Page 83 - Transformation Indaba Report

administrative, functional or intellectual purposes. However, it seems that networks
within higher education tend to morph into exclusionary ‘clubs’ that are organised around
six ‘economies’ that constitute, in part, a university’s institutional culture - the material,
administrative, socio-cultural, affective, intellectual, and political economies - as discussed
later.

10. The expression of these economies as transformation challenges seldom features in
discourses and institutional narratives on transformation as they are generally held as
‘normal’ or ‘naturallized’ parts of ‘the idea of the university’. Their power is often
reinforced by ‘managerialist’ cultures within higher education (see Lange and Luescher-
Mamashela, forthcoming) that take many aspects of their basic design and functioning as
‘given’. Furthermore, often running parallel to the above, is the prevalence of strongly
‘technocratic doctrines’ expressed, for example, in audit and quality assurance regimes
that end up reinforcing the deeply unequal legacies inherited from our collective past. It
also, for example, tends to bleach blatantly racist and exclusionary practices into financial,
administrative and sustainability matrixes. That is, ‘clean’ audits, financial sustainability,
effective regulation and administrative composure act as ‘pardons’ and ‘exemptions’ for
manifestly discriminatory practices; facilitating the ‘reign’ of a-historical and socially-
decontextualized conceptions of ‘quality’ and ‘excellence’.

11. It thus came as no surprise that many of the systemic challenges in the higher education
sector inherited from the colonial-apartheid past, despite several and significant shifts
(e.g. enrolment patterns, student financial aid), have not fundamentally shifted. The
‘system’ still reproduces student and staff development outcomes reflective of the
enduring legacies of our past. Despite its stated intentions, the higher education system
still largely functions as a-massively-powerful reproductive machinery. The Vital Statistics
(2014) of the CHE, which captures audited data from 2007 to 2012, confirms that
despite some significant progress in enrolment rates, our higher education system still
reproduces much of the racialized participation rates of the past. More damning, in
relation to academic success, the system has most recently been described as a ‘low-
intake-high-attrition-system because only about half of the 18% of the country’s 18 to 24
year olds entering the system graduate’ with ‘Black African’ and ‘Coloured’ students
fairing the worst (Van Zyl: May, 2015). Most of the other quantitative data points in the
same direction.

III. Transformation – Research and Policy Starting Points

12. The present focus on the transformation of higher education in South Africa follows a
range of impressive reports and research studies over the past fifteen years. Prime
amongst these are the Council on Higher Education’s (CHE) higher education reviews,
the Higher Education Monitor and the Kagisano series. The work of the Centre for
Higher Education Transformation (CHET) since 1996 is noteworthy, whilst a series of
books and a wide scope of articles of a reflexive and analytical nature also add to our

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NelsoN MaNdela UNiversity • traNsforMatioN iNdaba • 2022 78