Quality programmes were needed at South Africa's tertiary intitutions to create a "highly developed" public sector, Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande said in Pretoria on Thursday.

"As we embark on what we call a developmental state, we need to debate the issue of this developmental state and what kind of a public service we need for that kind of a developmental state," he said.

There needed to be clear goals from the government.

"There must be an effective and efficient public service," said Nzimande, adding that the public service needed to understand the aims of the government.

"One of the critical challenges when we talk about skilled public service is that we need quality programmes at our universities. That should be non-negotiable."

He said that, in terms of public administration, the country had moved forward, but that there were still challenges, including "racial contradictions, class contradictions and gender contradictions".

He said a market economy alone would not address these challenges.

An additional problem in distributing skill was the disparities between universities that were formerly part of the homelands during the apartheid era.