effectively
no option but to grow exceptionally rapidly. With little or no additional
resourcing available from the state and with the students being largely from
disadvantaged socio-economic and educational backgrounds, quality and standards
at many institutions were severely at risk. It was in this context that a major
contribution to the debate on competing imperatives was made by Harold Wolpe,
Saleem Badat et al. In various contributions, Wolpe and Badat juxtaposed
‘equality’ and ‘development’ (rather than equity and excellence), and analysed
the relationship between them in an effort to foster understanding of the need
to balance individual and collective interests and to recognise the importance
of quality for the emerging democracy (see for example Wolpe, Badat and Barends
1993). While excellence and ‘development’ in this sense – referring to social
development and international competitiveness – are closely linked, it is
‘development’ that has turned out in recent years to be arguably the better
concept to juxtapose with equity.
New challenges
These challenges have to be addressed
within the context of a higher education system in the midst of unprecedented
change. The country’s thirty-six public universities and technikons are to be
reduced to twenty-four institutions through incorporations and mergers. A new
sort of institution – a comprehensive university – is to be created. A new funding formula, which will seek to
steer publicly-funded student places towards national development needs, is
being introduced. A new, statutory, quality assurance agency has been launched
and is beginning a programme of quality audits. A national agency for
processing higher education applications is under consideration, and a new, and
much changed, curriculum for secondary schooling has been announced, along with
a new approach to certification. At the same time, private institutions are
proliferating and entrepreneurial providers from Europe, Australia and North America
are probing the possibilities of the South African market.
New national higher education policy is
making strong arguments for a more ‘responsive and engaged’ higher education
sector, and, it could be argued, for new ways of understanding the relationship
between equity and excellence. The South African National Plan for Higher
Education (MoE 2001) and the Education White Paper 3 (MoE 1997) ‘A Programme
for Higher Education Transformation’ put forward the following arguments about
the role of higher education in contributing to social justice and economic and
social life more generally:
Higher education, and public
higher education especially, has immense potential to contribute to the
consolidation of democracy and social justice, and the growth and development
of the economy… These contributions are complementary. The enhancement of
democracy lays the basis for greater participation in economic and social life
more generally. Higher levels of employment and work contribute to political
and social stability and the capacity of citizens to exercise and enforce
democratic rights and participate effectively in decision-making. The overall well-being of nations is vitally
dependent on the contribution of higher education to the social, cultural,
political and economic development of its citizens. (CHE 2000: 25-26)
Institutions such as UCT therefore have an
important role to play in addressing issues of equity in a broader sense
through supporting new forms of excellence in their policies and practices.
They offer individuals the opportunity of moving across the borders of social exclusion.
They incubate applied research and technology transfer spin-offs through basic
research activities. They act as nodes that link organisations dedicated to the
public good (whether government agencies or charitable foundations) with
communities. They facilitate the transfer of resources from the ‘first world’
economy to the ‘third world’ (whether the ‘third world’ is in rural Africa or the inner city of a North American metropolis).
In as much as this happens, the relationship - or possible relationships -
between the twin goals of equity and excellence will be better understood. Lastly, it might then be possible, through
this understanding, to see that the relationship between equity and excellence
is part of a bigger struggle around the identity and role of (public) higher
education institutions (Hall 2003).
It is evident that many people in higher
education continue to consider that equity and excellence are in competition,
particularly for resources, and the dilemmas faced by national and institutional
leaders in managing these forces have not yet been resolved. However, we have
expressed the view in this essay that, particularly in the South African
context, it is becoming increasingly counter-productive to consider and treat
equity and excellence (and the demands of ‘development’) as separate
imperatives. It fact, it may well be that the new overarching imperative is to
balance equity and excellence.
The key question becomes how this is to be
accomplished. We believe that progress will be made not by denying the
equity-excellence tensions that appear as a reality for many in higher
education but rather by (a) establishing clear, prioritised and convincing
goals at national and institutional level, and (b) developing, publicising and
implementing strong theory- and evidence-based policies and strategies that
demonstrate how, or to what extent, the tensions can be reconciled in practice.
We believe further that development work done in South Africa and elsewhere, of
the kind discussed in this paper, has identified principles and approaches that
can provide a basis for progress, albeit that there are still many serious
shortcomings in developmental practices on the ground. It is hoped that
international co-operation in this area of work will be able to grow
productively as some commonalities emerge between developed and developing
countries in relation to widening participation.
It is clear, however, that there are
substantial challenges ahead. In the area of promoting ‘equity of access’ and
‘equity of outcomes’ in the institutions themselves, forthcoming challenges
include:
- The probability of a growing tension between equity and efficiency in higher education resulting from changes in the state’s approach to funding public services. This is evident in the proposals for a new higher education funding framework in South Africa (MoE 2002), and may create testing challenges for equity and/or quality of provision.
- The growing impact of private higher education, which may include drawing away resources from the public higher education sector without contributing substantively to meeting developmental needs.
- The fact that race and social class are no longer virtually coterminous as they were in the apartheid period is already creating new tensions, alliances and challenges in higher education, and will require serious reflection on the equity agenda and possibly new equity-related approaches.
References
Badenhorst, F, Foster, D, and Lea, S 1990.
Factors affecting academic performance in first-year psychology at the University of Cape Town. SA Journal of Higher
Education 4 (1) 39-45.
Badsha, N, Blake, GTW, and Brock-Utne, JG
1986. Evaluation of the African Matriculation as a Predictor of Performance in
the University of Natal
Medical School.
South African Journal of Science 82,
220-221.
Badsha, N, Williams, A. and Yeld, N 1987. Alternative Admissions Research Project: A
Work in Progress Report. Paper presented at the Academic Support
Programme Annual Conference, Grahamstown.
Barsby, T, Haeck, W, and Yeld, N 1994
(Eds.). Accountability in Testing: the
Contribution of Tests to Increased Access to Post Secondary Education.
South African Association for Academic Development - Workshop Publication
Series No.2. Cape Town: University of Cape Town.
Bot, M 1992 (Ed.). Standard 10 Examination
Results, 1981-1991. EduSource 1, p.6.
Bunting, I 1994. A Legacy of Inequality
– Higher Education in South
Africa. Rondebosch,
South Africa: University of Cape Town Press.
CHE (Council on Higher Education, South Africa) 2000. Towards a New Higher Education Landscape:
Meeting the Equity, Quality and Social Development Imperatives of South Africa in
the 21st Century. Pretoria.
Christie, P 1986. The Right to Learn – The Struggle for
Education in South Africa.
Johannesburg:
The SACHED Trust.
Cloete, N, and Pillay, S 1987. Can Wits
Have a More Representative Student Body Within the Existing Structures:
Optimistic or Pessimistic? Unpublished Manuscript. Johannesburg:
University of the Witwatersrand.
Cooper, D, and Subotzky, G 2001. The Skewed Revolution: Trends in South
African Higher Education. Bellville, South Africa: Educational Policy Unit,
University of the Western Cape.
Crouch, L, and Mabogoane, T 1997. Aspects
of Internal Efficiency Indicators in South African Schools: Analysis of
Historical and Current Data. EduSource 19,
4-28.
Fisher, G, and Scott, I 1993. Approaches to
the development of intermediate post-secondary education in South Africa. SA Journal of
Higher Education 7(1) Research Supplement 43-58
Griesel, H 1991. Access to University: A
Review of Selection Procedures.
Unpublished manuscript. Durban: University of Natal.
Griesel, H 1999. Access and the Higher Education Sector. A South African Case Study on Innovative
Policy and Programmes. Pretoria: Association
for the Development of Education in Africa
(ADEA) and South African Department of Education.
Hall, M 2003. Boundary Institutions:
Universities and Social Change. Discussion paper. Cape Town:
University of Cape Town.
Hofmeyr, J, and Spence, R 1989. Bridges to
the Future. Optima 37(1), 37-48.
Hunter, P 1989. The transformation of
learning: the evolution of an academic support programme. SA Journal of
Higher Education 3(2), 68-75.
Kapp, R 2000a. ‘With English You Can Go
Everywhere’: An Analysis of the Role and Status of English at a Former DET
School. South African Journal of Education 25,
227-259.
Kapp, R 2000b. ‘Reading on the Line’ in a South African
English Second Language Literature Class. Unpublished manuscript. Cape Town: University
of Cape Town.
Khanyile, VP 1986. Untitled keynote address
presented at 1986 Academic Support Programmes Conference. Aspects 7. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal.
Macdonald, CA 1990. Crossing the Threshold into Standard Three. Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council.
Marton, F, and Saljo, R 1976. On
Qualitative Differences in Learning – I: Outcome and
Process. British Journal of Educational Psychology 46, 4-11.
Mboya, M 1986. Open non-racial
universities: A myth or reality? Monday
Paper 5 (28). Cape Town: University of Cape Town.
MoE (Ministry of
Education, South Africa)
1997. Education White Paper 3: A
Programme for the Transformation of Higher Education. General Notice 1196 of
1997. Pretoria.
MoE (Ministry of
Education, South Africa)
2001. National Plan for Higher Education
in South Africa.
Pretoria.
MoE (Ministry of
Education, South Africa)
2002. Funding of Public Higher Education: A New Framework (Revised Version).
Pretoria.
Muller, J, and Roberts, J 2000. The Sound and Fury of International School
Reform: A Critical Review. Report
prepared for the Joint Education Trust. Pretoria: Joint Education Trust.
Mullis, IVS 2000. TIMSS 1999 International Mathematics Report. Chestnut
Hill, MA: The International Study
Center, Boston College.
Nabarro, FRN 1980. An Outline of the
Academic Plan. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand.
NCHE (National
Commission on Higher Education) 1995. Report
of (Task Group 5) Technical Committee 2 on Student Access, Support and
Development. Pretoria.
NCHE
(National Commission on Higher Education) 1996. A Framework for Transformation. Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council.
Ndebele, NS 1995. Maintaining Domination
Through Language. Academic Development
1(1), 3-5.
NECC (National Education Coordinating
Committee) 1993. The National Education Policy Investigation: Framework Report
and Final Report Summaries. Cape Town: Oxford University
Press/NECC.
Perceptions of Wits 1986. Tomorrow begins at Wits today? The role of the university in a changing
society. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand.
Plüddemann, P, Mati,
X, and Mahlalela-Thusi, B 1999. Problems
and Possibilities in Multilingual Classrooms in the Western Cape. Unpublished Report on a Study Conducted for
the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa
(PRAESA). Cape Town: University of Cape Town.
Potter, CS and Jamotte, AN 1985. African
Matric Results. Dubious Indicators of Academic Merit. Indicator South
Africa 3(1), 10-13.
SAAAD (South African Association for
Academic Development) 1995. Facilitating Academic Development as a key element
of transformation in Higher Education. Submission to the National Commission on
Higher Education by the SA Association for Academic Development. Johannesburg: SAAAD.
Sass, A 1988. Academic Support in
Engineering at the University
of Cape Town. SA
Journal of Higher Education 2(1) 25-29.
Saunders, SJ 2000. Vice-Chancellor on a tightrope: A personal account of climactic years
in South Africa.
Cape Town:
David Philip Publishers.
Scott, I 1995. The interface between Higher
Education and Secondary/Further Education as a key determinant of access to and
success in HE. Paper commissioned by Task Group 5 of the National Commission on
Higher Education. http://star.hsrc.ac.za/nche/final/tg5/systems/papers.html
Shochet, I 1986. Manifest and Potential Performance in Advantaged and Disadvantaged
Students. Unpublished PhD thesis. Johannesburg:
University of the Witwatersrand.
Taylor, N, and Vinjevold, P 1999. Teaching and Learning in South
African Schools. In N Taylor and P Vinjevold
1999 (Eds.) Getting Learning Right.
Report of the President’s Education Initiative Research Project. Johannesburg: Joint
Education Trust, 131-162.
University of Cape Town 1986. Proposal for a Research Project to Devise Alternative
Selection Procedures for Entry to UCT. Cape Town:
Academic Planning Office, University
of Cape Town.
Vilakazi, HW, and Tema, B 1985. White Universities
and the Black Revolution. Paper presented at the 1985 Academic Support
Programmes Conference, University of the Witwatersrand.
Vinjevold, P 1999. Language Issues in South
African Classrooms. In N Taylor and P
Vinjevold 1999 (Eds.) Getting Learning Right. Report of the President’s
Education Initiative Research Project. Johannesburg: Joint Education Trust, 205-226.
Wolpe, H, Badat, S and Barends, Z 1993. The post-secondary education system: Beyond
the equality vs development impasse and towards policy formulation for equality
and development. Cape Town: Education Policy
Unit, University of the Western Cape.
Yeld, N, and Haeck, W 1997. Educational
Histories and Academic Potential: Can Tests Deliver? Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education
22, 5 -16.3.
Yeld, N 2001. Equity, Assessment and
Language of Learning: Key Issues for Higher Education Selection and Access in South Africa.
Unpublished PhD thesis. Cape Town: University of Cape Town.
Zaaiman, H 1998. Selecting Students for
Mathematics and Science. The Challenge Facing Higher Education in South Africa.
Pretoria: Human
Sciences Research Council.
Notes
[1] On its election in 1994, South Africa’s first democratic
government inherited a fragmented, bureaucratically chaotic situation in
respect of higher education administration and control (NECC 1993: 206). The
legislative framework of ‘own affairs’ and ‘general affairs’ determined how
post-secondary institutions were to be governed. In essence, this meant that
educational matters relating directly to the White, Coloured and Indian
population groups were deemed to be ‘an own affair within the group’s own
cultural and value framework’, and were administered by a Minister who was a
member of the Council of Ministers of the relevant group authority: the House
of Assembly for Whites, the House of Representatives for Coloureds, and the
House of Delegates for Indians. In contrast, the educational affairs of
Africans (in respect of ‘own affairs’) were administered by a Cabinet Minister
(the Minister of Cooperation, Development and Education) in the central
government. To make the position even more complicated, educational matters
deemed to affect more than one of the three minority population groups and Africans
outside the black ‘homelands’ or so-called national states (e.g. Gazankulu,
KaNgwane, Lebowa, QwaQwa, KwaNdebele, KwaZulu) were termed ‘general affairs’,
and were administered by the Minister of National Education. Apart from the
‘homeland’ authorities, there were thus five Ministers responsible for
education – four for ‘own affairs’ and one for ‘general affairs’. It is perhaps
no wonder then that ‘the apartheid model led to a situation of divided and
unequal control as far as educational institutions were concerned’ (Bunting
1994: 9).
[2] By way of illustration, in 1983 95% of the Department of Education
and Training (DET) students who obtained
a matriculation exemption (the statutory minimum requirement for eligibility
for degree study) attained D or E aggregates (Badsha, Williams & Yeld 1987)
– that is, they obtained aggregate scores of less than 60%. In South Africa,
the aggregate results of school-leaving examinations are classified and used as
the main criterion for entry to higher education, and a ‘C’ aggregate has
generally allowed access to most programmes.
Thus the profile of results for DET students was below the aggregate
level required by the white institutions. At this time, moreover, of the
students writing the Senior Certificate examination at the end of Grade 12,
only between 8% and 13% obtained an exemption
(Bot 1992). The fact that only about a tenth of the tiny group of
survivors of the dysfunctional DET school system (1.4% of those who started
school) would be eligible for regular admission to a white university shows
just how elite this group was. Compounding this, the very poor state of
mathematics and science education in DET schools meant that even if students
attained a high enough aggregate to be considered, they would be unlikely to
achieve the kinds of results in these key subjects to be considered eligible
for admission to many high-status academic programmes.
[3] The widespread
suspicion that DET Senior Certificate results did not effectively predict
future academic performance was supported by a growing body of evidence (Badsha
et al 1986, Shochet 1986, Potter & Jamotte 1985). This view was trenchantly
expressed by the principal of the University of the Witwatersrand
in 1987, who stated that ‘for students
produced by the system offered by the Department of Education and Training,
matriculation can only be regarded as a random statistic’ (The Star 25 May
1987). In addition to the structural and legislative factors impacting on the
access of black learners to historically white universities, the chaotic and
repressive conditions in DET schools ensured that black learners were
inadequately prepared for university study. The universities were therefore
faced with the unsatisfactory situation of having to select students on a basis
known to be unreliable. To make matters worse, the DET examinations produced a
restricted range of scores and a restricted set of subjects, making selection
largely arbitrary as there was little to distinguish one applicant from
another.
[4] The under-resourcing
is best captured in pupil-teacher ratios and per capita expenditure (Christie
1986). In 1971, the pupil-teacher ratios
were 58:1 in DET schools and 20:1 in White schools. In 1983 the ratios were
43:1 (DET) and 18:1 (White). In 1971, the per capita expenditure was R17 for
DET students and R282 for White students, and in 1983 it was R146 and R1,211
respectively.
[5] The
Teach-Test-Teach (TTT) project at the University of Natal
was in its early years a version of this approach (Griesel 1991, 1999; Zaaiman
1998). A large group of students was tested, put through a fortnight of
instruction, then re-tested. Selection
was planned to take place after this two-week tryout period.
[6] The prevalence and severity of educational disadvantage in South Africa,
and the adverse impact this has on the ability of candidates to demonstrate
their underlying abilities, made the development of an alternative system of
testing an extremely complex undertaking. Initially, it was believed that a
large part of the problem of the restricted range of scores obtained by black
Senior Certificate candidates would be overcome by a more rigorous assessment
system - in other words, that the flawed
DET examination was the primary problem. But it rapidly became clear that a new
approach to probing underlying ability was needed, rather than simply improved
conventional testing procedures. As Yeld
and Haeck (1997:9) pointed out, traditional testing approaches tend to elicit
‘… fairly uniformly dismal performances
… [which] … blur the distinction between better and weaker candidates’. The
AARP therefore adopted a ‘scaffolding’ approach, where tasks are created within
the tests. This ‘scaffolding’, it was reasoned, ‘enables candidates to engage
with the … tasks in ways which are different from those which would have been
employed had the scaffolding exercises not been worked through’ (Yeld &
Haeck 1997:9). The approach, while recognising the limitations of in-test
opportunities to really shift performance, attempts to take students from a
performance level based on their prior opportunities to one more closely
approximating their underlying ability. It was decided to use the skill areas
of language and numeracy in early test development, as these were of general
value in the curriculum and core areas of academic ability. In a comprehensive
validation study of this approach, it was concluded that ‘the use of
scaffolding within a test, for talented educationally disadvantaged students,
can significantly enhance test performance’ (Yeld 2001:307). The study also
concluded that the AARP tests were effective in predicting academic success
and, more specifically, that ‘students who score in the top quintile of their
candidate pool are more likely to graduate than are students who are admitted
on the basis of their Senior Certificate results alone’ (Yeld 2001:308).
[7] The basic statistics from the 2001 cohort writing the Senior
Certificate examination confirmed these disquieting results. Only about 15% (67
700) of South Africa’s
school-leaving examination candidates achieved the minimum requirement for
entry into higher education. This represented less than 8% of the age cohort,
far short of South Africa’s
target higher education participation rate of 20% (MoE 2001). Only about half
of those who achieved the minimum entry requirement for higher education were
black students – about 33 000 in total. 19% failed, and fully 51% of the age
cohort did not write the examination. It was not reported whether those that
did not write the examination were at school in lower grades, or not in school
at all. (See also Taylor and Vinjevold 1999.)
[8] ‘Placement’ here
refers to placing new students in first-year courses with an entry level that
matches their prior learning, thus enabling the students to gain a firm
foundation for their studies as well as allowing for responsible widening of
access.
[9] Part of the
Tertiary Education Linkages Project sponsored by the United States Agency for
International Development.
[10] It was argued that the articulation gap was partly attributable to
the higher education sector’s historical lack of alignment with South African
educational realities. Mainstream university programmes had never articulated
successfully with the black school sector. The main reason for this was that
the core of the higher education qualification framework had been adopted early
in the twentieth century (based on the Scottish system) for institutions that
were serving a small, predominantly white middle-class community. South
Africa’s higher education qualification structure was (and remains) based on a
three-year first degree followed by an ‘Honours’ year benchmarked on the
British Honours degree. Critical curriculum parameters and assumptions were
normed on a largely homogeneous and well-prepared student intake, and were not
valid for the majority of the black students who would need to be admitted in
increasing numbers if any significant equity progress was to be made.
[11] In 2004 – seven
years after the White Paper and a decade and a half since UCT, through its
Vice-Chancellor, first argued for state funding of AD in the then statutory
higher education advisory body – the Department of Education made available the
first major tranche of funding for foundation programmes, as provided for in
the new funding framework: a total of some R270 million for the 2004-06
triennium.
[12] For example, the direct intake into the
Science Foundation Programme grew from under 30 students in the 1980s to around
120 in the late 1990s, representing up to 30% of the total Science intake. The
growing numbers of ‘mainstream’ students transferring into the programme have
effectively doubled the size of some of the component courses, reflecting the
need for this form of provision.
[13] The ADP
contribution to the successful participation of black students cannot be
accurately quantified in summary form because of major variance in the extent
to which students in different categories and programmes make use of ADP
provision. By way of example, however, cohort studies of the five most recent
intakes to have completed their programmes (the 1995-1999 intakes) show that in
Science and Engineering – areas where black representation has historically
been very low – around 60% of the African graduates came through the full ADP
programme. This shows that talented but disadvantaged students, who do not meet
regular entry criteria, can reach the exit standards of academically demanding
programmes if they have appropriate provision. This is seen as significant in
that future growth in African enrolment will come mainly from this category of
students, at least in the medium term.
No comments:
Post a Comment