A university must balance its role to support reason, philosophical openness and pure, independent inquiry, with a more pragmatic role of creating social mobility, transforming lives, building prosperity.
We haven’t found this balance in SA. We have neither enough high-level research nor an increase in wellbeing. We obsess with quality, but it’s pace we need.
We have to create an alternative educational system that will rescue people by ensuring that no-one is denied a quality education that gives them not just a job, but a better future. Now is the time to follow countries that live this reality, such as Switzerland, New Zealand, Finland — even Russia and China. They use technical and vocational education and training (TVET) for the national interest.
If we follow international best practice, we have to diversify the post-school education and training model away from one that is mostly government funded and university-centric, to one that encourages private sector participation, mobilises resources and aligns to the actual needs of the economy.
Today, technology and innovation allow us to do that for everyone — affordably. We just need the Wifi.
Beyond formal education
At Henley, we try to rescue those the system has excluded by creating a ladder of learning that takes candidates from post-matric all the way to the equivalent of a university degree, studying at their own pace and earning while they learn. We have to take appropriate education to people. Without it, and the skills it brings, there is no building of national prosperity or escape from poverty.
It’s not enough to study once and qualify. We have to keep learning, all our lives
First, though, we have to break out of the mental jail that tells us only our formal educational system can deliver what we need. The statistics show us it can’t. It’s not delivering adequate public or private good.
SA’s clone of the Western education and university system is out of step with our needs. It’s not sacred and it’s not an asset unless it’s delivering. It’s time to evolve universities for our needs, repurpose the TVET system, and release and invigorate the online digital system.
We carry on as we do because we don’t trust ourselves to be brave enough to change. We have to decolonise education, not just racially but also intellectually. We also need to de-columnise campuses, by replacing grand academic colosseums with a vibrant, smart network of decentralised partners keen to experiment and celebrate fast, marginal improvements that, combined, build national capacity for an economy that needs skills that are radical and complex.
The state can use the existing network of 50 TVET colleges, with their R8bn annual budget. Or it can ask those partners that have the knowledge. Together, they can find the means. But between unemployment, Covid-19 and 4IR, we don’t have much time.