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A quarter of a century after South Africa's transition to democracy, the rhetoric of 'transformation' remains firmly ingrained in its higher education policy and discourse. In many of the reviews, reports, proposals, and frameworks on the transformation of the South African university system, one thing stands out: an oversupply of rhetoric and a dearth of empirical data. This article is a direct response to how infrequently data has been used and seeks to reveal the actual quantum of change, albeit with a focus on an admittedly singular element on the transformation spectrum but one which nevertheless preoccupies South Africans: equity (or race). The evidence presented in the paper shows that the absence of a clear articulation of transformation, accompanied by a lack of indicators and targets to track progress over time, hinders the progression of the discourse to equally important dimensions of performance such as efficiency, success and productivity—all of which are critical in determining the university's role in national development. The paper goes on to show that based on the data available, the public university system in South Africa is transforming given the increases over time in the number of black students and staff. However, without a clearly articulated idea of what constitutes change, one cannot claim a transformed system, and the political narrative of no transformation is likely to prevail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principles of diversity and inclusion are valued across the higher education sector, but the ways in which these principles are translated into pedagogic practice are not always evident. Students who are first in their family to attend university continue to report barriers to full participation in university life. They are more likely to leave their studies early, and to achieve lower grades in their final qualifications, than students whose families have previous experience of higher education. The purpose of this study was to explore whether a mismatch between staff perceptions and students' experiences might be a possible contributor to these disparities. The study explored and compared staff discourses about the experiences of first generation students at two universities, one in the United Kingdom (UK), and the other in South Africa (SA). One-to-one interviews were carried out with 40 staff members (20 at each institution) to explore their views about first generation students. The results showed that staff were well aware of challenges faced by first generation students; however, they were unsure of their roles in relation to shaping an inclusive environment, and tended not to consider how to use the assets that they believed first generation students bring with them to higher education. This paper explores these staff discourses; and considers proposals for challenging commonly-voiced assumptions about students and university life in a broader context of diversity and inclusive teaching practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on a study conducted to establish if academic practice in a university designated as Azania is aligning or diverting from the expectations of the rising knowledge society in South Africa. The paper is motivated by the emerging national needs specific to the production, dissemination and application of knowledge as the country takes steps towards knowledge led development. The general assumption is that academic practice in universities is spontaneously responding to the needs of its changing environment. Thus, to establish the position of academic practice in Azania, institutional and national documents were examined from a neo-institutional perspective through qualitative discourse analysis. The results showed that research, teaching and outreach at the University was responding to national needs. Thus, academic practice in Azania is aligning more than diverting from the expectations of the rising knowledge society. However, considering that the study based on only document analysis a focus on other data sources is recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on two concepts, the first of which is the extended information processing model of expert design cognition. This proposes twelve internal psychological characteristics interacting with the external world of expert designers during the early phases of the design process. Here, I explore one of the characteristics, hierarchical abstraction, and adapt it into an alternative ontological model of decision making. The model serves as an in-depth descriptor of how designers from different domains transform their mental states using judgment and decision making through hierarchical abstraction. The second concept entails an expansion of the idea of synergistic vertical transformation as a framework for mapping expert designers’ design process. Here, I focus on hierarchical decision making as multi-directional, and inter-relating the internal and external world of designers. In doing so, I provide a coding tool for researchers interested in exploring designers’ complex decision making processes. Concurrently, the model serves as decision making tool in design and technology education classrooms. As such, the paper focuses on the ontology of conceptual structures that support the early phases of the design process. This was based on empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving access to higher education is an important strategy for achieving equity in the labour market. Against the backdrop of the 'massification' of higher education in a number of countries, most notably in the UK during the 1990s, a growing literature on graduate un/employment has aimed to investigate whether the graduate labour market has absorbed the increasing number of university completers. In post-apartheid South Africa, this question assumes an added significance corresponding with the need to redress sharp inequalities in access to higher education inherited from the colonial and apartheid eras. Measuring graduate employment outcomes, however, is notoriously difficult. Graduate employment studies are often ad hoc and focus on graduates from only a handful of universities or degree programmes. Exploring a novel dataset, this paper presents the first analysis of the labour market absorption rates of publicly funded (through the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS)) graduates from low-income households across all South African universities between 2005 and 2015. While our findings illustrate the expected differences in the probability of employment by race and gender, we also identify a strong and significant association between the type of university from which NSFAS students graduate and the probability of employment and show that this association holds irrespective of race, gender and the field of study in which a degree is obtained. We conclude with a reflection on what a hierarchical higher education system means for the role of higher education in transformation and creating an equitable society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community engagement as a public mission of higher education is widely accepted in South Africa. This is articulated in White Paper 3 on the transformation of higher education and in institutional policies that promote different forms of community engagement. However, compared to the traditional roles of teaching and research, community engagement remains contested. It is most often viewed as voluntary and perhaps even peripheral. Given the serious social disparities in South Africa, community engagement needs to be invigorated and placed on par with the teaching and researching roles of universities. Furthermore, it should not only involve collaborative knowledge production, but should combine epistemological and ontological dimensions and involve holistic human development capable of dealing with social disparities A combined epistemological-ontological conception of community engagement is developed in this study and interventions are proposed at three levels. First, university induction programs, which tend to prioritize the teaching and researching roles of faculty members, should consider community engagement as equally important. Second, just as the teaching and researching roles tend to be well planned and/or incentivized, so too should community engagement. Third, community engagement should adopt a mode 2 knowledge production lens where community members reflexively produce knowledge together with faculty members and contribute to holistic human development. Finally, strategies are suggested to embed an epistemological-ontological conception of community engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the idea of 'core business' in contemporary South African public universities. South Africa's public higher education system has global ambitions, but is also highly internally stratified. Drawing on new data from interviews with higher education leaders and government policymakers across a number of South African institutions, we show that while the rhetoric of 'core business' of the university has been adopted by higher education leaders, the question of what constitutes the purpose of the university, in South Africa and arguably beyond, is subject to ongoing debate and negotiation. The multiplicity of conflicting but coexisting narratives about what universities should do in South African society—producing excellent research, preparing a labour force, or addressing societal inequalities—exposes a persisting tension surrounding the purpose of a public university. And while this tension has historical origins, we show that responses to addressing these various roles of the institution are not developed organically and in a neutral context. They emerge under conflicts over limited state funding and attendant and opportune market pressure put on public universities in times of crisis, that shape profoundly their framing and outcomes, and the future of the universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues of social justice in higher education together with a focus on access or widening participation have become of increasing importance globally. Given the complex theoretical terrain of social justice and the tensions inherent in applying social justice frameworks within higher education, and particularly in the area of access, this paper argues that it is necessary to take a step back and reflect on key theories of social justice and their implications for higher education. The paper considers three leading theorists of social justice whose work is commonly applied in higher education contexts and provides an account of the implications of this work for a specific social justice challenge, that of increasing access to university. The complexities of access and success in South African higher education are used as an illustrative case. On the basis of this conceptual analysis an argument is presented for the capabilities approach as a particularly productive theoretical approach in the context of university access for promoting more just outcomes, through a specific consideration of student agency and the interaction of this agency with institutional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]