Distinct pathways: tracing the origins and history of private higher education in South Africa

In much of the literature on the privatisation of higher education, it appears as both a relatively recent phenomenon, and one that is homogenous in its causes, forms and effects. Drawing on the case of South Africa, this study challenges these assumptions, suggesting that without a sense of the long history of private provision and its interwoven relationship with public higher education in that country, it is difficult to appreciate fully the effects of global and local dynamics. The paper draws on an empirical study conducted in 2001 to provide a historical sweep of private provision prior to 1990, before tracing the origins and history of contemporary cases. The analysis demonstrates that there are four distinct pathways to the establishment of private institutions, related to global pressures towards the marketisation and diversification of higher education. Distinct forms of private providers are shaped by the complex global, national and historical dynamics and relationships with the public higher education sector described.     

Changing forms of teacher education in South Africa: a case study of policy change

This paper examines some aspects of teacher education policy change in South Africa. It contextualises the changes by firstly examining the apartheid teacher education system and then mapping the changes that have occurred in teacher education in South Africa since 1994. Using a case study of the Further Diploma in Educational Management at the University of Pretoria, it provides a critical analysis of one particular current path to teacher education in South Africa, namely the ‘franchise’ public/private teacher education provision. The paper concludes by discussing the related policy possibilities and problems of teacher education policy since 1944. It highlights how institutions have stategically responded to change in a transitional context, and draws attention to the disjunction between policy intentions and outcomes.     

Are we using Friedman's roadmap? A comparative analysis of stimuli of private school enrolments in post-Soviet countries

There have been extensive scholarly debates on the role the private sector in the provision of schooling across the world. The former Soviet states have been largely excluded from these debates. This exploratory study examines the role the private sector in the formal provision of primary and secondary education in post-Soviet countries to demonstrate comparative trends and to provide a framework for the analysis of stimuli for private enrolments in the region. On the basis of the analysis of secondary data, documentary evidence and relevant literature, this paper shows that across the former Soviet countries, neoliberal ideas of education marketisation have not found fertile soil for development.     

Privatisation,Domestic Marketisation and International Commercialisation of Higher Education: vulnerabilities and opportunities for Chile and Romania within the framework of WTO/GATS

This chapter explores the processes of privatisation of higher education in Chile (after 1981) and Romania (after 1989), focusing on the emergence of private institutions, the expansion in enrolments in these institutions, and the relative increase in private sources of funding for the post‐secondary sub‐sector. Attention is also given to related trends in higher education in these two countries: domestic marketisation (a strengthening of an orientation toward selling programmes/commodities to students/consumers within the country) and international commercialisation (an expansion of initiatives by domestic and foreign institutions to provide distance education, study abroad/exchange, and foreign site‐based degree programmes). Of importance to an understanding of globalisation, these two societies, which at the time exhibited similar economic systems but had different political systems and were situated in different regional contexts, experienced remarkably similar processes of and outcomes from privatisation, marketisation, and commercialisation. In both cases these processes were promoted by ‘internal’ political actors but also shaped by ‘external’ forces, notably the World Bank's higher education policy recommendations and the conditionalities included in the stabilisation and structural adjustment programmes ‘negotiated’, respectively, with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in order to obtain loans. As a result of these processes—occurring prior to and during the emergence of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) as a component of the World Trade Organization (WTO)—higher education institutions in both Chile and Romania are much more vulnerable to foreign influence/domination, although they also have somewhat greater opportunities to broaden their role in the global ‘business’ of higher education.     

Embracing distance education in a blended learning model: challenges and prospects

Abstract

Distance education reaches out to non-traditional students in geographically dispersed locations, who are unable to attend face-to-face classes. Contact institutions have been quick to realise the many advantages of distance (online) learning, such as easy access to learning materials, interactive activities, assessment and communication tools. However, the path to anything approaching dual-mode provision has not been without obstacles. In South Africa in the early 2000s, the Council on Higher Education reinforced the mandate of distance education universities and decreed that contact institutions should not encroach on this territory. Subsequently, various frameworks and guidelines emerged which can inform current consideration of dual-mode provision. This practitioner report presents two case studies (University of Pretoria, South Africa; and University of Oxford, United Kingdom) which explore the implications for contact institutions in expanding their provision to include distance education.     

Private higher education in Africa: The case of Monash South Africa

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to review the contribution of private institutions to higher education in Africa and use Monash South Africa as a case study. A literature search was conducted to gain perspective on the current situation with respect to private higher education institutions in Africa and how they are perceived in relation to public higher education institutions.

In comparison with public higher education institutions, private higher education institutions in Africa were successful in four areas: ? Widening access to higher education in the continent

? Improving the quality of education

? Improving student experience

? Increasing the recognition and marketability of their degrees

However, private higher education institutions in Africa have failed in two areas: ? Reducing the costs of higher education in Africa

? Assisting with retention of skilled human capital in African countries.

In fact, private higher education institutions in Africa, have exacerbated the two situations above.

Monash South Africa was the first foreign university to be established in South Africa and one of over 100 private universities in the continent. As a campus of Monash University in Africa, it has seen a steady growth with over 3,500 students in the past 10 years of its existence. Like other private institutions, the campus was successful in the four areas above and also fails in the area of costs and assisting in retention of skilled staff in Africa. The campus has been successful in blending its private provider status with a public purpose mandate by offering degrees in social science, business and economics, information technology and health sciences.     

Globalisation and Higher Education Restructuring in Hong Kong,Taiwan and Mainland China

Globalisation and the evolution of the knowledge-based economy have caused dramatic changes in the character and functions of higher education in most countries around the world. However, the impacts of globalisation on universities are not uniform even though similar business-like practices have been adopted to cope with competition in the global marketplace. The pressure for restructuring and reforming higher education is mainly derived from growing expectations and demands of different stakeholders in society. In the last decade, government bureaucracy, public service institutions and higher education institutions and universities have been significantly affected by the tidal wave of the public sector reform around the world. Apart from improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public services, universities are confronted with a situation in which the principles of financial accountability and responsiveness to stakeholders prevail amidst the massification stage under the condition of global economic retrenchment. In response to such pressing demands for change, policies and strategies of decentralisation, privatisation and marketisation are becoming increasingly popular measures in university governance. Reform strategies and measures like quality assurance, performance evaluation, financial audit, corporate management and market competition are adopted to reform and improve the performance of the higher education sector. This article examines the most recent higher education reforms and restructuring in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China, with particular reference to the issues related to globalisation of decentralisation and marketisation in higher education.     

The international performance of the South African academic institutions: a citation assessment

This article reports the results of an investigation to identify the disciplinary strengths and the international standing of the higher education institutions in South Africa. Even though comparative assessments provide valuable information for research administrations, researchers and students such information is not available in South Africa currently. The Essential Science Indicators database of the Institute for Scientific Information is utilized for the investigation and six South African universities are identified to be included in the top 1% of the world’s institutions cited in the international scientific literature. The identified institutions are University of Cape Town, University of Pretoria, Orange Free State University, University of Witwatersrand, University of Natal and University of Stellenbosch. Analysis of the scientific disciplines in which the South African institutions meet the threshold requirements for inclusion in the database shows that the country has citation footprints in only nine of the 22 broad scientific disciplines. The article identifies the international standing of the South African universities in the various scientific disciplines, and elaborates on the consequences relevant to higher education and science and technology policy.     

南非私立高等教育的发展及政策干预

纵观历史,南非私立高等教育一直处于主流高等教育之外,在边缘地带发展.20世纪90年代后,在有利的政策环境和经济利益驱动下,主要借助公私高校伙伴关系,南非私立高校获得了新的发展机遇,但南非政府随之加大了对私立高校的监管,政府的政策干预在南非国内引发了激烈的争论.     

Privatisation and marketisation of higher education in Indonesia: the challenge for equal access and academic values

Increasing costs of running educational institutions and funding educational programs, coupled with decreasing government subsidies to support such costs, have made privatisation and marketisation of higher education a common phenomenon throughout the world. The article presents the development of this trend in Indonesia utilizing two recent government regulations: Badan Hukum Milik Negara (BHMN/State Owned Legal Institution) law of 1999, and Badan Hukum Pendidikan (Educational Legal Institution) law of 2009. Three main criticisms to the regulations include impartiality towards low-income students, the government’s reduced responsibility and commitment to education, and commercialization of public universities. The article argues that the regulations and their main criticisms have failed to address the underlying causes to educational inequity and the lack of emphasis on the impacts of privatisation and marketisation on academic values and purposes of higher education. The article emphasizes the need to revisit the purposes of higher education, to reinforce academic standards and values, and to strengthen the teaching profession.     

Privatization and competition policies for Australian universities

“Privatization” encapsulates an ideological shift towards market principles such as competition, commercialization, deregulation, efficiency and changing forms of accountability. In higher education, the privatization trend includes the full gamut from the creation of fully private institutions which operate without government financial support, to reforms in largely government-funded institutions operating in more of a quasi-market mode. This article examines privatization policies and speculates on their origins and their ramifications for universities around the world. In particular, it describes the impact of corporate managerialism (the import of management practices from the private sector) in institutions still largley under the control of governments, and focuses on examples of the particular effects of this ideological shift in three Australian universities. It argues that some traditional academic values should be preserved as important attributes of universities that enable them to operate in the public interest and maintain their role as a critical voice in society.     

Decentralisation and marketisation of adult and continuing education: A Chinese case study

Tsinghua University in Beijing, a leading Chinese university, has emerged as a pioneer in the decentralisation and marketisation of adult and continuing education in China. Recent development at Tsinghua has had a significant influence on the ways in which other universities in China have approached change. The university has decentralised power to the (continuing education) school level, implemented a corporate style of management and adopted market-driven programme development and management. This paper explores the ways in which decentralisation and marketisation has reshaped the provision of adult and continuing education at Tsinghua University, and its implications for China's higher educational institutions. After examining both the promise and the perils of adopting Western models for application in a diversity of Chinese contexts, the paper suggests that the decentralisation and marketisation of adult and continuing education in China will not lead to the complete withdrawal of government control over this sector of the educational system for both practical and political reasons. This Chinese case study therefore helps to improve theoretical understanding of the process of globalisation and the fact that the globalisation of neo-liberal decentralisation and marketisation does not necessarily imply or lead to homogenisation in policy or practice.     

Private Sector Consultants and Public Universities: the challenges of cross-sectoral knowledge transfers

Since the early 1990s, European higher education has been undergoing drastic changes with regard to the organisation and governance of academic work. The political emphasis on higher education autonomy and accountability went hand in hand with the introduction of market type steering devices and a new discourse regarding the universities' responsibilities to society. This article is about both carriers of diffusion processes that are crucial in disseminating private sector logics and the limits to such processes. By taking into account contradictory societal pressures towards isomorphism and differentiation; we will draw on neo-institutionalism and the sociological systems theory to provide a definition of privatisation in higher education. Especially, we are interested in detecting systematic limits to the privatisation of higher education. We therefore examine a relatively recent phenomenon in higher education governance: the increasing reliance of institutions on management consulting services. First findings show that the more market-centred a higher education system is, the more readily it accepts the economic rationale of the consulting business. Nevertheless, our study also stresses that management consultancy for higher education institutions is of limited scope. Systemic differences remain unbroken as the adherence to different value systems, communication patterns and resources limit the scope of external, private consulting activities in higher education.     

Serving two masters: how vocational educators experience marketisation reforms

Contemporary education reforms that draw ideas from the political and economic fields are said to be altering the nature of vocational education. While there are substantial policy studies on the effects of marketisation reforms, fewer analyse the perspectives of vocational educators on such reforms. How vocational educators negotiate the potential clash of values when marketisation reforms are enacted within the sector remains relatively unexplored. This paper aims to incorporate these perspectives in order to explore and help explain the responses of vocational educators to such changes. To do so the paper draws on concepts from Legitimation Code Theory, a sociological framework for analysing practices and beliefs. Specifically, it enacts ‘autonomy codes’, which reveal how external forces impact upon the internal practices of a social field. These concepts are used to analyse the beliefs and perceptions of a group of vocational educators in Australia who are undergoing marketisation reforms. The analysis suggests that many educators are experiencing a growing ‘code clash’ between the goals they attribute to reforms and their own beliefs about public education and the expectations of their students, one which problematises their capacity to reconcile these sets of values and colours their views of changes in the sector.     

Professionalising teaching in HE: the impact of an institutional fellowship scheme in the UK

The professionalisation of teaching in higher education has been increasingly prioritised across the globe in response to changes in the scale and nature of higher education brought about by massification, marketisation and managerialism. The UK experience has been characterised by the application of codified professional standards and this is of wider interest as perhaps the most developed attempt to formalise and systematise approaches to teacher development utilising such standards. Increasingly, this has focused on the ongoing development of existing staff in addition to new entrants to the profession. Institutional schemes underpinned by the United Kingdom Professional Standards Framework have rapidly spread throughout the sector offering a route for experienced staff to achieve fellowships of the UK Higher Education Academy. However, research into the effects of such schemes on individual participants and institutions has been limited. This article analyses the impact of such a scheme within the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences at Leeds Beckett University in the UK, drawing on data derived from in-depth interviews with scheme participants. Practice theories were applied as a frame for analysis of the developmental impact of the scheme through exploration of the practices involved in participation and how these meshed with other practices related to teaching and learning. This suggested that whilst such schemes may be an acceptable form of retrospective benchmarking, the ongoing developmental impact may be limited.     

Turning around low-performing private universities in China: A perspective of organisational ecology

While China has a long history of private institutions of higher learning, they disappeared almost entirely after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and did not re-emerge until the 1980s. Their reappearance is one of the ramifications of economic marketisation and privatisation in China. But private higher education institutions are now facing new challenges and competition in the education system. Approximately 500 of them were shut down between 2000 and 2009 for financial, legal or other reasons. Looking through the theoretical lens of organisational ecology – a sociological theory that applies ecological principles to organisational studies – this paper traces how the social and economic environment induced the re-emergence of private universities in China and how it has had an impact on their non-linear pattern of development. Using a number of relevant theory fragments from the overarching framework of organisational ecology as tools, the author then explores possible strategies for turning around low-performing private universities in China.     

Challenging educational injustice: ‘Grassroots’ privatisation in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa

The phenomenon of low-cost private schools ‘mushrooming’ in poor areas of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and elsewhere, is now well-documented. Findings from research by the author’s teams and others show that these schools are serving a majority (urban and peri-urban) or significant minority (rural) of the poor, including significant proportions of the poorest of the poor. Concerns are raised in the literature about their implications for social justice. In The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen asks us to rethink ideas about justice; instead of the quest for a Rawlsian ‘transcendental institutionalism’, he argues for a comparative approach, grounded in the practicalities of human behaviour. Linking Sen’s ideas on justice with the grassroots privatisation leads to the tentative conclusion that those concerned with promoting social justice could agree to help improve access to, and quality in, the low-cost private school sector, rather than focus on the public education sector. Paradoxically, this could be true even for those whose ideal is an egalitarian public education system.     

Marketising private tuition: Representations of tutors’ competence,entrepreneurial opportunities and service legitimation in home tutoring business manuals

Education researchers have explored the marketisation of schools resulting from neoliberal education policy, but little attention has been paid to supplementary education markets. Supplementary education services, such as private tuition, are delivered outside of school but designed to improve performance within it. A small body of research demonstrates that the private tuition market in the UK and the USA is burgeoning, and that students’ access to this service is differentiated by region, class and ethnicity. These emerging demand-side analyses are vital, but they cannot tell us about the educational entrepreneurship that shapes the supply of private tutoring services. This article addresses this lacuna through a discourse analysis of manuals, published as part of the developing tutoring support industry, that are designed to guide would-be entrepreneurs through the establishment of a private tuition business. This analysis excavates manuals’ treatment of: tutors’ motivation to work in the sector and their competence to do so; strategies to be employed in the marketisation of tuition services; and the need to build trust to ensure business legitimation in an unregulated industry. In conclusion, the article sets a new agenda for research into fast-developing supplementary education markets that explores: (i) the dynamics of this expanding educational workforce of private tutors; (ii) the ways marketisation addresses and augments parental anxiety about children's education; and (iii) the need for safeguarding and quality control in private tuition.     

Private Higher Education in Russia: capacity for innovation and investment

This article considers the potential role of private institutions in the development of Russian higher education. After decades of a government centralised higher education system, there is a clear trend towards the privatisation of education institutions and the diversification of education practices. Some commentators consider this to indicate that the Russian State is losing control of education; others welcome private initiatives, both in formal and informal education. Russian higher education has also been greatly challenged by the current demographic gap: the total number of secondary school graduates expected in 2012 is half that of 2006. This strengthens the competition for the enrolment of students in private and public (federal and municipal) institutions. Based on recent interviews with senior management at a number of provincial private universities, this article suggests possible avenues for private universities to extend into the education market and considers the implications.     

南非私立高等教育质量保障机制探析

1994年新南非政府消除种族隔离制度之后,其高等教育发展迅速,其中私立高等院校的数量也有了大幅提高,与此同时,私立高等教育质量问题也受到了人们的关注。为此,南非政府出台了一系列政策和策略,进一步完善私立高等教育质量保障机制,以促进和提高私立高等教育质量。