In this chapter we describe the inherited pre-1994 legislative and academic policy context and explain why it is no longer appropriate.
The existing policies for the regulation of higher education programmes and qualifications are contained in the following policy documents:
These policy documents were conceptualised within the apartheid framework. The acts that gave effect to the policies distinguished higher education institutions in terms of the kind of qualifications they offered, i.e. universities, technikons and colleges of education, nursing and agriculture, and in terms of the student body they catered for i.e. blacks (Africans), whites, coloureds and Indians. Furthermore, political and managerial responsibility for the various higher education institutions was apportioned to a number of different government departments organised according to the then applicable racial classifications.
Over and above state legislation, universities (specifically those designated for whites) were established and, at least partly, regulated in terms of their respective private acts. In contrast, technikons and colleges were established and regulated in terms of overall ‘umbrella’ legislation. For technikons this ‘umbrella’ legislation was nationally-based while for colleges it was provincially-based.
Despite the fact that most of this legislation has been repealed by the Higher Education Act, the inherited policies governing higher education programmes and qualifications are derived from a legislative context that was marked by fragmentation, lack of cohesion, and with clear boundaries separating universities, technikons and colleges.
This legislation set out the terms governing the offering of programmes and qualifications for each of the three types of institutions thus:
The philosophical basis for this differentiation in institutional focus rests to a large degree on the Main Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Universities (Van Wyk de Vries Report, 1974) which upheld the view that society could be divided into a number of different ‘spheres of relationships’. These ‘spheres of relationships’ were assumed to be independent of one another and to have unique characteristics. In these terms then, the university sector was to constitute a ‘sphere of relationship’ in which the promotion and diffusion of basic or fundamental knowledge was essential. The technikons were to constitute a separate and independent ‘sphere of relationship’ in which the development, implementation and practical application of technology was to be emphasised. Colleges were to concentrate on developing the various competences, values and attitudes required for specific vocations.
This sector-based approach to the provision of programmes resulted in different approval mechanisms for new programmes and qualifications for each of the institutional types. The Universities and Technikons Advisory Council (AUT) was responsible for approving the offering of new programmes by universities, and it used the criteria laid down in Report 116 to consider both the structure and content of new programmes, as well as the suitability of the applying university to offer them.
In the case of technikons, policy provided for a nationally applicable structure for programmes and qualifications based on subjects (although subject content could vary). The introduction of a new programme for technikons thus requires extensive pre-consultation within the technikon sector in order to reach agreement on a commonly acceptable structure for the programme concerned. A particular technikon is granted permission to offer an approved programme on the basis of an accreditation evaluation by the Certification Council for Technikon Education (SERTEC).
For colleges of education the now defunct Committee for Teacher Education Policy (COTEP), together with the AUT, advised on the introduction of new programmes. Since the provision of teacher education was a provincial responsibility, provincial education authorities took decisions on which colleges were to provide what programmes and qualifications.
In order to ensure some form of co-ordination and cohesion in the higher education system, some of the pre-1994 policy documents emphasised the need for mechanisms and rules for the articulation of qualifications between institutions in the same sector, and between institutions in different sectors. In addition, it was conceded that ‘grey areas’, where the boundaries between in the different ‘spheres of relationships’ became blurred, were growing. Nonetheless, although some of the pre-1994 academic policy documents concede that such strict classifications, especially those based on the concept of distinctive and independent ‘spheres of relationships’, are no longer tenable, they remain based on a sectoral approach to the programmes and qualifications of higher education. In this approach the higher education system was divided into three sub-sectors, each with its own and supposedly unique programme focus. Decisions relating to the offering of new programmes were therefore taken largely independently within separate sectoral contexts for universities, technikons and colleges of education respectively. These decisions attempted to curtail any form of ‘academic drift’ between the various types of institutions and thus sought to preserve the distinct focus of each type of institution.
The historical development of our higher education system has meant that the assumptions on which policies were based did not necessarily match reality.
For universities, permission to offer programmes and qualifications was granted on a laissez faire basis with little in the way of system-wide goals, criteria or quality checks on which to base the decision. For universities the decision whether to offer or not a particular programme was largely a matter of institutional autonomy.
In contrast to some of our universities, which were established more than a hundred years ago, technikons were formally established only in the early 1980s. Inevitably this meant that universities, in response to educational and training needs in society, started offering programmes and their associated qualifications which, in policy terms, encroached on the technikon ‘sphere of relationships’. This was particularly true in the case of training for the professional fields, and for the associated health professions in particular. In some cases, this trend was fuelled by professional boards which required a degree for purposes of professional registration. The fact that technikons were only allowed to start awarding degrees in the early 1990s meant that some forms of professional training, which would have fitted more naturally into the technikon qualification structure, had to be offered at universities.
Policy on teacher education, in particular, had to contend with an extremely ‘mixed reality’. Historically, teacher education was offered both at colleges of education and at universities. Ironically, technikons, which were established with the specific purpose of focusing on vocational and industrial education and training, were only allowed to begin to offer teacher education from the early 1990s. Apart from their own teacher education programmes, many universities had formal collaborative agreements with colleges of education which stimulated a large measure of academic interchange between these two types of institution. This ‘mixed reality’ was further entrenched when, in the 1960s, all teacher education for secondary schools for whites was assigned to universities; a model which gradually influenced teacher education for secondary schools for the other ‘population groups’ in the ensuing years. The recent initiative of incorporating most colleges of education into both universities and technikons has made it even more difficult to uphold the pre-1994 policy approaches, and a similar process is underway for colleges of agriculture and nursing.
In conclusion, the inherited system described above provided only a skeletal qualifications structure with little provision for articulation across the three ‘spheres of relationships’. Furthermore, the academic policies governing programmes and qualifications have never adequately reflected the actual distribution of programmes at institutions. In fact there has always been a significant mismatch between policy and practice in the field of higher education. The incorporation of colleges of education into universities and technikons serves to make this mismatch even more pronounced.