Date: 06/10/2003
Source: Ministry of Education
Title: Asmal: Conference on Policies & Models for International Cooperation in Higher Education
ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR KADER ASMAL, MP, MINISTER OF EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA AT THE CONFERENCE ON POLICIES AND MODELS FOR INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION, Norwegian Council for Higher Education and Centre for International University Cooperation, Bergen, Norway, 6 - 7 October 2003
EDUCATION - A COMMON GOOD? KNOWLEDGE IN THE ERA OF GATS
Chairperson
Ladies and Gentlemen
It gives me great pleasure to be in Bergen and to participate in this conference. I am sure that we have much to discuss as both Norway and South Africa are in the midst of major reform in higher education.
I have come to Norway directly from the United Nations Education Science and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) General Conference in Paris. In my address to Unesco I focused on three initiatives that I believe are essential to harnessing the processes and resources of globalisation to build bridges and facilitate exchanges across the divisions of an increasingly polarised world. These are: to revive multilateralism in the true tradition of the United Nations (UN); to revitalise values in education; and to resist the commodification of education.
I intend to draw on all three elements in the process of building a case for higher education as a public good.
There can be little argument that knowledge is the wellspring for the economic and social development. It is therefore imperative for a country like South Africa that our higher education institutions become innovative, high quality powerhouses of knowledge production and dissemination. To succeed in this endeavour, our transformation agenda has to take full cognisance of the need for efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness. However, it is possible, and indeed necessary, to do so without sacrificing social accountability and without subservience to the 'market'. A tall order some might say in the light of increasing pressure to commercialise or commodify education.
In a country like South Africa, and especially at this important point in our history, the transformation of higher education has to be seen in the context of the broader reconstruction and development of the country. In particular, it has to respond to the dual challenges of equity and development, that is, to overcome the fragmentation, inequality of the past and to meet current and future development challenges, especially in the context of an increasingly globalising environment.
Allow me to give you some examples of the way in which our transformation agenda seeks to respond to broader social and political imperatives.
Like other developing countries, we require to increase graduate outputs in areas such as science, engineering and technology. In our National Plan for Higher Education (February 2001), we propose over the next five to ten years to shift the balance in enrolments between the humanities, business and commerce and science, engineering and technology from the current ratio of 49%: 26%: 25% to a ratio of 40%: 30%: 30% respectively. It is not our intention to adjust the share of the humanities below the planned 40% since we believe that the humanities play an important role in developing a critical civil society through enhancing our understanding of social and human development. The National Plan in particular highlights the role that fields of study such as African languages; literature and culture can play in the development of a common sense of nationhood.
This approach is supported by an emphasis on the social sciences and humanities in the school curriculum. A major initiative is underway to transform the teaching of history in the primary and secondary phases of schooling. These developments are a part of our Values in Education Initiative that seeks to infuse the notions of human values, such as dignity, integrity and social honour into the school curriculum.
A new policy framework for language in higher education, which reflects the values and obligations of our Constitution, especially the need to promote multilingualism, was also adopted earlier this year. While the current position of English and Afrikaans as languages of instruction in higher education is acknowledged, the policy strives to promote, in the medium to long-term, the development of other South African languages for use as academic/scientific languages. The policy framework promotes the study of South African languages and literature through planning and funding incentives. The study of foreign languages is similarly supported. Multilingualism is also enhanced by way of appropriate institutional policies and practices.
An important element of our agenda in higher education is to focus on quality. Only through due attention to quality, including the building of inclusive institutional cultures, can there be meaningful access to higher education especially for those who were denied opportunities in the past. Only through combining access, quality and success will we be able to erode the domination of high-level occupations and knowledge production by privileged social groups. Quality improvement must, of course, include due attention to the curriculum and teaching and learning support. I intend to host a conference early next year to open up debate on this key area, and in particular, the issue of the responsiveness of higher education curricula to South African realities.
In an address that I delivered at the recent Conference of the Association of Commonwealth Universities in Belfast (September 2003), I highlighted my concern that the production of critical and socially committed graduates will depend crucially on the reform and transformation of learning and teaching and the curriculum. In this regard a number of questions need to be posed:
What are the orientations of our learning and teaching programmes in the different disciplines and fields? What are the outcomes that they seek to achieve and what kind of graduates do they seek to produce?
What is in our curriculum? Equally, what missing, what are the silences? What texts are being used? Where do these texts come from and who writes them?
What is the nature of learning and teaching that is being practised and the modes of interaction? What are our assessment strategies and methods?
Is there congruence between the outcomes that we profess to want to achieve and the curriculum, modes of learning and teaching and assessment practices?
Finally, are our programmes purely oriented towards narrow technical outcomes in terms of mastery and proficiency of the practice of a discipline or field? Or do they also address issues of critical citizenship and the context and needs of transforming societies in which the professions have to be practised. Are we producing excellent technicians or technocrats only, or simultaneously enlightened and critical citizens?
All too often in the reform of higher education, there is a propensity for governance, financing and other such areas to become the key issues. Too little or inadequate attention is given to the transformation of the core work of teaching, learning and research. We strive to pay due attention to these key areas because what we do or do not do in these arenas has a huge bearing on what kinds of graduates our institutions produce and what kind of contribution they make to our societies.
Those of you who are familiar with the challenges of large-scale educational change will appreciate that various threats and constraints have the potential to thwart even the most well conceptualised plans and strategies. In this regard, we can seek to anticipate and manage pressures from the internal or local environment. However, we are less well placed to address external influences.
Clearly, no education system exists in isolation. However, we do need to strike an appropriate balance between global and local/regional imperatives. In particular, the engagement of our higher education system with the global order has to be guided by national objectives. To ignore this is to run the risk of further entrenching the unequal power relations between the developed and developing worlds.
I want to illustrate this by reference to the proliferation of foreign higher education institutions establishing operational bases in South Africa either independently or in some cases, in partnership with local public and private institutions.
Prior to the promulgation of the Higher Education Act in 1997, there was a policy vacuum in South Africa with respect to the regulation of private higher education, both local and foreign. This gap was exploited by overseas institutions, especially from countries threatened by declining student numbers and revenue, which set up shop in South Africa. Regrettably, many of these institutions (some of highly dubious quality) appear to be driven by concerns that bear little relation to the human resource development priorities or equity imperatives that are driving change in South Africa. It would not be an exaggeration to say that if left unregulated, these developments had the potential of undermining the emerging national system. The policy and legislative frameworks are now in place to ensure the regulation of private higher education.
South Africa is viewed as a fertile market for growth in the higher education sector and furthermore, a spring board to the rest of the sub-Continent. Institutions from the United Kingdom, Australia and the US either began operations in South Africa or surveyed the field. In most instances, their focus was on areas of study, such as the MBA and other commerce and management programmes, where we already have significant capacity in the country, but which would be financially lucrative markets. The unbridled growth of these providers would have had a profound effect on the public higher education system, which was in the process of transformation and renewal. Let me illustrate this by just one example. A foreign institution unashamedly targeted the recruitment of students from high-income groups and particularly white students who, they argue, may otherwise have gone overseas to study. As you can well imagine, the impact of such agendas on our efforts to build non-racial South African higher education institutions could be profound.
Fortunately, we have, through the implementation of our policy and legal frameworks, been able to ensure the planned development of the private sector in ways that do not threaten the sustainability and integrity of the higher education system as a whole. This is not an attempt to exclude foreign institutions but to ensure that those who operate in South Africa do so with due regard to our policy goals and priorities and in ways that meet our national transformation agenda and quality assurance requirements. Furthermore, we have provided certainty in the regulatory environment through a transparent policy and legislative framework for the registration of private providers - both local and foreign and a quality assurance regime that applies the same criteria and conditions for all providers.
We have not allowed increased trade in education to undermine our national efforts to transform higher education and, in particular to strengthen the public sector so that it can effectively participate in an increasingly globalising environment. We cannot also countenance the excessive marketisation and commodification of higher education, which amongst others, can lead to the unfortunate homogenisation of academic approaches and to the undermining of institutional cultures and academic values.
In large measure, this experience has shaped South Africa's unfolding response to GATS. The very designation of education as a service is a fundamental problem if one accepts that education is not a commodity to be bought and sold. As the South African Minister of Trade and Industry, Alec Erwin, has so eloquently stated "Knowledge is not a commodity and can never be one. Knowledge is the distillation of human endeavour and it is the most profound collective good that there is." Minister Erwin goes on to argue that the more knowledge is turned into a commodity and privatised "the more it will either corrode the collective knowledge base or itself corrode as it distances itself from that collective wellspring".
Education is not merely a value-free instrument for the transfer of skills across national and regional boundaries, as some might like us to believe. On the contrary, education must embrace the intellectual, cultural, political and social development of individuals, institutions and nations. This 'public good' agenda should not be held hostage to the vagaries of the market.
The pressure exerted by commercial interests on educational provision is forcing a move away from educating for life, and inexorably towards more and more technical specialisation. It empowers students, but without educating them in how to use their new knowledge, which is power, responsibly.
International 'trade' in education services, particularly at the higher education level, has grown significantly in the past period, with increasing numbers of students studying outside their home country, increased international marketing of academic programmes, the establishment of overseas 'branch campuses' etc. By 1995, the global market for international higher education was estimated at US$ 27 billion, with the United States being the leading exporter of education services. Higher education is US's fifth largest service sector export, with its main export markets in Asia, accounting for 58% of all US exports, followed by countries in Europe and Latin America. (WTO Council for Trade in Services Background Notes, September 1998).
It should come as no surprise that the movement of students and staff is mainly from the south to the north, while export of educational services in the form, amongst others, of educational information, provision and facilities, such as branch campuses, is in the reverse direction.
The impact of private foreign providers on African higher education over the past period has been devastating, particularly because universities in much of Africa were already weakened by the effects of World Bank driven policy that developing countries should concentrate on building up basic and secondary education provision, since these were considered to offer greater individual and social returns. Although I am glad to say that the World Bank has subsequently revised its views in this regard, this change has come too late for many countries in Africa.
The 'rules' that shape the GATS are complex and far from transparent. As a consequence, we can only begin to anticipate the full impact of the Agreement.
Each county is expected to identify those services for which it wishes to provide access to foreign providers, including the extent of commitment and the conditions for such access. Notwithstanding this, there are a number of general obligations, such as the 'Most Favoured Nation' (MFN) element, applicable to all trade in services, which, as some have argued, may apply even when a country has made no specific commitments to provide foreign access to their markets. This provision requires equal and consistent treatment of foreign trading partners. This may have particular implications for countries that already provide access to foreign providers. For example, the provision of government subsidies to public institutions could be challenged as unfair treatment and that the requirement that similar subsidies should be provided to all institutions, public and private.
GATS is also premised on so-called progressive liberalisation of trade in service. This means that with each round of negotiations, countries are expected to add sectors to their schedules of commitments. Thus, the pressure to allow market access to foreign education providers is likely to increase. Education is also likely to be vulnerable to deals across sectors. For me, the use of education as a bargaining tool is highly objectionable, especially given the relationship between education, and culture and society. We should never have to bargain away our values and our ability to contribute to the global pool of knowledge and innovation. If the debates at the UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education +5 meeting (June 2003) are anything to go by, our views on GATS are strongly shared by countries in the rest of Africa, in Asia and Latin America.
South Africa has not made any commitments in education. However, to date, four countries have made requests of South Africa. These are Kenya, New Zealand, the US and Norway. In all four cases, the request is that South Africa ensures that there are no limits whatsoever on service providers from these countries that wish to operate in South Africa and that they be treated no less favourably than their South African counterparts. The US request further requests that South Africa remove "burdensome requirements, including non-transparent needs tests, applicable to foreign universities operating, or seeking to operate, in South Africa".
Norway's request comes as somewhat of a surprise to us. It is regrettable that the request was not preceded by discussions with my Ministry, especially in the light of the strong and constructive relationships that we have in education between our two countries.
How then should we act, given this complex terrain? South Africa's response is firmly located within a commitment to genuine international collaborations and partnerships in education, which I am sure you will agree is important to the health of any higher education system. It is certainly not be informed by parochialism and narrow chauvinism.
All of our public universities and technikons have a rich history of partnerships with sister institutions across the globe, including Norway. The University of Bergen, as you know has associations with a number of South African universities. These relationships include staff and student exchanges, support for capacity building, research linkages etc. They are partnerships between peers, shaped for mutual benefit and not for commercial purposes.
South Africa is also deeply committed to our responsibilities in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and in the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Since 1994, South Africa has witnessed a tremendous increase in the flow of students, particularly from other parts of our region and Africa - from about 5 000 students to some 40 000 today.
I am pleased to inform you that I am in the process of issuing regulations to institutionalise public subsidies for all undergraduate students from the SADC countries that enrol in our higher education institutions and for all postgraduate students whatever their country of origin. This is a major financial contribution on the part of South Africa as a developing country but we make it gladly in the light of our unstinting commitment to internationalism. We are also implementing changes to our immigration policies and regulations to ensure that unnecessary barriers (such as costly and onerous procedures/requirements for obtaining study and work permits) to international academic interchange are removed.
In the context of the starkly uneven development of higher education on our Continent, I am also acutely aware of the need to ensure that South African higher education institutions that wish to be active in the rest of Africa do so with integrity and without harming local systems. In this regard, I have called for the development of a code of conduct to inform the role and responsibilities of South African institutions operating beyond our borders.
As I have already indicated, we are not alone in having reservations about GATS in education. The 'Joint Declaration on Higher Education and the General Agreement on Trade in Services', adopted by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, American Council on Education, European University Association and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation encourages countries not to make commitments in Higher Education Services' or in the 'Adult Education' and 'Other Education Services' categories of the GATS. According to Knight (2002), "instead it supports the notion of reducing obstacles to international trade in higher education using conventions and agreements outside of a trade policy regime".
We believe that the internationalisation of higher education is better-addressed using conventions and agreements outside of a trade policy regime. We will continue to lobby key bodies such as UNESCO to champion this approach. We will also continue to build and strengthen our bilateral and multilateral partnerships. In this regard, my Ministry, in cooperation with our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is currently developing a proposal to offer scholarships to students from the small least developed countries in Africa that do not have higher education capacities of their own, such as The Comoros and Madagascar.
Our rich international partnerships in higher education have also played an important role in helping to reduce the accumulated effects of years of isolation from the global community during the dark days of apartheid.
The current partnerships between Norway and South Africa are rooted in the relationships that grew out of the anti-apartheid solidarity movement, which was so strongly supported by Norway.
The South Africa Norway Tertiary Education Development (SANTED) Programme is an excellent example of genuine support for the development of higher education not only in South Africa but also in the SADC region as a whole. To date, the SANTED Programme supports capacity development at four historically disadvantaged universities (Fort Hare, Zululand, Western Cape and Durban Westville) as well as knowledge exchange between our two countries through a joint research project involving the University of Bergen. The SADC projects include: - a major 3 way collaboration in academic programme development in economics, engineering and biological sciences between the University of the Witwatersrand, which is one of South Africa's leading research universities, the University of Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique and the University of Namibia; - a collaboration between the Nursing Departments of the Agostinho Neto University in Angola and the University of South Africa; and a project on peer education in the area of HIV/AIDS involving the University of the Western Cape and the University of Zambia.
Our two countries also have an agreement for research support, which includes staff and postgraduate student exchanges. I can see few better ways to promote internationalisation than through efforts of this nature.
I hope that the effects of trade liberalisation on efforts to truly internationalise higher education can be minimised. However, of some concern is whether already limited financial resources might increasingly be used for trade driven activities rather than those that emphasise intellectual and social gains.
I am convinced that a fundamental re-thinking of the inclusion of education in GATS is needed. We must avoid, at all cost, an approach to GATS that puts our education in peril. Only time will tell whether it is indeed possible to engage with GATS in ways that hold promise for our own agendas and needs.
However, I am more than ever convinced that GATS should not become a preoccupation, nor should it paralyse meaningful transformation and partnerships. Francis Fukuyama was wrong: History has not ended. Nor is the agenda for change irrelevant. Therefore we should bear in mind what that great African writer, Ben Okri, has put before us:
They are only the exhausted who think
That they have arrived
At the final destination
The end of their road
With all of their dreams achieved
And no new dreams to hold
I thank you.
Issued by: Ministry of Education
6 October 2003
Source: Ministry of Education
Title: Asmal: Conference on Policies & Models for International Cooperation in Higher Education
ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR KADER ASMAL, MP, MINISTER OF EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA AT THE CONFERENCE ON POLICIES AND MODELS FOR INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION, Norwegian Council for Higher Education and Centre for International University Cooperation, Bergen, Norway, 6 - 7 October 2003
EDUCATION - A COMMON GOOD? KNOWLEDGE IN THE ERA OF GATS
Chairperson
Ladies and Gentlemen
It gives me great pleasure to be in Bergen and to participate in this conference. I am sure that we have much to discuss as both Norway and South Africa are in the midst of major reform in higher education.
I have come to Norway directly from the United Nations Education Science and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) General Conference in Paris. In my address to Unesco I focused on three initiatives that I believe are essential to harnessing the processes and resources of globalisation to build bridges and facilitate exchanges across the divisions of an increasingly polarised world. These are: to revive multilateralism in the true tradition of the United Nations (UN); to revitalise values in education; and to resist the commodification of education.
I intend to draw on all three elements in the process of building a case for higher education as a public good.
There can be little argument that knowledge is the wellspring for the economic and social development. It is therefore imperative for a country like South Africa that our higher education institutions become innovative, high quality powerhouses of knowledge production and dissemination. To succeed in this endeavour, our transformation agenda has to take full cognisance of the need for efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness. However, it is possible, and indeed necessary, to do so without sacrificing social accountability and without subservience to the 'market'. A tall order some might say in the light of increasing pressure to commercialise or commodify education.
In a country like South Africa, and especially at this important point in our history, the transformation of higher education has to be seen in the context of the broader reconstruction and development of the country. In particular, it has to respond to the dual challenges of equity and development, that is, to overcome the fragmentation, inequality of the past and to meet current and future development challenges, especially in the context of an increasingly globalising environment.
Allow me to give you some examples of the way in which our transformation agenda seeks to respond to broader social and political imperatives.
Like other developing countries, we require to increase graduate outputs in areas such as science, engineering and technology. In our National Plan for Higher Education (February 2001), we propose over the next five to ten years to shift the balance in enrolments between the humanities, business and commerce and science, engineering and technology from the current ratio of 49%: 26%: 25% to a ratio of 40%: 30%: 30% respectively. It is not our intention to adjust the share of the humanities below the planned 40% since we believe that the humanities play an important role in developing a critical civil society through enhancing our understanding of social and human development. The National Plan in particular highlights the role that fields of study such as African languages; literature and culture can play in the development of a common sense of nationhood.
This approach is supported by an emphasis on the social sciences and humanities in the school curriculum. A major initiative is underway to transform the teaching of history in the primary and secondary phases of schooling. These developments are a part of our Values in Education Initiative that seeks to infuse the notions of human values, such as dignity, integrity and social honour into the school curriculum.
A new policy framework for language in higher education, which reflects the values and obligations of our Constitution, especially the need to promote multilingualism, was also adopted earlier this year. While the current position of English and Afrikaans as languages of instruction in higher education is acknowledged, the policy strives to promote, in the medium to long-term, the development of other South African languages for use as academic/scientific languages. The policy framework promotes the study of South African languages and literature through planning and funding incentives. The study of foreign languages is similarly supported. Multilingualism is also enhanced by way of appropriate institutional policies and practices.
An important element of our agenda in higher education is to focus on quality. Only through due attention to quality, including the building of inclusive institutional cultures, can there be meaningful access to higher education especially for those who were denied opportunities in the past. Only through combining access, quality and success will we be able to erode the domination of high-level occupations and knowledge production by privileged social groups. Quality improvement must, of course, include due attention to the curriculum and teaching and learning support. I intend to host a conference early next year to open up debate on this key area, and in particular, the issue of the responsiveness of higher education curricula to South African realities.
In an address that I delivered at the recent Conference of the Association of Commonwealth Universities in Belfast (September 2003), I highlighted my concern that the production of critical and socially committed graduates will depend crucially on the reform and transformation of learning and teaching and the curriculum. In this regard a number of questions need to be posed:
What are the orientations of our learning and teaching programmes in the different disciplines and fields? What are the outcomes that they seek to achieve and what kind of graduates do they seek to produce?
What is in our curriculum? Equally, what missing, what are the silences? What texts are being used? Where do these texts come from and who writes them?
What is the nature of learning and teaching that is being practised and the modes of interaction? What are our assessment strategies and methods?
Is there congruence between the outcomes that we profess to want to achieve and the curriculum, modes of learning and teaching and assessment practices?
Finally, are our programmes purely oriented towards narrow technical outcomes in terms of mastery and proficiency of the practice of a discipline or field? Or do they also address issues of critical citizenship and the context and needs of transforming societies in which the professions have to be practised. Are we producing excellent technicians or technocrats only, or simultaneously enlightened and critical citizens?
All too often in the reform of higher education, there is a propensity for governance, financing and other such areas to become the key issues. Too little or inadequate attention is given to the transformation of the core work of teaching, learning and research. We strive to pay due attention to these key areas because what we do or do not do in these arenas has a huge bearing on what kinds of graduates our institutions produce and what kind of contribution they make to our societies.
Those of you who are familiar with the challenges of large-scale educational change will appreciate that various threats and constraints have the potential to thwart even the most well conceptualised plans and strategies. In this regard, we can seek to anticipate and manage pressures from the internal or local environment. However, we are less well placed to address external influences.
Clearly, no education system exists in isolation. However, we do need to strike an appropriate balance between global and local/regional imperatives. In particular, the engagement of our higher education system with the global order has to be guided by national objectives. To ignore this is to run the risk of further entrenching the unequal power relations between the developed and developing worlds.
I want to illustrate this by reference to the proliferation of foreign higher education institutions establishing operational bases in South Africa either independently or in some cases, in partnership with local public and private institutions.
Prior to the promulgation of the Higher Education Act in 1997, there was a policy vacuum in South Africa with respect to the regulation of private higher education, both local and foreign. This gap was exploited by overseas institutions, especially from countries threatened by declining student numbers and revenue, which set up shop in South Africa. Regrettably, many of these institutions (some of highly dubious quality) appear to be driven by concerns that bear little relation to the human resource development priorities or equity imperatives that are driving change in South Africa. It would not be an exaggeration to say that if left unregulated, these developments had the potential of undermining the emerging national system. The policy and legislative frameworks are now in place to ensure the regulation of private higher education.
South Africa is viewed as a fertile market for growth in the higher education sector and furthermore, a spring board to the rest of the sub-Continent. Institutions from the United Kingdom, Australia and the US either began operations in South Africa or surveyed the field. In most instances, their focus was on areas of study, such as the MBA and other commerce and management programmes, where we already have significant capacity in the country, but which would be financially lucrative markets. The unbridled growth of these providers would have had a profound effect on the public higher education system, which was in the process of transformation and renewal. Let me illustrate this by just one example. A foreign institution unashamedly targeted the recruitment of students from high-income groups and particularly white students who, they argue, may otherwise have gone overseas to study. As you can well imagine, the impact of such agendas on our efforts to build non-racial South African higher education institutions could be profound.
Fortunately, we have, through the implementation of our policy and legal frameworks, been able to ensure the planned development of the private sector in ways that do not threaten the sustainability and integrity of the higher education system as a whole. This is not an attempt to exclude foreign institutions but to ensure that those who operate in South Africa do so with due regard to our policy goals and priorities and in ways that meet our national transformation agenda and quality assurance requirements. Furthermore, we have provided certainty in the regulatory environment through a transparent policy and legislative framework for the registration of private providers - both local and foreign and a quality assurance regime that applies the same criteria and conditions for all providers.
We have not allowed increased trade in education to undermine our national efforts to transform higher education and, in particular to strengthen the public sector so that it can effectively participate in an increasingly globalising environment. We cannot also countenance the excessive marketisation and commodification of higher education, which amongst others, can lead to the unfortunate homogenisation of academic approaches and to the undermining of institutional cultures and academic values.
In large measure, this experience has shaped South Africa's unfolding response to GATS. The very designation of education as a service is a fundamental problem if one accepts that education is not a commodity to be bought and sold. As the South African Minister of Trade and Industry, Alec Erwin, has so eloquently stated "Knowledge is not a commodity and can never be one. Knowledge is the distillation of human endeavour and it is the most profound collective good that there is." Minister Erwin goes on to argue that the more knowledge is turned into a commodity and privatised "the more it will either corrode the collective knowledge base or itself corrode as it distances itself from that collective wellspring".
Education is not merely a value-free instrument for the transfer of skills across national and regional boundaries, as some might like us to believe. On the contrary, education must embrace the intellectual, cultural, political and social development of individuals, institutions and nations. This 'public good' agenda should not be held hostage to the vagaries of the market.
The pressure exerted by commercial interests on educational provision is forcing a move away from educating for life, and inexorably towards more and more technical specialisation. It empowers students, but without educating them in how to use their new knowledge, which is power, responsibly.
International 'trade' in education services, particularly at the higher education level, has grown significantly in the past period, with increasing numbers of students studying outside their home country, increased international marketing of academic programmes, the establishment of overseas 'branch campuses' etc. By 1995, the global market for international higher education was estimated at US$ 27 billion, with the United States being the leading exporter of education services. Higher education is US's fifth largest service sector export, with its main export markets in Asia, accounting for 58% of all US exports, followed by countries in Europe and Latin America. (WTO Council for Trade in Services Background Notes, September 1998).
It should come as no surprise that the movement of students and staff is mainly from the south to the north, while export of educational services in the form, amongst others, of educational information, provision and facilities, such as branch campuses, is in the reverse direction.
The impact of private foreign providers on African higher education over the past period has been devastating, particularly because universities in much of Africa were already weakened by the effects of World Bank driven policy that developing countries should concentrate on building up basic and secondary education provision, since these were considered to offer greater individual and social returns. Although I am glad to say that the World Bank has subsequently revised its views in this regard, this change has come too late for many countries in Africa.
The 'rules' that shape the GATS are complex and far from transparent. As a consequence, we can only begin to anticipate the full impact of the Agreement.
Each county is expected to identify those services for which it wishes to provide access to foreign providers, including the extent of commitment and the conditions for such access. Notwithstanding this, there are a number of general obligations, such as the 'Most Favoured Nation' (MFN) element, applicable to all trade in services, which, as some have argued, may apply even when a country has made no specific commitments to provide foreign access to their markets. This provision requires equal and consistent treatment of foreign trading partners. This may have particular implications for countries that already provide access to foreign providers. For example, the provision of government subsidies to public institutions could be challenged as unfair treatment and that the requirement that similar subsidies should be provided to all institutions, public and private.
GATS is also premised on so-called progressive liberalisation of trade in service. This means that with each round of negotiations, countries are expected to add sectors to their schedules of commitments. Thus, the pressure to allow market access to foreign education providers is likely to increase. Education is also likely to be vulnerable to deals across sectors. For me, the use of education as a bargaining tool is highly objectionable, especially given the relationship between education, and culture and society. We should never have to bargain away our values and our ability to contribute to the global pool of knowledge and innovation. If the debates at the UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education +5 meeting (June 2003) are anything to go by, our views on GATS are strongly shared by countries in the rest of Africa, in Asia and Latin America.
South Africa has not made any commitments in education. However, to date, four countries have made requests of South Africa. These are Kenya, New Zealand, the US and Norway. In all four cases, the request is that South Africa ensures that there are no limits whatsoever on service providers from these countries that wish to operate in South Africa and that they be treated no less favourably than their South African counterparts. The US request further requests that South Africa remove "burdensome requirements, including non-transparent needs tests, applicable to foreign universities operating, or seeking to operate, in South Africa".
Norway's request comes as somewhat of a surprise to us. It is regrettable that the request was not preceded by discussions with my Ministry, especially in the light of the strong and constructive relationships that we have in education between our two countries.
How then should we act, given this complex terrain? South Africa's response is firmly located within a commitment to genuine international collaborations and partnerships in education, which I am sure you will agree is important to the health of any higher education system. It is certainly not be informed by parochialism and narrow chauvinism.
All of our public universities and technikons have a rich history of partnerships with sister institutions across the globe, including Norway. The University of Bergen, as you know has associations with a number of South African universities. These relationships include staff and student exchanges, support for capacity building, research linkages etc. They are partnerships between peers, shaped for mutual benefit and not for commercial purposes.
South Africa is also deeply committed to our responsibilities in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and in the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Since 1994, South Africa has witnessed a tremendous increase in the flow of students, particularly from other parts of our region and Africa - from about 5 000 students to some 40 000 today.
I am pleased to inform you that I am in the process of issuing regulations to institutionalise public subsidies for all undergraduate students from the SADC countries that enrol in our higher education institutions and for all postgraduate students whatever their country of origin. This is a major financial contribution on the part of South Africa as a developing country but we make it gladly in the light of our unstinting commitment to internationalism. We are also implementing changes to our immigration policies and regulations to ensure that unnecessary barriers (such as costly and onerous procedures/requirements for obtaining study and work permits) to international academic interchange are removed.
In the context of the starkly uneven development of higher education on our Continent, I am also acutely aware of the need to ensure that South African higher education institutions that wish to be active in the rest of Africa do so with integrity and without harming local systems. In this regard, I have called for the development of a code of conduct to inform the role and responsibilities of South African institutions operating beyond our borders.
As I have already indicated, we are not alone in having reservations about GATS in education. The 'Joint Declaration on Higher Education and the General Agreement on Trade in Services', adopted by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, American Council on Education, European University Association and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation encourages countries not to make commitments in Higher Education Services' or in the 'Adult Education' and 'Other Education Services' categories of the GATS. According to Knight (2002), "instead it supports the notion of reducing obstacles to international trade in higher education using conventions and agreements outside of a trade policy regime".
We believe that the internationalisation of higher education is better-addressed using conventions and agreements outside of a trade policy regime. We will continue to lobby key bodies such as UNESCO to champion this approach. We will also continue to build and strengthen our bilateral and multilateral partnerships. In this regard, my Ministry, in cooperation with our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is currently developing a proposal to offer scholarships to students from the small least developed countries in Africa that do not have higher education capacities of their own, such as The Comoros and Madagascar.
Our rich international partnerships in higher education have also played an important role in helping to reduce the accumulated effects of years of isolation from the global community during the dark days of apartheid.
The current partnerships between Norway and South Africa are rooted in the relationships that grew out of the anti-apartheid solidarity movement, which was so strongly supported by Norway.
The South Africa Norway Tertiary Education Development (SANTED) Programme is an excellent example of genuine support for the development of higher education not only in South Africa but also in the SADC region as a whole. To date, the SANTED Programme supports capacity development at four historically disadvantaged universities (Fort Hare, Zululand, Western Cape and Durban Westville) as well as knowledge exchange between our two countries through a joint research project involving the University of Bergen. The SADC projects include: - a major 3 way collaboration in academic programme development in economics, engineering and biological sciences between the University of the Witwatersrand, which is one of South Africa's leading research universities, the University of Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique and the University of Namibia; - a collaboration between the Nursing Departments of the Agostinho Neto University in Angola and the University of South Africa; and a project on peer education in the area of HIV/AIDS involving the University of the Western Cape and the University of Zambia.
Our two countries also have an agreement for research support, which includes staff and postgraduate student exchanges. I can see few better ways to promote internationalisation than through efforts of this nature.
I hope that the effects of trade liberalisation on efforts to truly internationalise higher education can be minimised. However, of some concern is whether already limited financial resources might increasingly be used for trade driven activities rather than those that emphasise intellectual and social gains.
I am convinced that a fundamental re-thinking of the inclusion of education in GATS is needed. We must avoid, at all cost, an approach to GATS that puts our education in peril. Only time will tell whether it is indeed possible to engage with GATS in ways that hold promise for our own agendas and needs.
However, I am more than ever convinced that GATS should not become a preoccupation, nor should it paralyse meaningful transformation and partnerships. Francis Fukuyama was wrong: History has not ended. Nor is the agenda for change irrelevant. Therefore we should bear in mind what that great African writer, Ben Okri, has put before us:
They are only the exhausted who think
That they have arrived
At the final destination
The end of their road
With all of their dreams achieved
And no new dreams to hold
I thank you.
Issued by: Ministry of Education
6 October 2003
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