Reply to DA question reveals Minister Blade Nzimande does not care about international standards for our universities
Minister Nzimande confused ideologue with no idea of what constitutes a good university
Minister Nzimande failing obligations to South African students and researchers


After the University of Cape Town was ranked 146th on the Times Higher Education World University Ranking, the only South African University to be rated, my colleague Dr. Wilmot James MP, asked Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande why South Africa has only one university listed in the top 200 and whether he had any plans to get our universities into the top 100. His written parliamentary reply, released today, clearly states that he has no use for international comparisons and does not intend to push our universities into positions of globally recognised excellence.

A copy of the reply follows below.

Writing in a defensive tone, the Minister takes great pains to discredit the respected Times rankings, saying that they show "a bias towards universities which are larger and well-resourced, where English is the language of the academy and modeled along Westernised notions of what a university is or ought to be." But hold on. Universities that are "well resourced" put themselves in a position of achieving excellence. That's not a bias, that's a fact. Since South African universities rely on the state for its resources, the Minister should do what is necessary so that ours are also "well resourced."

As for the minister's claim about the "bias" towards English, there are 55 universities ahead of UCT which draw its students from countries that do not speak English as a first language (like Japan, China, Sweden, etc.). This is a weak excuse for weak performance.

And as for the supposed bias towards "Westernised" institutions. How convenient that such a distinction exists, to explain away our universities' failing standards. The incoherence continues in a later passage in the parliamentary reply, which reads: "our objective is to ensure that the quality of our universities is constantly and consistently measured against our own set of criteria (including international best practices)." So, on the one hand, he patriotically trumpets "our criteria" for establishing academic excellence. Then he invokes "international best practices." Which is it? And if we do care about international standards, then why would the minister not do everything in his power to make our universities more internationally competitive? It is obscene that the person in charge of Higher Education in this country should care so little about our universities' excellence.

Through his statement, the Minister has revealed himself to be an ideologue who scoffs at international standards while the institutions he is responsible for languish in global comparisons. Our university students cannot afford his indifference to their educational standards. South Africans want to be full participants in the global arena, especially academically, thus we need someone at the educational helm who has the vision to take our universities to new heights. It is astonishing that the ANC allows him to carry on like this. If Blade Nzimande does not crave making our universities the best they can be, then he should quit his post for he is failing in his role as a leader.