Cape Town - The Department of Higher Education and Training may close or downgrade higher education institutions that fail to meet requirements for their recognised institutional type.
This is according to the new Policy for the recognition of South African Higher Education Institutions, gazetted on Monday by Minister Blade Nzimande.
The new draft rules aim to differentiate types of educational institutions.
A university must offer a wide range of studies or be classified as a college.
“A university must undertake research and produce knowledge contributing to the national development needs and international scholarship, and demonstrate a culture of sustained scholarship evidenced in peer reviewed academic publications which inform teaching and learning in all its academic fields,” the draft states.
Any new university must be established as a university college first.
A university college must offer a range of qualifications, with no less than 85% being on the Higher Education Qualification Sub-Framework (HEQSF).
It must develop or grow or evolve into a university over time, under the trusteeship of an existing established university.
A higher education college must offer a range of qualifications, with no less than 60% being on the HEQSF.
“Higher education institutions that fail to meet the criteria for their officially recognised institutional type will be reviewed for suitability and may be declared as a different institutional type or incorporated as a subdivision of an existing higher education institution by the Minister in terms of section 21 of the Higher Education Act. Or even be subject to closure,” the gazette stated.
Nzimande said the purpose of the policy was to give effect to the institutional types provided for by the Higher Education Act.
Universities South Africa (Usaf) chief executive Professor Ahmed Bawa said that they made several inputs to the process.
Usaf is a membership organisation representing South Africa’s 26 universities.
“The purpose was to broaden the types of institutions that offer higher education qualifications. If we understand that higher education qualifications have to be accredited by the council of higher education, it doesn’t matter where they are offered, then the quality process should be exactly the same.
“Among the pros is that this will allow us to grow the number of people who are taking higher education qualifications because it means we will have additional institutions that will be offering higher education qualifications. Our universities are really operating at full capacity currently so if there are other types of accredited institutions, then I don’t see a problem with that,” said Bawa.
However he said one major issue that was not yet clear was how the institutions would be funded.
“Currently many of our universities are seriously underfunded, so the question is will this new initiative attract funding away from the university sector? That would have serious consequences. In principle, if the funding principle works well, I’ll be supportive of the shift because it will increase the capacity of our sector to offer higher education qualifications.
“We also have to be convinced that there is sufficient capacity at these institutions to offer higher education qualifications. As long as the council of higher education does its work properly we should be safeguarded against these things.”
The public has been offered a period of about 30 days to comment on the draft policy.
Cape Times