Transcript HE Studies Policy Analysis Leadership and Management

Introduction to Higher Education
Presented at
Unisa Young Academics Programme
25 September 2008
Associate Prof George Subotzky
Executive Director: Information & Strategic Analysis, Unisa
Overview
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DISA
Source material
Higher education as a scholarly field of study
What is higher education?
• Definition
• Purposes
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Key issues & terms
Post-1990 policy process
Contemporary context of higher education
The changing high education workplace
Gender equity in higher education (time permitting)
DISA Mandate
UNISA
Business Units
Business
Units/
Business Units
33
DISA
ODL
Business Units
HE
Dev.
Pol. Ec.
Business Units
Business Units
HE
Policy
Vision, Mission, SP & Business Model (ODL)
Integrated Strategic Management Framework
DATA TO INFORMATION + ANALYSIS = STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE
change
plan
STATUTORY REPORTING
• HEMIS Submissions
• Other External Stakeholder
Requirements
INFORMATION &
ANALYSIS/IR OUTPUTS
• Calendarised
• Periodic
• Ad hoc Requests
Strategic
Management
Framework
INSTITUTIONAL
INFORMATION & ANALYSIS
PORTAL
• Institution-wide Webbased BI Analytic Tool
• Downloadable I & A
outputs
BI
ENTERPRISE
ARCHITECTURE
3 types of Outputs
act
review
DATA
ICT + IR
DISA
External
Source material
• Taught modules in UWC Masters/PG diploma in
Higher Education Studies: Policy Analysis,
Leadership & Management (PALM) 2002-4
• Introduction to Higher Education Studies
• The Contemporary Context of Higher Education
• Overview of the post-1990 Higher Education Policy
Process in South Africa
• Changes and continuities in the higher education
workplace
• Challenge of adaptation: included slides,
recapitulation & detail
• Previous publications & recent analyses – selfcitation
Higher education studies as a field
• Relatively new as a field of scholarly study
• Most developed in the USA: Pre-requisite for
appointment in highly professionalised
workplace
• Many qualification & professional development
programmes, including Europe & South Africa
• Numerous academic & professional
organisations, journals, conferences & networks
• SARDHE; AERA; ASHE; SRHE; AIR, EAIR, SAAIR
• Considerable body of knowledge
• Multi-disciplinary in nature
Approaches to HE Studies
• Theoretical paradigms:
• Positivist, Interpretive, Critical
• Modernist, Post-modernist/post-structuralist
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Sociological
Historical
Philosophical
Political Science
Political Economic
Economic
Comparative/International
Higher education studies: Focus areas
• Students
• Retention
• Student affairs
• Assessment
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Faculty/staff
Finance
Governance
Policy
International comparative
What is Higher Education?
• Definition
• What is ‘higher’ about higher education?
• What distinguishes it from other levels of
education?
• Purposes
• Multiple
• Conflicting
Function/Purpose of HE
• Science/knowledge production, dissemination &
preservation
• Intrinsic value: formative education, cultural &
intellectual enrichment
• Instrumental value: Growth/Development/
Transformation
• Professional/Vocational education & training to
serve HRD & labour market needs
• Public good
• Community engagement
• Critical independent space
• Growth/Development/Transformation
• Ideological: reproduction & social mobility
What is distinctive about HE?
• Epistemology/knowledge dimensions
• Scholarship & research
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Systematically elaborated and conceptualised, theoretically informed
knowledge construction, pursuit of truth, meaning and objective
knowledge, both within and across disciplines and institutional
boundaries
• Knowledge structure: vertical
• Fragmentation/specialisation of knowledge: the
disciplines and subdisciplines
• Higher order thinking and professional/
academic/vocational education & training
• Outcomes/ontological dimensions:
graduateness
• Preparedness for labour market & citizenship
commensurate with high-level knowledge framework
Higher education as socially situated
activity
• HE has had a long history – among the most institutions in
society
• HE is a socially situated and contested activity, and
therefore inevitably serves particular ideological interests
• It takes on different features according to historical,
political economic and geographical specificities. Different
emphasis on its multiple purposes and a variety of shifting
institutional forms are the result of changing relations with
society, namely:
• State
• Global institutions
• Corporate sector
• Civil society
• Technology
Proliferation of forms of HEIs
• Traditional research model
• Graduate schools
• Carnegie classification: 2-year colleges, 4-year UG
(liberal arts colleges), comprehensives, research
intensive, etc
• Differentiation and articulation: wide variety of binary
& primary systems
• Specialised professional institutions: eg graduate
business schools
• Distance education/ODL (six generations)
• Virtual universities (‘click’)
• Hybrids (‘brick & click’)
• Corporate universities
Contested vs shared concept
Many institutions claim university status.
Therefore, the key questions are:
• Can we derive a general, universal definition
despite contestations, historical, geographic
and ideological differences (Modernist view
– Barnett, Holiday)?
• Does the proliferation of forms and
purposes preclude this (postmodern view –
Scott, Castells)?
Barnett
• Weakness of the field: paradox
• No educational theory of higher education
• No theoretical framework
• Intrinsic vs instrumental/functionalist value
• Attempts to construct an educational and
epistemological theory of HE, based on the
assumption that there is something universally
common about HE despite its historical and
geographic variations, and defines this in terms
of a reconstructed version of liberal HE
• Argues for defining the value and nature of HE
as a unique and special critical process
Holiday: The Idea of an African University
• Relevance of Newman’s The Idea of a University for
African Educationalists
• “Africans in their quest for a form of university education
which will harmonise with their Africanness are driven by
an innate conviction … that such education will have to
be inseparable from their own spirituality and religious
commitments” (p 1)
• This is under threat in the dominant climate of scientism
and secularism
Holiday
• The idea of the university is not reducible to a list of
typically observable features: there are varying cases
outside of observed categories: this is so much more the
case in contemporary times, given the variety of new forms:
eg the corporate university, the virtual university (‘click’
institutions) and hybrid (‘brick and click’)
• Main claim: The idea of a university denotes something
universal. Therefore, something must be a university (in
generic terms) before it can be properly called an African
university (in particular terms).
Holiday (cont)
• Problem of retro-defining the university in terms of an
interpretation of Africanness: eg in RDP or African
Rennaissance terms: any institution which purports to
address these goals is therefore automatically a university.
• “The truth is no matter how noble are motives for wishing it
otherwise, there are real constraints on what may be
allowed to count as a university”
• New Zealand contemporary example: projection of notion
of universities of technology
• Suggestion: Africanness as a common identity can be
interpreted as “identification with and commitment to
challenges of context” and therefore to development
priorities, rather than in cultural, spiritual, nationalist,
genetic or metaphysical terms
Universities as dynamic systems of
contradictory functions (Castells)
• General theoretical claim: In all societies, universities
perform basic functions implicit in the role assigned to
them by society through political power or economic
influence
• These functions are specific to historical, cultural ideological
and scientific context
• 4 Main (general) functions (at the theoretical level) whose
specific weight in each historical and geographic context
defines the predominant role of the system and the specific
task of institutions:
• Ideological apparatuses
• Selection of dominant elites
• Generation of new knowledge: science function
• Professional training
4 Functions of HE
1. Generation and transmission of ideology
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Not just reproductive of dominant ideology but
reflecting within them external ideological struggles
“The formation and diffusion of ideology has been, and
still is, a fundamental role of universities, in spite of the
ideology of their ideology-free role”
(Castells, 2001: 206)
2. Selection of dominant elites (adapting this to the
historical & cultural characteristics of each society)
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Selection
Socialisation
Formation of networks
Codes of distinction
4 Functions of HE (cont.)
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Production and application of knowledge: science function
(research)
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Late development: 19thC Germany
Exception rather than rule: 200/3500 in USA
Research diffused in society, especially in Europe (central research
labs) and Japan (government-funded corporate R&D)
Grew out of professional university as research needs grew (US
graduate school model)
Land Grant Institutions: prototype of HE-industry links in regional
development (foundation for expansion in S&T and humanities)
Boosted by military needs
Professional training of skilled labour force (developmentrelated teaching)
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Training of the bureaucracy
Successive waves: Church, Medicine, Law, Engineering, Business,
Social Services/Health/Education, IT
Professional university gave rise to the science university
Source of the contradictory reality
• In addition to performing their role assigned
to them by society (ie the particular balance
of the 4 main functions):
“Universities as organisations are also
submitted to the pressures of society, beyond
the specific roles they have been asked to
assume, and the overall process results in a
complex and contradictory reality”
Contradictory functions
• In contemporary times, a new function: Social
Demand for HE
“Massification”
• Implicit role: surplus labour absorption: where can youth
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be? “Warehouse function”
• SA potential of this?
• Contradiction: equity and development (p 30)
Universities “combine and make compatible the seemingly
contradictory functions simultaneously although within
different emphasis” Castells, 2001: 211; Singh p 81)
“It is not possible to have a pure … model of the university” –
key point for policy-makers to understand.
Contemporary pressure is for them to function as a
“productive force in the new informational economy” (as
technology institutes, research universities, university-industry
partnerships) – instrumental aspect
But they remain “conflictual spaces” (Is this so in UoTs?)
Challenge for developing countries
“The ability to manage such contradictions,
while emphasising the role of universities in
the generation of knowledge and the training
of labour in the context of the new
requirements of the development process, will
condition to a large extent the capacity of
new countries and regions to become part of
the dynamic system of the new world
economy”
(Castells, 2001: 212)
Functions of Developing Country Universities
• Universities in the 3rd world are “historically rooted in colonial past”:
they perform an ideological function in post-colonial period
• “The recruitment of social elites, first for the colonial administration,
later on for the new political elites created with independence, became
the fundamental function of universities in the 3rd World” (Castells, 2001:
213)
• Educational and economic functions backgrounded because of the initial
dominance of the political function – led to considerable braindrain
• Need for skilled labour as part of development tasks gave impetus to
educational function
• Professional function: colonial and “homeland” administration (HBUs)
• Massification, but in traditional fields: law, humanities and social
sciences (HBUs)
• Attempts to develop S&T fields difficult
• Structural and institutional impediments to expansion of science
function (see page 215)
• Castells recognises the need for autonomy from political pressure: “The
necessary distance and independence of academic research vis-à-vis the
immediate pressures of political conflicts …”
Challenges for Dev C. universities
• Rise of technological institutions, but science function lags
behind training function
• Inability to manage contradictory functions and
interaction between ideological/political/cultural, science,
technology, economy and society
• Technical universities not able to fulfil scientific needs –
without cross-fertilisation and self-determination
(detachment): no discovery (Castells, 2001: 216). Need
“complete systems”.
• “Only possible to apply science that exists” – cf Mode1/2
• Castells argues for: a) undifferentiated comprehensive
university as key to development; b) for inter-disciplinary
flexible programmes and c) selected research centres
• Suggestions for rejuvenating HE in dev. countries
Challenge for Dev Country HE
• If 3rd World countries
are also to enter the
Information Age and
reject an increasingly
marginal role in the
world system,
development policies
must include the
impulse and
transformation of HE
systems as a key
element of the new
historical project
Bridging the divide
between 1st and 3rd
worlds
Interdependence …
• Interdependence argument for multilateral Marshall Plan
• Moral
• Functional
• Political
• Economic: “The development of the 3rd World is in the
(rational) economic self-interest of the OECD countries
and their corporations”
• “It will not be possible to integrate 3rd World
countries in a dynamic world economy without
creating the necessary infrastructure in higher
education”
• Prospects and challenges?? What do you think?
Towards a definition/statement of purpose
HE is concerned with the legitimation, production,
dissemination, reproduction and perservation of
high-order academic & vocational knowledge in
order to:
• Prepare graduates for the labour market and citizenship
• Provide formative education and to enrich cultural and
intellectual life
• Enhance socio-economic growth, development &
transformation, in particular by solving problems and
creating opportunities for social mobility
• Contribute to the public good through community
engagement and by providing a critical, independent
space
Key Issues & Terms: Epistemology
• Knowledge:
• Tacit, Practical, Political, Intuitive, Pre-theoretical,
Rational, Indigenous, Technical/Academic
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Truth, evidence & validity
Theory & Practice
Science & Technology
Research
• Basic (Mode 1), Applied, Strategic (Mode 2)
• Discipline & Department
• Multi-disciplinarity, Inter-disciplinarity &
Trans-disciplinarity
Key Issues & Terms: Governance
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Academic Freedom
Autonomy
Accountability
Governance
• Systemic and institutional
• Style & method: spectrum from steerage to
control
• Transformation
• Quality
• Quality assurance & promotion
• Certification, accreditation
Key Issues & Terms: Policy
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Formulation
Adoption
Planning
Implementation
Monitoring
Evaluation
Review
Research
Analysis
Advocacy
Key Issues & Terms: Ideology &
Power Relations
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Ideology
Discourse
Interests
Power
Power relations
Reproduction
Micro-politics
Key Issues & Terms: Equity
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Access & admissions
Equality
Equity
Inclusivity
Success & throughput
Massification
Social demand
Assimilation vs transformation
Policy tensions (real & imagined):
• Equity & Excellence
• Equity & Development
• Shifting equity discourse in South Africa
Key Issues & Terms: Value & Purpose
• Value:
• Intrinsic: Knowledge for its own sake
• Instrumental: Knowledge in service of an
ideological or socio-economic purpose
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Liberal/formative education
Emancipatory education (critical theory)
Science function
Professionalisation
Vocationalisation
Key Issues & Terms: Institutional & Academic
Identity
• Vision, Mission, Niche (strategic identity), Business Model
• Institutional differentiation (universities, UOTs, comprehensives – the
‘size and shape’ processes & debates, contact & distance)
• Africanness
• Status and reputation
• Academic identity
• Teaching/Research/Community Engagement balance
• Profile: Professoriate, Tenure
• Teaching and learning
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Programme and course: PQM
Curriculum and pedagogy
Admissions, assessment policies
Delivery Model
Graduateness
• Research
• Basic, Applied & Strategic
• Service/outreach/Community Engagement
• Service learning
Key Issues & Terms: Institutional
Organisation/Governance/Management
• Leadership
• Management: strategic & operational, academic
• Administration
• Student ‘Affairs’: Support/Development
• Academic: Teaching and Learning
• Research
• Human Resources
• Finance
• Other support/enabling mechanisms: business
architecture
STRATEGY FORMULATION
• Mission, Vision, Business Model (ODL)
• Strategic Plan
Strategic Outcomes, Objectives & Performance
Measures (all shaped by Social Mandate)
IOP & STRATEGIC PROJECTS
Strategically-aligned Outcomes, Objectives,
plan
Outputs & Performance Measures
FUNCTIONAL PLANS
eg Academic, Research, HR, Estates, ICT etc
• Projects
Strategic
Management
RESOURCE ALLOCATION
(SRAM)
Framework
• Budget
Functional Outcomes, Objectives, Outputs &
Performance Measures, Integrated Scheduling
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
• Strategic Change Initiatives
change
• Continuous Improvement
Initiatives
These are identified through
ongoing review process, and then
find expression, as the case may be,
in:
• New or revised Strategy or
Strategic Projects
• Objectives and Actions in the IOP
• Changes to Operations, the
Business and Enterprise
Architectures and Enabling
Conditions
• ACHRAM & PADRAM
OPERATIONS
• Functional/Operational Units
act
Inputs, Processes, Outputs, Outcomes
& Performance Measures
Business & Enterprise
Architectures
Shaped by strategy - the
optimal configurations of:
• People/capacity
• Processes/Systems
• Resources/Infrastructure
• Technology
Strategic
Projects
Enabling Conditions
(in addition to appropriate Business &
Enterprise Architectures)
• Effective Leadership &
Management
• Conducive Climate &
Culture
review
INSTITUTIONAL PERFORMANCE
& STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
• Monitoring and Evaluation
(BI/Institutional Research)
• Quality Assurance
• IPMS
• Risk Management
Ongoing:
• Strategic Reflection/Review
• Environmental Scanning
Key Issues & Terms: Current Impacts
• Marketisation or market-like behaviour
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• Academic capitalism
Entrepreneurialisation
Managerialism
Globalisation
Internationalisation
ICTs
Responsiveness
• New public accountability; new instrumentality
• Changing relations between state, society & the
Academy
HE Studies Policy Analysis
Leadership and Management
Sub-Module 1B:
The Contemporary Context of Higher Education
March 2004
Associate Prof George Subotzky
Key Issues & Concepts
• The multi-faceted nature of globalisation
• The nature of the ‘network’ society and the
role of knowledge, information and
technology
• The emergence of new modes of economic
production and new organisational modes
of knowledge production
• The various impacts and implications of
globalisation on higher education
Key Issues & Concepts (cont.)
• In particular, the marketisation of HE and the
rise of managerialism, and the corresponding
constriction of the civic role of the academy
and its contribution to the public good
• Alternatives to the dominant patterns of
globalisation and marketisation of HE (to the
entrepreneurial university)
• The role and responsive of HE not only towards
the competitive global knowledge-driven
economy but also towards democracy, equity
and basic reconstruction and development
Assumptions: Key Aspects of HE (see Intro.)
• HE is a ‘socially situated’ activity
• Social relations are contested, unequal and ideologically
contested
• HE shaped by, and responds to external environment:
global forces/ institutions, the nation state and society
(private/market corporate sphere and public/civil society)
• Reproduces and/or transforms unequal social relations
• Key aspects and levels of external environment: Global
level: globalisation
Changing economic production patterns and social
relations
• Role and modes of knowledge and information
• Changing function, role and forms of HE
• New relations between HE and state, private sector and
community
• New ICTs
• International level: Internationalisation of HE (Scott, 1998)
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Key aspects of HE (cont)
• National level:
• Public & macro-economic policy, political economy
• HE policy formulation & implementation: government
and other agencies
• Regional level:
• Contribution towards regional development
• Regional collaboration & competition
• Institutional level:
• Complex, loosely coupled organisations
• Contested sites: Multiple centres of authority and interests
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Disciplinary organisation vs departments (feudal fiefdoms) vs
inter-disciplinary cross-cutting organisation
Managerial vs collegial tensions
‘Local’ vs ‘Cosmopolitan’ Allegiances: Academics and Managers
engaged in multiple networks
Academic vs non-academic staff interests
What is globalisation?
• Your understanding and definition?
• Key feature of contemporary society, impacting - directly
or indirectly - on all aspects of life in every society (eg
HIV/AIDs), including HE
• Generalisability of trends and patterns? Problem of
extrapolation of part to the whole eg Internet economy,
flexible labour, new modes of knowledge production
• Different perspectives from ideological positions
• Supporters: assume inevitability: ‘There is no
alternative’ (TINA)
• Opponents: question this & assume alternatives
• Therefore different definitions & interpretations – ie
good and bad dimensions: threats & opportunities
Globalisation
• Globalisation is the intensification of trans-national
relations/exchanges/integration in the sphere of economics
(services and production), culture and media, knowledge,
science and technology, through the advancement of ITCs
and the process of progressive deregulation which primarily
serves the interests of global capital, transnational
corporations and the advanced industrial nations
• Networking and partnerships in development leading to
interdependence and connected results
• Unified space and time of various exchanges
• Unavoidable and feared (conspiracy??), supported by the
wealthy: inevitable and sustainable in its current form??
• Positive potential – reasons for participation: global
competitiveness avoid marginalisation
• Cultural imperialism
Dimensions of Globalisation
• Ideological: Castells (2001):
Globalisation is both a code word for the new emerging
world system and “the banner to rally both the
determined march of global corporate capitalism and
the worldwide sources of resistance to it”
• Economic (focus of Castells, 2001)
• Technological, Space/time compression (Urry, 1998)
• Regional, National and Local responses:
homogenisation and heterogenisation Conceptualising mediating levels and processes
• Cultural and Media/IT: implications for identity (“transnational
imaginaries” and local responses - solidarity (Stromquist &
Monkman, 2000, see also McGrew, 1992), power, gender,
knowledge (technological vs social)
Economic Globalisation
Castells (2001, 2-3): The New Economy
Key sociologist of globalisation – SA contestations of his
views in CHET book
• Worldwide and Capitalist
• Not the Internet economy: “It is the economy of all
kinds of businesses and all kinds of activities whose
organisational form and source of value and competition
are increasingly based on information technologies, of
which the Internet is the epitome and organising form”
(Castells, 2001: 2)
• But: Labour is still the basis of the economy
• Can be defined as the combination of 3 inter-related
characteristics (see Castells, 2001: 2)
• Various dimensions of economic globalisation
The New Economy
3 inter-related characteristics (Castells, 2001, 2-3):
“It is an economy in which productivity and
competitiveness are based on knowledge and
information … powered by IT”
This new economy is a global economy
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“The global economy … has the capacity [in relation to its core
activities] to work as a unit in real time, on a planetory scale”
“This capacity [comprises of] 3 aspects:
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Technological capacity: its ability to structure the entire planet
through telecommunications and informational systems
Organisational capacity: firms and networks working in this
economy organise themselves to be active globally … [in
relation to both] supplies and markets
Institutional capacity: governments create the institutions on
the new economy through deregulation and liberalisation
“which opens up the possibility for this new economy to
operate globally”
Financial Globalisation
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“The heart of the global economy is the global financial market”
Globalisation refers to core activities: “Global financial markets, the
integration of capital markets and money markets in a system which
works as a unit in real time”
Indicators: eg currency market trading in 1999 = $2-trillion = 20% more
than UK GDP per day! (Castells, 2001: 4)
Global interdependence and speed, size and complexity of financial
markets are the result of 6 developments:
1. Deregulation/liberalisation
2. Technological infrastructure (speed, size & complexity): trading
through electronic networks which allow rapid movement of capital
in real time
3. Interdependent nature of financial products
4. Speculative movement of financial flows: systemic volatility: vast
gains from small fluctuations
5. Market valuation firms: sentiment and perceptions, not performance
– open to manipulation? (SA bemused: fundamentals are there, but
Foreign Direct Investment isn’t following)
6. International financial institutions: conditionality
Summary
“What we have is a new kind of system in which
global financial markets are integrated,
interdependent and at the same time, highly
unstable in their processes. If capital markets and
currencies are interdependent, so are monetary
policies and interest rates, and therefore, so are
economies everywhere. Capital flows become global
and increasingly autonomous, at the same time visà-vis the actual performance of the economies.
What is the relationship between the performance of
an economy and what happens with its financial
system? It is a very undetermined equation.”
(Castells, 1999: 6)
Transformation of International Trade
1. Transformation of composition of international
trade a) from commodities and raw materials to
advanced services b) within manufacturing from
low value-added/low tech to high valueadded/high tech
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WTO want to include HE in GATS. What are the
implications? HE and FTAs (Mallea, et al 2002, SA Minister of
Education, 2003, CHE)
2. OECD: 19% pop and 74% trade, but developing
countries’ share of international trade increased
substantially
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Africa – most internationalised region – why?
Trading blocs and regional integrated economies: neither
integrated regions nor single global economy: instead:
networks of trade.
Internationalisation of Production
• Core of the matter:
“What really has happened in the world in the last 20 years is that
the core of production of goods and services in every sector has been
internationalised through transnational networks of production,
distribution and management” (Castells, 2001: 8).
• Internationalisation of the production process
through a layered network
• Transnational Corporations (TNCs): decentralised
networked units formed through FDI in the form of
mergers and acquisitions
• Much wider than usually assumed: 53 000 TNCs
• 30% of global GDP (15% within same TNC), 66% of global
trade, but employ fraction of global labour market
• Subsidiary networks: SMMEs and informal sector
(Selective) Globalisation of S&T
• Science & Technology (S&T) is globally
integrated through connections to
developing countries
• But with tremendous asymmetry: S&T very
highly concentrated in ‘core’/ leading
economies
• Networks are (somewhat) interactive, with
diffusion to developing countries (eg India) is
possible
Summary
“A key characteristic of the new economy is that it is organised in
networks … a set of interconnected nodes. These … are in the large
corporations [and are] decentralised. Small and medium businesses
connect to each other, forming networks [which] connect to these
decentralised networks of the corporation, forming networks of networks
[increasingly using] e-commerce. The new technological basis for the
new economy is the Internet . The Internet is not simply one more
technology. The Internet is the equivalent of electricity and of the
electrical engine of industrialisation. It induces the networking form, just
as the fusion of the electrical engine allowed the formation of the
industrial factory, at the heart of the development of the large capitalist
corporation (Castells, 2001: 10).
“If knowledge is the electricity of the new network society,
then HE is the power station”
Networks and global reach
• Networks: a set of interconnected nodes: key characteristic
of the new economy
• New economy and survival activities are the two key sectors
in the world
• Relation between old & new economy (p 10-11)
• “Double logic” of network society: clear patterns of
inclusion and exclusion: does not integrate everyone but
affects all (p 11 - see below)
“It is a very lean efficient system of including and excluding”
• Integrated global networks and excluded local societies:
Cuts across North and South divide, which no longer
prevails.
East Palo Alto and Bangalore examples – do you agree?
“Globalisation does not integrate everybody. In fact, it currently
excludes most people on the planet but at the same time , affects
everybody”
Transformation of Labour Markets
• New technologies and unemployment – jobs are lost “under
some conditions”: therefore we must “create dynamism in
other sectors” (unclear and fuzzy regarding interventionist
role of the state??)
• Flexible labour and individualisation of labour-capital
relationships have become the norm
• “Self-programmable” vs “generic” labour – key issue for
education (Castells, 2001: 10)
“Self-programmable labour [has] the built-in capacity to generate value
through innovation and information, and has the ability to reconstruct
itself throughout the occupational career on the basis of this education
and this information. Therefore it is always at the source of the creation of
[added] value” (Castells, 2001: 13)
• 2 key issues: global search for talent and pressure for access
to developed world – migrations including women
(Stromquist and Monkman)
• Capital is global, labour is local: Majority of labour not
globalised
Globalisation and developing countries
• Leap-frogging technology – possible?
• New production modes: Manufacturing not
disappearing but changing: “Post-Fordism”
(Kraak, 2001: 38): manufacturing plus
automation, innovation, flexible responsive
output, high-tech, connected to information
and global markets
• 2 phenomena: a) Devaluation of low-skilled
generic labour, leading to b) expansion of
informal, survival and criminal sectors, which
are linked to new economy
Globalisation, inequality and poverty
•
•
•
•
Impact on LDCs: dual society (p 15; Smythe in Subotzky, 1999)
4th world – marginalised discarded societies: (p 15)
What is Castells suggesting about alternatives here?
New economy: “simultaneously highly productive and
extraordinarily exclusionary through the process of
networking and segmentation” (p15)
• Well documented indicators of asymmetries in
distribution of benefits and wealth: 4 axes - inequality,
poverty, polarisation and social exclusion – see
examples (p 16)
• What is responsible? Correlation and causation
• Problem of personifying globalisation!
• Key issue: relationship between this new mode of development –
info development – and the overall process of intergration
6 Factors re: exclusion
1. Nature of networks [and the interests underlying
them] allow for exclusion
2. Extreme under-development of technological
infrastructure in most of the world
3. Likewise, education, technological literacy and R&D
extremely unevenly distributed: not just massification
“warehousing” but also quality [resources & capacity!]
4. Impact of integrated market volatility
5. Bypassing and restraint of national states by
international finance institutions [World Bank and IMF]
6. Parallel criminal economy, and social crises: migration,
urbanisation without conditions to integrate,
corruption strife, ecological crisis, impacting most on
women and children – all “the contradictions of
development are sharper than ever”
Sustainability? Alternatives?
• Proponents: TINA and the trickle-down approach:
“redistribution through growth”
• Opponents: Inherent contradictions make it
unsustainable:
• Underlying tensions: (Subotzky p 58/9)
• Crisis of Interdependency: unregulatable systemic
volatility of markets, ecology, social cohesion
• Crisis of overcapacity
• Crisis of supply of talent
• Left: Castells, Chomsky, NSMs as well as Orthodoxy:
Sachs, Fisher, Stiglitz – socially and politically
unsustainable as well
Alternatives?
• Global turning point: realisation of rational selfinterest in avoiding negative global impacts –
idealistic optimism or real hope?
• Role of state:
• minimal state vs regulatory/interventionist (Stromquist
& Monkman, 2000: 22-23)
• diminished role or not?
• Position of SA
• Explaining current political economy (Subotzky, 1999:
60-61):
• Dual development path and current privileging of
global
• Complementary development path? Settlement?
• TINA or not?
Subotzky (1999)
• Situates the impacts of globalisation within political
economy
• Tensions underlying globalisation
• SA political economy
• Seeks complementary alternatives to the HEindustry partnership and market-oriented
knowledge production – model of CSL: an instance
of serving the public good and RDP
• Tracks impacts of globalisation: tensions and the
SA case; SA HE; impacts on HE
Additional issues
• Impacts of Globalisation on HE
• Reinserting the public good (Singh)
• Changing modes of knowledge
production (Kraak, Subotzky)
• Changing functions of HE: shift from
elite to mass HE (Kraak, Scott)
• Massification, internationalisation and
globalisation (Scott)
• Approach issues through close
reading of cross-cutting debates in
various sources: analysts’ critique
each others’ accounts
Forces of Change acting on HE
• Multiple impacts of globalisation:
• New global economy & ICT-driven knowledge society
• Shifting purposes and role of HE in innovation and competitiveness
•
•
•
•
•
•
driving economic development : the new instrumentalism – the call
for ‘responsiveness’
New public accountability to national government & society mainly
in terms of contribution to economic development: quality assurance
New relations between HE and state, private sector and community
Neo-liberalism and the emphasis on fiscal constraint and efficiency
Marketisation, Vocationalisation, Managerialism and Privatisation
New knowledge production (Kraak, Subotzky)
Impact on faculty life (Stromquist & Monkman, Subotzky - June)
• Internationalisation (exchange, curriculum, collaboration, Scott)
• Social Demand: increased access: “Massification” (Scott, Kraak)
• ICTs – the rise of new Distance Education, Multimedia
instruction, virtual universities, corporate universities (Scott)
• Counters: Reinserting the public good (Singh, Subotzky)
Reinserting the Public Good
• Responsiveness primarily interpreted in economic
terms (Singh, Subotzky)
• Impacts of Globalisation: Social Purposes of HE
losing ground
• Hold multiple purposes in balance (also Castells)
• Strategies to operationalise public good:
Analytic clarity: public good and market
Interrogating relevant knowledge and skills
Identifying strategic possibilities: TINA issue
Operational opportunities (eg Community Service
Learning - Subotzky)
• Implications for leadership and management
• Good practices
• Role of State and donor communities
•
•
•
•
New Modes of Knowledge Production
• Kraak paper: outline of debate and centrality of Mode 2
debate in HE policy
• Key factors in the emergence of Mode 2: Globalisation +
democratisation – simultaneous impact led to a ‘major shift
in the institutional organisation and delivery of HE
programmes since the late 1980s (too simple?)
• Globalisation:
• post-Fordism (new modes of economic production): flexible
specialisation
• IT & the facilitation of internationalisation of capital
• The networked firm
• New educational demands: highly skilled labour force – specialised
skills + generic competencies – ‘portable’ skills, self-programmable
• Democratisation/massification
• Egalitarian pressure for wider access
• Diffussion of skilled professionals, knowledge workers and research
organisations outside HE institutions
Impacts of Changes (Kraak)
• Impact 1: The shift from a closed to an open HET system:
• New programme offerings – beyond discipline-based degree
•
•
•
•
•
qualifications, based on open-learning methods (see Scott in Kraak,
2000: 8)
Economic (new skills needs) and educational responses
(accommodating non-traditional students)
Eroding of the dominance of elite academic cultures [FE or HE
slippage?]
Shift from closed to open intellectual systems (dynamically
interactive with outside social interests and knowledge structures)
incorporating the values of non-elite communities [optimism about
knowledge equivalences, interfaces and seamless mobility?]
4 key changes (Scott) [dichotomous from-to pattern?]:
• From courses to credits
• From departments to programmes
• From subject-based teaching to student-based learning
• From knowledge to competence
Unified system and institutional differentiation
Impact 2: From Mode 1 to Mode 2
• Mode 1: Disciplinary knowledge production:
• ‘basic/blue sky/curiosity-driven + ‘applied’
• formulated within disciplinary boundaries
• Mode 2:
• Transdisciplinary knowledge production
• Applications driven: generated in the context of
application
• Organisational diverse (transient teams) and
heterogeneous
• New forms of quality control
• Socially reflective
Interpretations & Critique of Mode 2
• Kraak: optimist
• Subotzky (1999) argument: cautiously exploratory
• The Gibbons Thesis: promise or peril for LDCs?
(Subotzky; Muller and Subotzky: critically cautious
– the debate moves on)
• Alternative interpretations (Rip, Etzkowitz, Subotzky
et al, 2003)
• Key issue: Uncritical uptake and interpretation of
policy
Massification, Internationalisation & Globalisation
•
Scott: Tension between massification and internationalisation?
International mission vs responsiveness to local circumstances?
Myth of:
•
a)
b)
•
universities as international institutions – they are national institutions
created to fulfil national purposes
International community of scholars believing in universal values –
contemporary world is much more complex, diverse and pluralistic
Characteristics of mass systems (shift from elite to mass):
•
•
•
•
•
Inclusive
Diversified institutions: including ‘local’ institutions
New managerial approach
Quality assurance and regulation
International dimensions of mass HE
•
•
•
•
Student flows (across boundaries and market-driven)
Staff flows
Research and teaching collaboration
Flow of ideas (postmodernist pluralism – globalisation not just about real
time IT-driven markets)
Globalisation and Internationalisation
• Internationalisation:
World-order dominated by [certain] nation
states involving increased cross-national
flows
• Globalisation:
“National boundaries rendered obsolete
[weaker? – danger of totalising tendencies] by
the transgressive tendencies of high
technology and world culture”
Recap: The multifaceted nature of globalisation
• Various dimensions:
• Ideological
• Economic
• Cultural (identity)
• Technological, space/time
compression
• Mediating responses –
national, regional and local
• The nature of the network
society: inclusion and
exclusion
Recap (cont.)
• Globalisation and Developing Countries
• Inequality, Poverty, Polarisation and Social
Exclusion
• Sustainability and alternatives
• Interdependence and Internal Contradictions:
•
•
•
•
Possible turning points?
Political-economic position of SA: choices?
Role of state and transnational civil society
formations in relation to globalisation and
fostering alternatives
TINA or not?
Conditions for developing alternatives
HE Studies Policy Analysis
Leadership and Management
Sub-Module 2B:
Overview of the Post-1990 Policy Process
in South Africa
March 2004
Associate Prof George Subotzky
Context for HE transformation in SA
• Opportunity and imperative for this:
• 1990 political changes – offered opportunity for fundamental
reconstruction
• Legacy of apartheid: unequal, ineffective, inefficient, distorted and
dysfunctional
• Scale of fundamental transformation unprecented
• Policy framework characterised by two key factors:
• Globalization
• Dual social structure
• Dual national development priority:
• Engagement in the competitive global economy
• Address the basic needs of the majority poor
• Ongoing challenges of impacts on HE of:
• Globalisation
• Internationalisation
Historical overview
• SA history: characterised by intense political
conflicts and socio-cultural divisions
• HE system therefore shaped by prevailing balance
of forces in successive historical periods
• Colonialism and underlying conflict between British and
Afrikaner nationalism
• Phases of economic development (agriculture, mining,
industrialisation)
• Apartheid
• Multiple institutional system: result of intense
rivalry between 2 dominant politico-cultural
linguistic groups: British colonialists and Boer
Afrikaners
Post-1990 Policy Process
• Period of negotiation and re-entry into international
community
• Engagement with multilateral & development
assistance agencies: international and local studies
• Progressive policy formulation through key
processes and documents:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
National Education Policy Initiative
ANC manifesto and IPET
National Commission on HE
Green Paper, White Papers
HE Act
Size and Shape reports
National Plan
National Working Group – Mergers
Implementation of 3 regulatory levers: funding framework,
QA, enrolment planning
Periodisation
• Pre-1990
• Apartheid planning, control, repression
• Opposition, activism, analysis
• 1990-1994
• Negotiations and realisation that post-apartheid policy
framework would be required
• Multilateral and bilateral agencies: 1st studies and
quantification of apartheid inequalities
• National Education Policy Initiative (NEPI)
•
•
Policy options by progressive educationists
Equity and development issues
• ANC Education and Training Policy Framework: election
manifesto
• Implementation Plan for Education and Training (IPET):
plan of action for new minister
1994-1997
• Consultative Process of Formulation of Macropolicy Framework
• National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE)
(1996)
• Comprehensive framework for single, unified but
institutionally differentiated programmes-based system
• Wide consultation, general consensus
• White Paper on Higher Education Transformation:
1, 2 and 3 (initial contestations, wide consensus on
final version) (1997)
• 3 imperatives:
•
•
•
Redress
RDP needs
Global competitiveness
• 8 policy goals (p. 550)
3 Overarching HE Goals
• Equity:
• access and success
• redress: social and institutional
• democratic, “co-operative” governance
• Effectiveness:
• relevance (responsiveness to societal needs:
contributing to global and basic
development)
• quality
• quantity: graduate and research outputs
• Efficiency:
• delivery (within fiscal constraint)
• removing inefficiencies of apartheid
Post-1997 Immediate DOE Priorities
Implementation diverted:
• Creating/strengthening required structures
and bureaucracy: HE Branch and Council for
HE
• Incorporation of colleges
• Regulation of private HE
• Institutional management/finance crises
• Norms and standards for teacher education
• HEMIS
• NSFAS
1997 – 2001: “Implementation vacuum”
• Between White Paper and National Plan
• Symbolic vs substantive policy
• Conditions not ready: policy naivety to policy
maturity; capacity, other preoccupations
• Role of state: (structural intervention and
market regulation to achieve equity,
effectiveness, efficiency) vs minimal state
• Tension between regulatory national
planning and autonomy (without denying
accountability)
• New Minister (1999)
Partial Regulation and Market Conditions
• Partial regulation  2 conditions
a) market conditions - various institutional
responses:
- Entrepreneurialism: Local and transnational DE and
telematics, satellite campuses (HWAUs)
- Academic restructuring towards programmes and
inter-disciplinarity (HWEUs) - ‘Disciplinary’ vs the
‘credit accumulation and transfer’ positions
- Private Sector needs (HWUs and some Techs)
b) greater inequalities and dysfunctionality of
some HDIs – no substantial redress policy
Size and Shape Debate
• Preoccupation with restructuring: Rationale?
• CHE 1st Discussion Document (May 2000)
2nd Discussion Document (July 2000)
• Huge controversy
National Plan
Operationalises WP goals: objectives, targets and
strategies, timeframe.
• Indicative targets:
• participation rate 15% to 20%;
• graduation rate benchmarks;
• shifting enrolments between the humanities, business and
commerce, engineering and technology from the current ratio of
49:26:26 to 40:30:30 respectively; and
• student and staff equity targets.
• Regulatory steps to ensure diversity of institutional
mission and programme differentiation (PQM).
Institutional programme mixes to be determined on
basis of current profiles, relevance to national priorities,
and demonstrated capacity for proposed new programs.
National Plan
• Restructuring of institutional landscape through
the reduction in number of institutions but not
delivery sites
• Various immediate institutional mergers are
recommended while further potential ones and
regional collaboration will be guided by a
National Working Group, heavily laden with
economists – signaling a strong efficiency
intention
• Principle of differentiation and restructuring
accepted (as far back as NCHE): detaching
differentiation from disadvantage
3 Regulatory Levers
1. National/Institutional goal and results oriented
Planning framework:
•
3-year Rolling Plans; Strategic Plans; PQM
2. Funding framework: new doc
•
•
•
•
•
Goal oriented, earmarked and block grants
Separate research funding
Teaching inputs/outputs
Minimalist government: ‘funding in the last resort –
lever for market solution
Institutional factors: ‘redress’: size and African enr.
3. Quality Assurance: HE Quality Committee
•
•
Accreditation of programmes
Institutional site visits (pilots completed)
Current Policy Processes
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Restructuring (post-Zuma ANC review?)
Programme & Qualifications Mix (PQM)
New academic policy – HEQF (CHE)
NQF review
New school leaving certificate & FETC framework
Distance Education & Satellite Campuses
Redress Policy
Language Policy
National Higher Education Information and
Applications Service
• Ministerial Teacher Education Committee
• Enrolment & output targets: tensions between
participation & efficiency (post-Zuma ANC review?)
• Autonomy debate: governance style
Restructuring
•
•
•
Reduce 36 to 22 institutions but retain 48 sites:
11 Universities; 6 Comprehensives; 5 Technikons
10 mergers from 23:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
•
U of Natal and UDW = UKZN
MEDUNSA & North = U of North
RAU and Wits Tech (Comprehensive) = U of Johannesburg
Port Elizabeth Tech and UPE (Comprehensive) = Nelson Mandela UoT
Potchefstroom & N West Univ.(Comprehensive) = U of Northwest
UNISA, Tech SA and Vista Distance (Comprehensive) = (new) UNISA
Cape and Pen Techs = Cape Peninsula U of T
Natal, ML Sultan and Mangosuthu Techs = DIT
North West, N Gauteng and Pretoria Techs = Tswane U of T
Unitra, E Cape and Border Techs = Walter Sisulu U of S&T, EC (compr)
12 Untouched:
Wits, UCT, Stellenbosch, Pretoria, Free State U, Rhodes, UWC, Fort
Hare, Venda (UoT), Zululand (C), Free State Tech, Vaal Triangle Tech
Descriptive Overview of Current System
• 36 Institutions, reducing to 22
• Ambiguous Binary System
• Historical Categories: HAIs and HDIs (still
valid??)
• Unexplained fluctuations in enrolments
The “Skewed Revolution”
(Cooper & Subotzky, 2001)
• Some important aggregate changes, but
apartheid imprint intact in many ways
• Disaggregations reveal race and gender groups
concentrated by institutional type, field and
level (new public-private partnerships)
• Staff:
- Largely unchanged
- 14% professors are women
• Institutional capacity still highly uneven
Key HE Challenges
• Planning & Implementation
• Capacity
• HE Policy shaped by political-economic choices:
Reconciling conflicting policy imperatives: equity
and development
• Integrated Policy-making: avoiding ‘immediatism’
(demonstrable change which may not meet goals
of equity, efficiency and effectiveness) and ‘big
bang’ policy (change the world)
• HIV/AIDS: major humanitarian and HRD challenge
for planning and management
Higher Education Challenges
Equity
• Social and individual redress: need for
political settlements and alternative
funding sources
• HE and the Public Good, service, and
contributing towards basic Reconstruction
and Development, critical function of HE
• Access and success: assimilation vs
transformation: RPL, NQF
• Greater representivity/diversity: staff,
students & outputs
Higher Education Challenges
Efficiency
- Institutional landscape
- Management and leadership crises
- Throughput and success rates
• Tensions between managerialism and
marketisation of HE and collegiate culture
Higher Education Challenges
Effectiveness:
- HRD, Labour market needs and dual
development path in the context of
globalisation
- ‘Graduateness’/quality
- ‘Responsiveness’: Curriculum, disciplinarity
and interdisciplinarity new knowledge issues,
partnerships
Peril or promise for developing countries:
Uncritical policy uptake?
The Nature of Policy
“Policy is the authoritative allocation of values”
Policy is a complex process, which involves far
more than the documented texts to which the term
usually refers. It involves several formal and nonformal non-sequential elements, a variety of
agents in different settings, and consists of various
types. Without fully grasping these aspects, policymaking, implementation and analysis will remain
inadequate.
Components of the Policy Process
• Research and the identification and privileging of
areas and options
• Formulation
• Interpretation, Adoption and Adaptation
(necessary prioritisation and emphases)
• Planning
• Implementation
• Monitoring (tracks change) and evaluation
(formative and summative – explains change)
These are not linear steps which can be rationally
determined, but inter-relate in complex ways, are
subject to multiple determinants
Policy Agents
• Government (including the ministry, other
ministries and cabinet);
• Parliament (including Portfolio Committee and
ANC study group on education);
• The civil service (which involves the bureaucratic
function of policy);
• The organised business sector;
• Civil society (organised labour, teacher and
student organisations, academics, researchers and
other stakeholder bodies); and
• Foreign advisors, multilateral and bilateral
development agencies and philanthropic
foundations.
Policy Models
• Rational Model
• Conceived as a cycle comprising linear steps
• Assumes outcomes
• Complexity Model
• Policy process as unwieldy, complex,
contradictory, indeterminate subject to unequal
power relations, interests and contestations
These have methodological implications
Types of Policy
Adapted from Dudley & Vidovich, 1995:14-15
and Taylor et al. 1997:33-35
• Distributive: favour all groups in allocation
of resources and benefits
• Redistributive: distribute additional
resources to one set of beneficiaries for
equity reasons.
• Regulatory: limit or direct behaviours of
particular groups through conditional
resource allocation
Types of Policy
• Symbolic: signifies general values, principles
and normative ideals with very little or no
indication of implementation procedures or
resource allocations. Provides benchmark for
evaluation and its political function is to achieve
consensus
• Substantive: concrete actions governments
want to take: the content of decisions
• Procedural: indicate how decisions are to be
implemented, eg guidelines
• Material: show commitment to implementation
through the allocation of resources.
These are not discreet elements but part of
overall policies.
Types of Policy (cont.)
• Rational: Outlines a set of guidelines for new policy
development independently of practice
• Incremental: dependent upon previous or existing
policies and practices.
• Top-down: Developed by an authoritative structure
and distributed downwards through the system in a
top linear, hierarchical process. Linked to the
notion of ‘forward mapping’ (Elmor, 1980).
• Assumes those closest to the source of policy have
greatest authority and influence, and that responding to
problems in complex systems depends on clear lines of
authority and control
Types of Policy (cont)
• Bottom-up: Builds on existing practices,
analysing the conditions at the coalface of
implementation
• Seek to create conducive behaviours
(compliance, knowledge, skills, capacities and
resources) among practitioners which will
support successful implementation
• Relates to Elmore’s concept of ‘backward
mapping’
• Assumes that those closest to the source of the
problem have the greatest ability to influence it
and that problem-solving in complex systems on
maximizing discretion at the point where the
problem is most immediate (Elmore 1980:605).
Types of Policy (Cont.)
It is important to note that not all policies
fall neatly into one or other of these
distinctive categories. In practice, they are
typically a combination of the categories
and/or their components (Taylor et al.,
1997).
Consequences for Implementation
•
•
•
•
Successful implementation rests on a
number of necessary conditions:
Adequate human, financial and other
material resources necessary
Clear planning strategies
Understanding, capacity and political
opportunity to turn symbolic policy into
substantive, material and procedural policy
Understanding the dynamics various
components of the policy process in the
specific context
Consequences for Implementation
• Among the various agents involved – their differentiated
‘behaviours’ which might facilitate or obstruct
implementation (Elmor)
• Understanding the various roles, interests, motives, possible
recalcitrance, priorities, capacities, technical skills,
knowledge and the required discretionary ability and
opportunities to deal with contingencies
• Successful implementation thus involves attaining
supportive compliance, which in turn depends on sufficient
ideological consensus and trusting belief in the symbolic
value, substance and planning strategies of policy
• As this always varies, successful implementation also
depends on monitoring, evaluation, review, accountability,
and, where necessary, sanctions.
Policy Tensions
• Policy is necessarily a contested and indeterminate
process, inevitably subject to competing interests,
ideologies and values
• Shaped by unavoidable resource constraints which
lead to competing priorities
• How do these abstract considerations find concrete
expression?
• In South Africa, given its sharply polarised history,
these tensions take on a particular character, which
can be seen to be the outcome of both structural
and conjunctural conditions