What are the big challenges facing higher education in South Africa today?
To understand today’s challenges, we need to go back to the apartheid years. Thirteen years ago, with the coming of the new democracy, we had 36 higher education institutions, 21 universities and 15 polytechnics, all state run. All of them were ethnically and racially unintegrated, with schools that black, colored and Indians attended being hopelessly under-resourced, and those that whites attended being well resourced. The challenges we had then we continue to face today, although we’ve made much progress. At that time, the participation rate of black students was not commensurate with their share of the population. Student retention and graduation rates were low. The quality of academic programs and teaching was uneven, as were academics’ qualifications and capacities. What kind of progress have you made in addressing these problems? In 1994, we had about 500,000 students enrolled at these 36 institutions; by 2005, that number had increased to 734,000, and we expect it to reach 800,0
