A Contested Good? Understanding Private Higher Education in South Africa

Kruss, Glenda and Andre Kraak (eds.) A Contested Good? Understanding Private Higher Education in South Africa. Boston: Center for International Higher Education, Boston College, 2003. 124 pp.

So what does one make of the recent growth of private higher education in much of the Third World? Can we make sense of this latest global educational development that has left scholars, policy makers, and development experts surprised? No doubt such questions have arisen in areas without a historic tradition of private higher education and in those witnessing increasing resurgence where there has been such a tradition. As academic interest in this sector of higher education has grown, new questions have become germane: What role does private higher education play? What regulatory environment should guide its development? Are there similarities and differences in its growth and development across nations, culturalcontexts and institutions? In an attempt to understand the sector, scholarship on private higher education has become increasingly prominent in both the advanced industrial nations and Third World countries.1

The work under review represents such an attempt in an African country, South Africa. The work is refreshing in its analytical approach which cuts across the various facets that are critical to understanding the context of private higher education in a state largely dominated by public higher education. The work is provocative in drawing upon perspectives from both local and foreign scholars, as well as a mix of university academics, policy researchers and government policy makers. The work is highly relevant in problematizing issues within the current debates that underlie discussions in private higher education. Overall, the issues discussed can be distilled into three important themes: role of private higher education, the regulatory climate in which it functions, and how South Africa's case reflects convergence in public-private higher education.

The role and respectability of private higher education has always been problematic in Third World nations. Conventional wisdom has always regarded it as an unhealthy competitor to the public sector. In contradistinction, Andre Kraak, Glenda Kruss and George Subotzky demonstrate that the sector has a well-defined niche where it serves to compliment the public sector role. Subotzky's work illustrates the demand-absorption role of private higher education: enrollments are clustered in lower qualification levels and in fields with high demand, education and business studies. This observation is taken further by Kraak who provides evidence showing that private institutions are demand-driven, providing career- or vocationally-oriented education. This constitutes a complimentary function that meets the national demand for intermediate, middle-level education and training. Glenda takes this demand-absorption discourse further, unveiling its intra-sectoral differences: most private institutions meet demand for specialized education, different from that offered in public institutions; a small but influential sub-sector meets the demand for "better" (high status, internationally portable, career-oriented) education than that in the public sector; and a small segment meets the demand for more education, absorbing those excluded by the public sector due to finance and certification reasons.

The regulatory environment shaping the development of private higher education is explored by Cosser, Jonathan, and Mabizela. Mabizela offers us an historical trajectory of the evolution of higher education policy. His observation that "....expansion of higher education activities required government support and intervention, and hints at the need for government to take control of higher education" (p. 45) underscores the centrality of state policy in the growth and development of private higher education. Over time, according to Mabizela, governmental policy led to a functional-racial divide between universities and other higher education institutions emerged: public universities largely catering for the whites and private post-secondary institutions, many correspondence colleges, largely catered for blacks.

Quality assurance through regulatory policy is discussed by Cosser who identifies the anomalies in the registration and accreditation processes in South Africa's Department of Education and the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) and the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC). He concludes with a succinct message for quality assurance: the culture of quality needs to evolve from within the institutions themselves in response to learner needs, the labor market requirements and society in general. In my estimation, this chapter underscores an important, but frequently ignored reality in higher education: quality is more of a perception and, thus, difficult to legislate.

Since quality is related to the relationship between the institution and the consumer, the labor market and the society, questions arise as to the education sector's relation to the well-being of the polity and the resultant regulatory framework for its existence. Writing from a philosophical standpoint, Jonathan addresses this issue in a thorough and exhaustive analysis of private higher education in a democratic society. Since higher education has both public and private benefits, it is a social good according to Jonathan. Thus, in a democratic society like South Africa with its commitment to equity and economic development, the only rational path is for state regulation of the tendency of market forces to promote private interests over those of the social good. I found Jonathan's chapter quite illuminating and provocative in its treatment of private higher education, social benefits and state regulation.