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few can be classed as theoretical in design and approach’ (ibid:159-160), is one of the
critiques against research on higher education forwarded by Jansen et al (xx). Moreover,
what these studies reveal is the power of the reproductive machinery of the university
which is structurally anchored within its institutional arrangements.

15. This machinery is disclosed in various data on the system and its major operations
captured, albeit in a different genre, in The Report of the Ministerial Committee on
Transformation and Social Cohesion and the Elimination of Discrimination in Public
Higher Education Institutions (2008; the Soudien report). This report, given the public
expression of present challenges within the sector, needs to be revisited. A focus on its
clear and detailed recommendations on staff development, student achievement,
knowledge and governance over the past 6 years would already have made massive
inroads into the system’s transformation challenges.

IV. Transformation – key conceptual frames

16. Globalisations

a. The world has become connexionist in the wake of globalising economic,
cultural, political and social processes that are steered, almost exclusively, by neo-
liberal logics. The alignment of universities with this logic and the new spirit of
capitalism; and the ensuing managerialism linked with notions of efficiency and
control has received widespread scholarly attention over the past two decades
(Adams, 2006; Vally and Motala, 2014; Lynch, 2014; McGettigan; 2014; Hedley,
2010; Ntshoe, 2008). Badat (2009:3-4) identifies three forms of neoliberal
influences on the university: the way in which the logic of the market defines the
purpose of higher education in economic terms; the redefinition of the university
as supermarkets for varieties of public and private goods; and the rise of rampant
materialism, also within higher education spaces.

b. These developments afflict the global higher education scene as captured in
University in Ruins (Readings 1996); Scholars in the Marketplace (Mamdani 2007);

special study of an emergent, significant national phenomenon that is of contemporary and critical importance to higher
education, for example, private higher education (Kruss, 2004); black academic migration (Potgieter, 2002); new forms of
knowledge production (Kraak, 2000); institutional culture studies (Thaver, 2005); and higher education as international trade
(Sehoole, 2005). These studies generate high concentration value for limited periods of time and tend to locate South African
higher education within international thinking and trends on the issue under analysis. Policy analysis − focused review and
criticism of an emergent or established higher education policy or policies, with an assessment of the nature, origins and
consequences of such policies (Muller, 2003; Hall, Symes & Luescher, 2004; Jansen, 2004; SAUVCA, 2003). This category of
study ranges from thoughtful theoretical or public position papers on a topic to more conventional policy analyses targeting a
particular higher education policy or plan. Single-issue studies − coverage of a wide spectrum of issues or concerns in higher
education that are often confined to a particular institution, based on a specific interest of an individual academic researcher, and
using a wide range of methodologies. Such studies typically appear as a single article in a higher education journal or as an entry
into a general education or social science journal. A single issue of the South African Journal of Higher Education would, for example,
cover topics as disparate as performance management in higher education, environmental education research, building research
capacity, indigenous knowledge systems, language policy in higher education, postgraduate supervision, and industry-university
partnerships.
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