Date: 15/02/2010
Source: The Democratic Alliance
Title: DA: James: Speech by the Shadow Minister of Higher Education, during the Debate on the State of the Nation Address, Parliament



Dit is my voorreg, Speaker, eerbare Raadslede, om ‘n paar idees met u te deel.

One can look at President Zuma's State of the Nation speech in terms of what he said and what he did not say.

In terms of what he said, I have little quarrel and support the overall thrust: focus on job creation, education and health.

The main issue with President Zuma's address is what he did not say, and the lack of ambition he indicated in word and manner for our country.

An economy is animated by the talent, ideas, intellectual property and spin-off entrepreneurial opportunities coming from some of our 23 universities and over 50 colleges. We have the most advanced science, medical and technology infrastructure on the continent by far. We are at the high end of astronomy, nuclear physics, biotechnology, medical genetics. Together with our science council system, we could be a powerhouse on the continent, competing globally with the likes of India and China. Yet we are running at 40 per cent capacity. And the President never demonstrated measures to turn this situation around.

We need hundreds of trades schools, for high-end artisan training. None of this is new. To get there we require an unrelenting attention to quality. I think of Stanford University in California, a fourth rate institution in the 1940s, built up by its legendary Provost, by paying consistent attention to detail in the quality of its staff, students and infrastructure. We need to apply ourselves similarly. Again, the President remains silent on the quality of our education institutions.

Education needs to be the joyful unlocking of human potential, and not the burden of head-stuffing of students, seen as units of information consumption.

This was not evident from the President's speech.

We have administrative support systems that are hobbling at many of the historically disadvantaged universities, and require much more demanding levels of accountability and performance management. Likewise, academic staff recruitment practices require scaling up at all universities, but particularly at the historically disadvantaged universities. Of the 41,383 total academic staff at our universities, only 16 per cent have doctorates; only 34 per cent masters.

So let's get on with it.