The Challenge: Further and Higher Education in the South African Perspective
USAID's Contribution to Educational Transformation
Transformation before and after Democracy: Stories of Selected Programs
Providing access to higher education for disadvantaged South Africans
6. University of Durban-Westville
7. ACE Strategic Planning Project
Strategic Planning: Peninsula Technikon
Strategic Planning: University of the Western Cape
The Challenge: Further and Higher Education in the South African Perspective
The South African government recently proposed transforming its higher education system "to serve a new social order, to meet pressing national needs, and to respond to new realities and opportunities." Sometimes this vision seems almost within reach. At one of the tertiary institutions hobbled by apartheid, the University of Durban-Westville (UDW), the Academic Registrar describes both the challenge and the joy inherent in such transformation.
"We have specifically targeted the disadvantaged, the poor, the masses that would not normally reach university... Something like 0.4 percent of those who enter at the bottom of the [South African educational] pyramid survive to the top, and they have to survive conditions which are totally dreadful. They have to be good in order to reach a university at all. They have to be very bright, very capable, and very highly motivated. They will have survived where a whole lot of others will have failed.
"They will be sent here by a whole village. One of the really exciting things is a graduation ceremony at UDW, when a whole village turns up to applaud their student, the student that they have sent to university and supported over five years for a three-year degree. That's their product, a communal product. There's also the fact - another way in which we're privileged in our students - that is they have survived apartheid. They have come through the townships. They have toyi-toyied. They have chased out [armored personnel carriers]. They have grown up very early, very young. They have stuff in their heads that students don't have elsewhere in the world. They are remarkable human beings. They come to us having gone through a very tawdry school system. They may take a couple of years longer than most people elsewhere to get their BA's or BSc's or BEd's, but when they do graduate they are the salt of the earth."
South Africans have, in fact, made great strides in transforming their tertiary education system. At the same time, much more remains to be achieved. This paper examines South Africa's progress in laying the foundation for a new, nonracial post-secondary education system and the role that USAID has played in that progress. After highlighting some of the challenges and contrasts characterizing the country, it focuses on how this nation's educational system has developed, during the apartheid era and after democratic elections. It then moves to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission to South Africa and its work during those two periods, exploring in more detail ten of the programs in further and higher education that have benefited from U.S. funding. Finally, through the eyes of the South Africans who have implemented these programs it assesses the impact of USAID's development assistance to this sector, examines key challenges for the future, and discusses some important lessons arising from this experience.
No country in Africa is more familiar to Americans than South Africa. This is due in some measure to its long-standing position as an economic powerhouse on the continent. By far the most important reason, however, lies in four decades of increasingly violent confrontation over the doctrine of apartheid, theoretically the concept of separate but equal development and practically the domination of the vast majority of the country's people, who are not white, by just 18 percent, who are. Although the National Party introduced apartheid per se when it took power in 1948, white political and economic control was a fact of life from the merger in 1910 of four British dependencies to form the Union of South Africa.
Long years of struggle finally bore fruit on May 10, 1994, when Nelson Mandela, released from prison just four years earlier, became the first president democratically elected by all South Africans. His inaugural address inspired a vision that confirmed his stature as one of the great leaders of the twentieth century.
"We have triumphed in the effort to implant hope in the breasts of the millions of our people. We enter into a covenant that we shall build a society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity - a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world."
Great visions are not easily achieved, of course. South Africa faces major challenges in its quest to become the rainbow nation of President Mandela's dream. The London-based Fund Research group recently characterized it as:
"... a country of 41 million people surrounded by some of the worst poverty in Africa, with a rigid and under-educated labor force, an oligopolistic economy and high real interest rates. One of the major problems is the high and increasing level of unemployment and, with a third of the labor force without jobs, the growth in crime threatens social cohesion and economic progress."
External assessments tend towards mixed reviews of current performance but cautious optimism about the country's longer-term economic potential. For example, in the United States the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal gave South Africa only three marks out of five on their index of economic freedom, but lauded its transition to democracy and judged national reconciliation to have been impressive. World Bank estimates put per capita income (GNP per head) at $2,910 in 1994, placing South Africa well ahead of other countries on the continent (with the exception of Libya and Gabon) and in the upper-middle-income ranks of the world's nations. On the other hand, the country's Gini Coefficient (an index of income inequality), which stood at 0.64 in 1985, is one of the highest in the world, reflecting the unequal wealth distribution among different racial groups that was the goal and the result of apartheid.
While acknowledging challenges during his government's first years in power, President Mandela marked 1997's beginning with an optimistic assessment of South Africa's progress and prospects under democratic rule. He spoke of solid foundations having been laid, of reconstruction and development's impact being felt. He highlighted the signing of the new constitution as "a fitting way to end the year," and the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as "a powerful instrument of healing." He took pride in the fact that millions of people have gained access to water, electricity and health care, that quality education for all is taking shape, and that programs for land reform and housing are now "firmly on track." He concluded, "By keeping our sights on the long term we can manage the ebb and flow of the present."
Apartheid established, as a matter of conscious intent, an education system of extraordinary complexity and fragmentation, characterized by inequitable allocation of resources, differing education standards, and duplication of educational facilities. For South Africans of color, it left a legacy of low education levels; high illiteracy, dropout and repetition rates; and poor academic performance. These seeds brought forth bitter fruit in terms of limited economic opportunities, higher birth rates, increased health problems, and higher crime rates for the majority of the population.
Some 2.8 million people in the country have not had any education at all. Of these, 92 percent are African. In the case of tertiary education, the harsh reality of apartheid denied these South Africans equity in virtually every way. The Bantu Education Act of 1953 and the Extension of the University Education Act of 1959 solidified separation by race, providing separate institutions and different curricula for various demographic groups. Severe limitations in the disadvantaged majority's access to quality primary and secondary education placed corresponding limits on their access to post-secondary studies. As a result of inadequate curricula, resource-poor facilities, untrained or poorly prepared teachers and administrators, and strikes by both students and teachers, consistently less than 40 percent of African students completed the secondary school-leaving matriculation (matric) examination. Looking at the development-critical subjects of math and science unveils an even bleaker picture. Only one in every 10,000 black students passed matric with university-level qualifications in these subjects. These problems created a situation where only 12 percent of Africans 18 to 21 years old were at universities, compared to nearly 70 percent of whites.
Those black students who did reach tertiary education still found substantial inequities blocking their success. At the time of South Africa's first democratic elections, direct expenditures for black students frequently were only eight to 15 percent of those for white students. Most historically disadvantaged institutions (HDIs) could not engage in systematic planning and admission procedures as they struggled to respond to political demands caused by apartheid. For example, enrollments doubled at some institutions when "open admissions" became the response to the slogan "admit one, admit all." Therefore, staff-student ratios at historically black universities approached 25:1, compared to 12:1 at historically white universities. As one University of the Western Cape (UWC) faculty member points out, this resulted in, "... large class sizes, very little attention to research, a squeeze on resources...."
Not only did previous governments spend less on black institutions, they created great inefficiencies in support of the apartheid ideal of separate facilities for separate racial classifications. Dr. Jairam Reddy, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Durban-Westville, uses this institution to make the point.
"We had the University of Natal, but we established five kilometers away the University of Durban-Westville as an institution for Indians, duplicating most of the faculties which existed at the University of Natal, simply because the government wanted a separate university for the Indian community. We could easily have been one university."
Academic qualifications represented still another problem. The majority of HDI faculty did not have doctorates in their fields, compared to 90 percent of the faculty at historically white institutions with doctoral degrees. HDI faculty members found few opportunities to engage in research or professional development because of poor facilities, enormous teaching loads, and other professional demands. Senior administrators enjoyed limited, if any, possibilities to acquire managerial training and experience before being thrust into critical leadership positions. All of these factors combined to ensure that administrative, academic and research infrastructures remained insufficient to provide educational quality effectively and efficiently.
As democracy dawned in South Africa, therefore, nowhere was the need to break with the discriminatory past more evident than in the education system. No social sector evoked higher interest among the general public, black and white. None presented greater challenges. In response, the new government allocated 21 percent of the national budget to education, a figure which is in the upper range suggested by organizations such as UNESCO. It committed itself forthrightly to a series of policy initiatives intended to "open the doors of learning for all" and to "build a just and equitable system which provides a good-quality education and training to learners young and old throughout the country." These policies are based on the principles of a fundamental right to education, one nonracial system, compulsory basic education, lifelong learning, and a division of powers between the national and provincial levels of government.
No one would deny the magnitude of the problems inherited from the apartheid era. Several factors constrain the South African government's capacity to address them. Perhaps the most significant of these is the sheer magnitude of the undertaking. History provides few instances of a society attempting to transform itself on the scale and at the pace upon which South Africa has embarked. The country faces a widely acknowledged shortage of experienced human resources in government to undertake policy analysis and formulation, develop legislation, and establish infrastructure and management systems. Government's commitment to democratic processes of broad-based participation and consultation by stakeholders further extends the time needed for achieving goals, adding to the perception that change is slow in coming. Many believe that it will require the better part of a decade to complete South Africa's transition process.
On balance, though, the nation definitely is making progress towards its goal of a transformed educational system. The old apartheid laws are gone. Racially fragmented bureaucratic structures have been torn down. New, united organizations are being built in their place, including a national and nine provincial education departments. Already 1997 has seen the promulgation of a white paper on higher education which details new government policy for the sector, the drafting of a bill to turn that policy into legislation, the submission of a report on further education destined to lead to similar policy and legislative results, the publication of a technology-enhanced learning initiative report, and the pilot testing of the first phase of a new primary education curriculum, Curriculum 2005.
Tertiary education reform poses as many challenges as transformation at any other level of the system. This sector rests on two pillars. The first, higher education, comprises universities and their career-oriented sister institutions, the technikons. Approximately 150,000 students currently attend 15 South African technikons, as opposed to 350,000 at 21 universities.
The second pillar is further education. In his keynote address to a seminal 1995 conference on community education in South Africa, Minister Sibusiso Bengu explained:
"In the terminology of the National Qualifications Framework, community education targets general education and further education levels. Further education is conceived as the level of education and training between the general education phase, covering compulsory schooling to Grade Nine level on the one hand, and Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) on the other. Learning at the further education level will occur in a variety of contexts, such as senior secondary schools, present technical colleges, community colleges, industrial training centers, at distance education centers, or a combination of these...."
Overall, the further education and training sector now consumes R10 billion ($2.2 billion) per year. Most further education occurs in schools, where approximately 2.1 million pupils study at the senior secondary levels (grades 10-12). In comparison, just under 60,000 full-time-equivalent students study at technical colleges. Government spends R7.2 billion ($1.6 billion) per year on the former against R500 million ($109 million) on the latter. Outside formal education, the data become less precise. Estimates of the number of working South Africans receiving education and training vary widely, between 630,000 and 2.7 million. The Department of Labor has 150,000 people on training courses.
A long road still lies ahead in the reform of tertiary education, not only to redress past injustice but to help the sector play its full role in national transformation and development. Yet progress can already be seen. Figures recently published by the South African Institute for Race Relations show the results of quite rapid changes in university and technikon output. Although Africans hold only 11 percent of the country's 435,000 degrees, they accounted for 30 percent of the degrees, diplomas, and certificates awarded at the end of 1994. Between 1991 and 1994, the total number of degrees, diplomas, and certificates granted to Africans grew by 42 percent, against a comparable figure for whites of just one percent. In the Institute's words:
"While most of South Africa's privately owned physical assets may still be in white hands, a larger and larger share of the country's know-how is to be found in black heads. Thus, of the roughly two million South Africans who have had some form of post-matric education, whites are now in the minority."
Such changes have not happened entirely without outside help. For example, the United States has spent nearly a billion dollars in the past decade on development in South Africa. Evaluations have praised the innovative character and emphasized the impact of American interventions. At a time when foreign aid is increasingly under attack at home and abroad, some have offered USAID's South Africa program as a model for foreign aid that works.
Prevented by moral principal and by law (specifically, the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act or CAAA) from providing funds to the apartheid government or its agencies prior to the 1994 elections, USAID/South Africa ventured into the relatively uncharted waters of non-governmental organization (NGO) funding. Whereas in other countries USAID projects usually work through host governments, in South Africa the Mission responded to unsolicited proposals from small organizations outside of the apartheid political system. The result was, by agency standards, a huge national program when measured in numbers of grants and recipients, and an unusual one when assessed strategically. This alternative approach has yielded some of USAID's greatest successes in South Africa.
Subsequent to the 1994 elections, USAID found itself able to give bilateral grants to the new, democratic government. This opened a whole new realm of development opportunities. In the higher education sector, for example, it could support tertiary institutions directly. USAID now balances funding between government and non-governmental organizations while testing the viability of its long-term strategy: strengthening democratic education by creating capacity, developing systems, and influencing policy in the country.
USAID's involvement in South Africa began in 1982, when Congress approved $4 million for scholarships to South Africans disadvantaged by apartheid. A few months after the arrival of the first in-country USAID staff member in 1986, increasing public repugnance towards the apartheid system and the brutality it fostered led Congress to pass the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. Soon thereafter, the Agency for International Development initiated a separate South Africa country program and began making preparations to open its own office, or mission, in the capital city of Pretoria.
The CAAA prohibited the U.S. from assisting any agency "financed or controlled" by the South African government. It required instead that American funds be channeled through non-governmental organizations. This posed a particular challenge for educational development. Some of apartheid's most visible inequities were reflected in the higher education system. Yet that system was very much a government activity, with virtually all tertiary institutions funded and controlled by state agencies. Therefore, the new USAID office in South Africa had to work with NGOs that were creating innovative models for redressing the balance and preparing for a democratic future.
The release of Nelson Mandela from prison in February, 1990, and the beginnings of negotiations for an end to white minority rule, stimulated a dramatic increase in the level of U.S. assistance. Annual USAID funding doubled from $40 million in 1990 to $80 million in 1992. Almost half of this money was aimed at education. In response, USAID/South Africa began to review its funding strategies, moving towards bigger grants focused on major strategic areas. The Mission also sought to become more proactive, responding to fewer unsolicited proposals.
Just days after South Africa's first democratic elections in May, 1994, the Clinton administration announced a huge three-year aid package more than half a billion dollars in size, with USAID assistance projected at approximately $130 million per year. USAID/South Africa targeted about a quarter of this annual amount, approximately $30 million, to the education sector. Although the expansion of the total package reduced education's percentage somewhat from previous USAID/South Africa budgets, funding for the sector remained close to levels in the years immediately preceding democratic elections. Still, this comprises only a small fraction of South Africa's education budget. In keeping with the global strategy of leveraging its investments by supporting programs that offer the possibility of positive impact out of proportion to their cost, USAID has sought to play a "catalytic role" in the country's post-apartheid educational development.
What USAID is trying to do in South Africa has not changed very much since the days of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. The agency continues to work towards the broad goal of good education for all South Africans. It continues to target South Africans who were unable to obtain high-quality education, or indeed any education at all, under the apartheid system.
How USAID is trying to achieve its objective has changed substantially, on the other hand. Its South African program has evolved towards a more common Agency for International Development funding model. USAID/South Africa still works at all levels of the education system, from primary to tertiary. It still supports further education and training for disadvantaged South Africans. However, it has begun to tighten its focus somewhat, pulling back from areas such as career guidance and secondary education. Its university and professional training approach is being revised to take into account that South Africans of color are no longer excluded from such opportunities within their own country. USAID/South Africa continues to design and propose new interventions, rather than responding to unsolicited proposals as it once did exclusively.
The biggest shift in USAID's implementation strategy, however, affects who receives its funds. Money once given exclusively to local organizations now goes increasingly to support the government's objectives and education programs, although such funding can continue to support NGO collaboration. The previous, NGO-based approach was dictated by the existence of a non-democratic government, excluded from support (or even contact) under American law. The advent of democracy in 1994 removed these restrictions. Consequently, USAID is now able to deal directly with the South African government. Indeed, it is anxious to do so. Strengthening the new, democratic administration is an obvious development priority. Increasingly, then, funds that previously would have gone to NGOs and CBOs (community-based organizations) are now provided to the national and selected provincial governments as bilateral aid.
To accomplish its objective of increased equity of educational quality and access, USAID supports three major areas: policy formulation, system development and capacity enhancement.
First, it wishes to see policies for transformation enacted. A new system needs to operate under new rules that ensure fairness for all. USAID has already played a catalytic role in supporting policy formulation at all levels of education through technical assistance and funding to organizations who have contributed to policy research, analysis and public consultation.
Second, responsive systems must be functioning. These are the mechanisms that will translate good policy into good practice, models (or "blueprints") for effectiveness. One example is the National Qualifications Framework (NQF), a system for integrating in-school and out-of-school education and training established under the South African Qualifications Authority Act. Under the NQF a worker who never had the opportunity to complete primary education can receive equivalent training as an adult learner, training that will be recognized as the qualification necessary to proceed to secondary-level education (which can be delivered in or out of school).
Finally, the educational system's organizational capacity should be enhanced. USAID is focusing on all players in the drama of transformation: national and provincial governments, educational institutions, youth commissions, and NGOs. What can be done to improve the ability of South African groups to implement the policies and run the systems that will increase access and quality for historically disadvantaged individuals?
To help achieve increased equity of educational quality and access, USAID/South Africa works primarily through two large-scale projects, the Support to Tertiary Education Project (STEP) and the Tertiary Education Linkages Project (TELP). Each of these has provided grants directly to South Africans. Each has used U.S.-based institutional contractors to deliver cross-cutting technical and logistical support.
The STEP Project
USAID/South Africa established the Support to Tertiary Education Project in June, 1990, to assist in the process of peacefully dismantling apartheid by preparing disadvantaged South Africans for positions of leadership in a democratic society. To achieve this goal, the Mission committed support through the year 2003 for:
The project intends that black South Africans become full contributors to and participants in the political, social, economic and intellectual life of their nation. Therefore, STEP's design promotes leadership, develops human resources, and supports the success of black students in tertiary education institutions. Based on extensive consultations with educationists, community leaders, parents, and students, STEP gives priority to education projects which help disadvantaged South Africans cope with and overcome the inadequacies of apartheid education; are nonracial yet affirm black leadership within the organization; promote communication and resource-sharing with other organizations providing similar services; and support the development of nonracial education in post-apartheid South Africa.
Post-election realities required modifications to the project's original strategy. Consequently, USAID amended STEP in September, 1995, increasing the life-of-project funding level to $137 million and allowing bilateral partnership with the national government though the Ministry of Education and other departments. STEP support continues in the following target areas:
The TELP Project
Approved in 1995, the Tertiary Education Linkages Project will spend an estimated $50 million through the year 2004 to increase access for black South Africans to tertiary education opportunities and resources, and to improve academic, administrative, and research capacity in historically disadvantaged tertiary education institutions. Its specific objectives include supporting the National Department of Education, building capacity at HDIs, and carrying out special programs at 15 participating HDIs.
TELP's activities can be divided into three components: policy analysis and planning, capacity building, and linkages. Policy analysis and planning involves the detailed examination of critical issues in tertiary education with the aim of presenting options and programs for ensuring a more equitable and efficient tertiary education system. Some of the issues involved include:
The project defines capacity-building as the process by which institutions are established, expanded, and/or made more effective. It supports this process by:
TELP sees linkages as mutually cooperative activities enabling two or more institutions to address broad-based problems, share resources, and engage in joint activities related to policy analysis, planning, and capacity-building. It supports the establishment or enhancement of linkages among South African tertiary institutions, and between South African institutions and colleges and universities in the United States.
In pursuit of these objectives, TELP has already committed more than $18 million through its bilateral agreement with the South African government. These funds have supported the National Commission on Higher Education, small capacity-building grants to 15 individual HDIs, additional grants to a consortium of HDIs, and work at HDIs in five areas identified by their Vice Chancellors and Principals: student academic and social development; staff development; research skills development; program/curriculum development; and management and administrative development. Those institutions where TELP funds already are supporting specific activities say that the project makes possible reforms that would otherwise not be implemented.
The ten programs explored in this paper represent examples of successful work towards USAID's strategic vision through the STEP and TELP projects. They demonstrate tangible and significant progress towards the transformed education system to which the new government and its development partners have committed themselves. Although this paper does not represent a formal evaluation process, the words of key players from each program confirm that they, too, feel their USAID-supported work is making a difference in bringing about equal access to quality tertiary education for the country's disadvantaged majority.
The selected programs fall naturally into three categories of intervention. First come four programs whose primary work centers on opening doors to tertiary education that were previously closed to South Africans of color. Next come four tertiary institutions where USAID supports a variety of capacity-building efforts, plus an umbrella forum for all HDIs in the country. Finally, two bodies responsible for developing new national tertiary education policies demonstrate the direct impact of the Mission's strategy on supporting the country's efforts to chart a new course for further and higher education.
A variety of organizations arose during South Africa's "struggle years" to promote necessary change. One of the oldest of these is the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), whose headquarters are in Johannesburg, Gauteng Province. Founded in 1929, it describes itself as "a liberal, non-profit-making research organization" that has "consistently opposed racial discrimination and promoted the establishment of a non-racial society in South Africa." In recent years the Institute's emphasis has shifted somewhat from race relations (although still an important issue) to researching socio-economic conditions, publications, and advocacy.
In 1935, SAIRR began awarding small bursaries (scholarships) with very limited resources. Bursary Director Mr. Dennis Venter explains:
"The bursary department started off with various South African trust funds, individuals and companies making funds available for black education. One of the earlier, and most illustrious, recipients is President Mandela. He notes in his autobiography that he received �120 from the Institute in the late 1940's to assist him in his law studies.
"The bursary program expanded dramatically in the early 80's when first the Scandinavian countries, then later Europe, started making relatively large sums of money available for the Institute to fund tertiary education [for black students]. At the time white universities had limitations placed on their acceptance of black students. To their credit, [they] disregarded government policy and accepted black students. It made it much easier for them if they were sure that these students had funding."
USAID has provided five different grants to SAIRR, with bulk of this assistance centering on bursaries and related support services. The Institute's total bursary program has amounted to R104 million since 1982 (approximately $22.6 million at current exchange rates). Under the STEP Project, SAIRR benefited from major USAID grants totalling more than $16.5 million. At the peak of its support in 1995, USAID supplied 75 percent of the Institute's bursary funds.
It is not difficult to quantify the accomplishments of these funds. Three years ago, 1,200 students were studying under the program at various tertiary institutions, achieving a pass rate of 91 percent. As funding declined, that figure dropped to 800, then to the current level of 560 students. Venter comments:
"We started our first USAID program with 38 students. The program grew tremendously over the years and peaked in 1995, in which year there were 836 students on the USAID program. Regrettably the program is winding down, and this year [it supports approximately] 260 students."
Venter explains that since 1986 approximately 46 percent of graduates from Institute-supported study received USAID funds.
"We've had 837 students who have graduated from South African universities in various fields of study with USAID support. In the nature of things we do not have any resources to be following up every year, but from the questionnaires that we send out immediately after graduation we at least have 125 students whose details we know. Among them was a business adviser with the Small Business Development Corporation, pharmacists, a medical doctor, attorneys, a dental therapist, dieticians, a few engineers, a number of teachers..."
The Institute's bursary program has provided more than scholarship money, however. It also funded academic support for disadvantaged students.
"Various universities, such as Wits, Natal, Cape Town and Rhodes, established academic support programs in an effort to bridge the gap with students, black students in the main, when entering university from an education background that prepared them very poorly for tertiary education. These programs were not funded by government. The universities had to find their own resources. Through our USAID funding, we could make an ex-gratia payment to the academic support programs at institutions where we had students. It started off with R400 ($90); we increased it to something like R1,000 ($220)."
PRISM (Planned Route into Science and Maths) runs one such support program with the objective of providing effective math and science education so that its students can enter a tertiary institution or acquire employment in the fields of science and technology. A Durban-area NGO, it offers disadvantaged students a second chance at higher education and meaningful careers.
The program presently operates on two campuses, the larger at Mangosuthu Technikon in Umlazi, Durban. In 1997, nine PRISM teachers (or tutors) serve a total 250 students, up from only 85 students at the program's inception. Examination results continue to be far above national and provincial averages, with success rates on the 1996 provincial math and science exams of 92 percent and 95 percent, respectively.
PRISM employs a very practical teaching approach. Mr. Deeps Karma, Head of the Science Department, comments:
"When I first started off here and saw the type of students that came to us, their background in terms of science, it surprised me that they actually got through matric. The way science is being taught in their schools, they are taught science, but they were never allowed to think science. Here we allow them to think science. They experiment for themselves. They discover. Science is interesting, and they're motivated. This, to me, is the greatest joy."
PRISM faces a year-to-year challenge in finding funds to support this work. As explained by Mr. Mark Allison-Broomhead, the Project Manager, the basic economics are simple. They are also discouraging. It costs R6,500 ($1,400) per year to educate one PRISM student. Parents pay R1,500 ($325). That is a substantial amount for disadvantaged communities in a country where a new teacher might work one month to earn R1,500. Nevertheless, it represents less than a quarter of the actual delivery cost. Fortunately, several donors have been ready to assist PRISM cover the shortfall. Among these, USAID has been the largest contributor so far. It gave just over $600,000 in funding to PRISM from 1992 to 1996 through STEP.
What has PRISM accomplished? Karma comments:
"In the first three years of PRISM we've been funded by USAID. I can easily offer at least 100 students who are now in the process of being professionals, black professionals, feeding into South Africa. The funding is creating futures for people who had no futures before they came to PRISM."
One former student, Mr. Elija Kweyama, is now studying under a bursary for a BSc in Chemical Engineering. He wrote:
"I would like...to thank PRISM for what it has done for me. I was fortunate to be one of the first PRISM experiments in 1991. I could not further my study at tertiary level [because my matric results were poor]. I joined PRISM at Mangosuthu branch to improve my math and science. There was a huge difference between PRISM and where I was coming from....
"My PRISM results were very good.... I also wrote exams under DET department of education [and did well].... Since then I did not look back. Now I have a national diploma in Chemical Engineering obtained at Mangosuthu Technikon in 1995. The techniques and problems I learned at PRISM were very useful in my diploma. I was one of the best students in Chemical Engineering, graduating with 11 distinctions.
"Without PRISM's help I would not be where I am today."
Less than an hour's drive from PRISM's Durban campuses, the University of Natal at Pietermaritzburg hosts a sister bridging initiative, the Science Foundation Program (SFP). Ms. Joan Houston, the Project Manager, explains its roots:
"The University decided that there were African students who could do a science degree, that we could find a way [to determine] who they were, and that we could take those students and give them a year before they started a degree [program]. That's, in essence, what this program is. It's a pre-degree year. There are students out there with academic potential. They can be helped sufficiently in one year to bridge the gap between where they left school and where they need to be for the first year [of university]."
In 1991, after 18 months of preparation, SFP began with its first class of 25 students. An integral part of its host university, the program includes courses in physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology. Students also do a course called "Learning, Language and Logic," which is designed to improve their command and comprehension of English. In addition, a counselling component helps them make informed career choices and learn to cope with the heavy demands of university life. All program components are compulsory. The courses themselves emphasize the development of scientific reasoning and practical skills. Houston explains that the SFP intends to alter ways of thinking and learning.
"The aim of this program is to change the mindset of students. It's that they themselves are responsible for their thinking, and it's thinking that's going to take them through further studies - not a good teacher, or a good textbook, or even a good university."
In 1996, SFP students paid R4,500 ($975) per year in fees. However, these covered only half of the program's total operational budget, set at R1.1 million ($239,000) for 1997. External funding must not only assist the students themselves, but also cover the shortfall for staff and running costs. Houston notes that USAID was the program's prime funder in its initial years, covering 90 to 95 percent of its costs. From 1990 to 1993 USAID supported SFP through SAIRR, which provided a sub-grant. From 1993 to 1995 USAID funded SFP under STEP (channeled through the Griseldis-Crowhurst Bond Trust) with about $260,000.
The first SFP students graduated from the University of Natal in 1994. Approximately 70 to 75 percent of this group is likely to graduate on time or no more than one year later. This is well ahead of the university's most recent average for all science students, 43 percent, and substantially better than the equivalent figure for black students entering the science faculty directly, 26 percent. The second SFP cohort seems destined to perform even better, with 65 percent already having graduated in the minimum time and an additional 17 percent expected to graduate one year later. Houston asserts that none of this could have happened without USAID's support.
"If we hadn't had USAID's funding, we'd have had to have someone else's funding. And if there hadn't been any other funding, there wouldn't have been a program. It wouldn't have existed because there would have been no government funding, no university funding. This whole venture, in fact, was USAID's baby, if you like. It couldn't have existed without that initial seed funding, which was a very large seed - millions of rand."
Of course the most important results of the Science Foundation Program, and of the USAID funds that have supported it, reside in the lives of its students. To take a single example, Mr. Themba Mathaba was one of the first SFP graduates. He had attended two different high schools, both with under-equipped laboratories and under-qualified teachers, and was unable to complete his final year because of unrest. After doing his matric privately and spending a year in voluntary community development work, he entered SFP in 1991. He completed his BSc, majoring in genetics and molecular biology, and is now working in recycling. Mathaba speaks of SFP in these terms:
"I have met people from a wide range of educational backgrounds, from highly privileged private schools to bridging courses run at other universities. From what I have observed, students who have come through SFP are streets ahead of other students, no matter what their educational background is! During their Foundation Year the SFP students develop great self-confidence, and gain far more than just subject confidence. They gain real life-skills, and can adapt what they have learned to any environment in which they find themselves.... Even their approach to life changed for the better. We gained an ability to think clearly, and to tackle a task in a logical way."
From its offices in the city of Cape Town, the Desmond Tutu Educational Trust (DTET) works to redress the educational disadvantages experienced by black students under apartheid. Founded in 1990, it assists cooperating tertiary institutions to provide academic enrichment resources. The Trust also facilitates cooperation among the Western Cape higher education institutions with which it works: the Universities of Cape Town, Stellenbosch and the Western Cape; and the Cape and Peninsula Technikons.
Ms. Thandiwe January-McLean, the Trust's Executive Director, notes that South Africa has seen a substantial increase in black tertiary enrollment, from 18,000 students in 1980 to 100,000 students in 1990. Because of their inequitable educational preparation, however, these students have been denied success in many areas, leading directly to the kind of support the Trust provides.
"We've never been a bursary organization. Trust funds really have been directed at two main areas. [First is] the development of an innovative financial assistance program for traditionally disadvantaged students, supporting work-study, individual capacity building and academic development projects. And then [there is] the development of an institutional capacity-building program which has assisted historically black institutions."
USAID was the Trust's original and main funder, providing two grants of $3 million and $6 million, respectively, under STEP for the period 1990 to 1998. In the years prior to the 1994 elections the Tutu Trust, like SAIRR, offered USAID a way to support programs of redress and capacity-building for black students and disadvantaged institutions. In the years since 1994 the Trust has provided continued support to these initiatives. It occupies an unusual (although not a unique) place among USAID grantees, in that it functions as an intermediate donor.
Although the Tutu Trust regards all of its objectives as important, it sees its primary role as improving the financial position and academic development of black students at selected tertiary institutions. This is does in a unique way. Instead of providing direct bursaries like most other funding agencies, it channels its support through student salaries earned by participation in work-study projects. Thus the Trust has become a pioneer in funding work-related projects in South Africa, an approach which McLean describes as "very central" to its mission. Work-study has also become quite important to some Western Cape institutions, as she illustrates.
"One example is the library information service program at the Peninsula Technikon. The students who were manning the library were work-study students. The fact that they were working there made a difference between whether the library closed at 8:00 pm or at 10:00 pm. The students were able to gain skills. The institution, because of its financial problems, was not able to hire full-time people to do library duty all the time. So the students, in fact, fill great gaps and have continued to play that role."
Given that a high proportion of black students at the five Trust-supported institutions in the Western Cape come from backgrounds that are both educationally and economically deprived, these institutions recognize the importance of effective and on-going academic development programs. Without such support, the disturbingly high rates of failure and drop-outs among black students are likely to continue unabated, with serious consequences not only for the learners themselves, but also for South Africa's future development. Unfortunately, government financing does not yet reflect this reality, leaving external funding from organizations such as the DTET to fill the gap. For black students the official medium of instruction is very often a second or third language, so many of the Trust's academic development programs pay particular attention to language and communication skills. Other priorities include numeracy, computer literacy, life skills, and management and administrative skills.
Since its inception, the Tutu Trust has assisted over 20,000 disadvantaged black students with financial and academic support, as well as with work experience, skills development, capacity building and career guidance. Recent DTET reports describe 37 projects underway in 1996, down from 44 in 1995. Only 11 projects are being supported in 1997 because of the phasing out of the current USAID grant. McLean reflects:
"The fact is that USAID really made a major grant at a time when young, black South Africans needed all the support they could get in terms of education. I think the Trust has played a very important role in directly addressing the plight of students that had been excluded for so many years."
After the 1994 elections, technikons and universities created to serve the majority population found themselves without the infrastructure and resources required for them to play their full role in a new democracy. Capacity-building thus became critical for institutions such as M.L. Sultan Technikon, originally created for the Indian community. Located in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal Province, it is well-known for several centers of excellence, including its department of chemistry, hotel school, and design center. M.L. Sultan prepares students for a variety of careers through its 25 academic departments housed in four faculties. Its programs lead to qualifications ranging from national diplomas to doctorates. In 1995 the technikon's enrollment numbered 7,232 students. Of these, 57 percent were male and 48 percent female; approximately 50 percent were Indian, 40 percent African and the remaining ten percent white or colored.
In addition to strategic planning activities funded under STEP, USAID has provided two capacity-building TELP grants totalling almost $580,000 for areas such as curriculum development, linkages, multi-cultural education, transformation and public relations. Another supported area is improved student support. Ms. Naziema Jappie, Acting Dean of Student Services, explains the concepts of student development and academic support.
"When we talk about student development, we are looking at creating leadership within the ranks of students. It's also to develop students who are coming from disadvantaged backgrounds to be able to cope with tertiary education. You have to create a holistic person, a person who actually goes out into the working world. The academic side is looking at outcomes-based education. We are trying to parallel that, so that once the person is out there he doesn't just have that kind of academic support but also has the other support that is needed to gear him towards working."
Some TELP funds have supported M. L. Sultan by promoting linkages with related institutions in the United States. An important mechanism for accomplishing this is overseas visits, such as the one recently undertaken by Dean Theo Andrew of the Faculty of Engineering to visit several American colleges and organizations.
A number of joint projects arose from his trip, ranging from technikon participation in developing new energy-production techniques to cooperative ventures with Rev. Leon Sullivan's foundation.
In the area of curriculum development, TELP has supported the Biological Science Department's modularization efforts. In essence, this means restructuring a curriculum (what is taught) from large blocks of content and time (courses) into smaller blocks (modules). Faculty can arrange these modules with much greater flexibility. This, in turn, allows institutions to teach students more effectively. Lesley Cooke is the faculty member who has worked most closely on this endeavor with her department head in Biological Sciences, Ms. Dimes R. Naidoo. Cooke explains that M.L. Sultan's vision goes far beyond a mechanistic definition:
"We see curriculum development as embodying staff development, institutional development, development of the curriculum, development of the student.... We see modularization as a vehicle for everybody, for every stakeholder in the technikon community and in the wider community, to have input into developing the curriculum; to shift the emphasis onto learning and, much more importantly, to shift the emphasis onto the student."
As for teaching English as a multi-cultural language, Ms. Krish Chetty, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Director of the Communications Department, explains that the large number of second and third-language English speakers entering the technikon challenges its faculty in new ways. In response, TELP funds will support training approximately ten communication lecturers in multi-cultural teaching with greater emphasis on language.
Finally comes the Positive Response in Design Education (PRIDE) course, launched in 1990. Thanks to PRIDE, the Department of Design Studies at M.L. Sultan has the most integrated student profile among graphic design courses in South Africa. The program's aim is to help educationally disadvantaged students develop essential skills, a sense of self-worth and guaranteed access to further studies. One of its graduates recently won a national student designers competition. Department Head Ian Sutherland adds the story of another PRIDE student, Kim Vilakazi, who has benefited from this USAID-supported program.
"She gave as her address 'the Fudge Lady.' She worked in a store, one of those little booths where they also sell cakes and things. Her parents certainly didn't ever want her to become an artist or a designer. They wanted her to be a nurse. Then she saw an ad for the PRIDE program. She came, and she grew as a person, enormously. We identified her with [an] advertising agency. She was sent down to Cape Town to do her post-graduate studies in advertising design. And within five years, she's now working in a big advertising agency in Johannesburg. [She moved] from the Fudge Lady [to a successful advertising career] within five years."
The University of Durban-Westville offers another example of apartheid's legacy. The South African government established it in 1961 exclusively for its citizens classified as "Indian." Having begun to enroll non-Indians in 1978, by 1989 UDW registered more Africans than Indians as first-year students. Now the majority (about 60 percent) of its 10,500 students are African. The university is on its way to reflecting the population demographics of its region.
UDW now comprises nine faculties offering a total of 63 programs. Along with other historically disadvantaged institutions in South Africa, it is struggling in the post-apartheid era to establish itself as a university of genuine quality in the face of substantial deficiencies inherited from the apartheid era. For example, it is the only HDI to have an engineering faculty. Its Institute for Social and Economic Research is one of the country's largest and most professional research centers. UDW boasts the only graduate school of business in KwaZulu-Natal. It is the only HDI in the province offering a program for health professionals.
However, apartheid's restrictive race policies and its extremely unequal funding formulas have impacted negatively on every aspect of university life. Faced with these deficiencies, UDW must now cope with increasing enrollment pressures and limited government financial support. These pressures result in an overworked faculty, overused facilities, insufficient individual attention for students disadvantaged by the former education system, and the lack of time and staff support to conduct research.
USAID has played a particularly active role in the university's development, beginning with strategic planning work supported under STEP. Currently, USAID assistance flows through TELP, with a commitment of $590,000 for a five-year period. Project funds focus on three main areas: staff computer skills development, curriculum reform, and fund-raising.
The computer skills staff development project is testing a system of on-going training modules focusing on specific computer skills. Mr. Yesh Sharma Maharaj, the Program Manager, reports a high level of excitement about the training. He estimates that of UDW's approximately 1,200 staff members, 700 are potential candidates for the program. So far he has trained 185 people, with another 200 already registered.
The Acting Academic Registrar, Prof. Alan Brimer, sees the modularization project as the way to change UDW's fundamental teaching approach, moving from content-based syllabi to outcomes-based syllabi and from teachers-as-lecturers to teachers-as-facilitators.
"A modularized system would allow students to pace themselves, not only academically but also financially. We hope to get our modules into convenient course packs and to make it possible for students to take them all over the province, in cooperation with other KwaZulu-Natal tertiary institutions. This means that our students could engage in lifelong learning practices. They could take modules while working at home, in school halls and church halls, wherever they are and over a period of time, at their own convenience, at their own pace and as they can afford to pay for things. They would accumulate what would eventually add up to a degree and so proceed to a professional career."
Finally, USAID helps UDW with fund-raising. The university recognizes that it cannot expect government to provide the level of financial support required to achieve all its objectives. Therefore, it needs an effective capital fund-raising campaign to increase institutional capacity, strengthen existing areas of excellence, and expand access to previously disadvantaged students. USAID is funding planning efforts for this campaign, consultants, and an institutional linkage with the University of Massachusetts.
Dr. Prem Singh, the university's Head of Development, believes that much progress at UDW would have been left unrealized had the institution not been able to access TELP funds to help it meet its severe challenges.
"We most probably would not have modularized. Not most probably - we would not have gone the modular route. We would not have had a development plan and this [computer training] room would not have been set up. To put it in the best possible context, we have had enormous problems. And for us to have done all of these things is a little bit of a miracle."
The apartheid regime literally laid siege to higher education at historically disadvantaged institutions (HDIs) in South Africa. The presence of troops and continued violence on some campuses throughout the previous decade, the high level of political activity among students, and the pressures caused by the sheer overload of student numbers in the face of completely inadequate resources, all provided precious little time to consider the future.
In the run-up to 1994's democratic elections, many HDIs recognized that their capacity for planning and management would be crucial if they were to create a different future for themselves. They needed to plan strategically, to institutionalize "a creative process of change guided by a clearly articulated and costed plan." This meant encouraging broad participation in the planning process; developing a mission statement; determining the primary goals of the planning exercise; articulating the institutional vision and strategies for fulfilling it; determining a timetable; establishing support mechanisms; and reviewing the institution's strengths, problem areas, financial prospects, and operational environment.
In response, USAID awarded in 1993 a grant of more than $3.5 million to the American Council on Education (ACE) through STEP. Founded 75 years ago, ACE functions as the umbrella organization for American post-secondary education. It comprises most U.S. colleges and universities plus 250 associations. The strategic planning project originally served five historically disadvantaged universities. In the end, ACE supported 13 disadvantaged technikons and universities. It focused on using strategic planning to enhance their effectiveness, efficiency, and responsiveness to South Africa's educational needs.
Through continuous planning, HDIs learned to design institutional futures that will deliver high-quality educational opportunities to the majority population. Towards this end, the project created linkages between U.S. colleges and universities and their South African counterparts, which for many years were completely isolated from international contacts. It provided participating institutions with a variety of resources, including funding for their planning efforts; on-going consultation from current and former U.S. college and university presidents who served as "senior associates" to individual institutions; workshops and consultations in areas such as fund-raising, academic development, and leadership; internships on U.S. campuses for South African administrators; salaries for planners; equipment for planning; and a computerized model for collecting and projecting financial data.
Both M.L. Sultan Technikon and the University of Durban-Westville participated in this project. However, the above descriptions of their development concentrate on the capacity-building activities funded by TELP. Therefore, this paper now examines two other South African tertiary education institutions, Peninsula Technikon and the University of the Western Cape, specifically in terms of their strategic planning work.
Peninsula Technikon (Pentech), located in the Cape Town suburb of Bellville in Western Cape Province, sits next door to its sister institution, the University of the Western Cape. It was established under apartheid to serve all "colored" (mixed-race) students in the country, but the institution objected to that classification and threw open its doors to all students. Today its student body is 50 percent African, about 2 percent white and 48 percent colored or Asian.
When Pentech's Vice Chancellor, Mr. Brian Figaji, discovered ACE's involvement in the strategic planning process for historically disadvantaged universities, he lobbied successfully to have technikons included. This came about in 1995. From that point forward, the ACE project worked to establish a strategic planner on each participating campus. Mr. David Bleazard took up the appointment as Peninsula Technikon's Strategic Planning Facilitator from his faculty position in the journalism department. He explains:
"One of the early activities was to try to redefine the roles of some of the key players, like the strategic planning committee. Ray Haas was one of the first ACE visitors. He said a whole lot of paradoxical things to us, like it wasn't the role of the strategic planning committee to plan, and it wasn't the role of the planning officer to plan. The role of the committee would be one of trying to see that the decisions made within the institution were made in terms of the strategic plan. Planning had to be much more broadly spread.
"One of the early decisions was not to revisit the vision statement, the mission statement, but to focus rather on the objectives. Efforts were made to make the objective-setting process as inclusive as possible, but for some reason it tends to be perceived as a sort of top-down exercise. We tried to design a process which addressed that perception. What we're trying to do this year, having set the objectives, is to focus on implementation. One of the initiatives to promote implementation of the objectives was to set aside some money from the institution's budget, which we refer to as 'earmarked funding,' specifically for activities which were aimed at realizing the objectives."
Both the ACE and South African professionals involved in the strategic planning project cite the senior associates program as one of its major successes. Bleazard lauds the contribution of Pentech's senior associate, and also emphasizes the value of internships in the United States for himself and a colleague. Figaji adds that the annual meetings of chief executives and senior planners, as well as inputs from external experts, offered real value to his institution.
Peninsula Technikon now has a strategic plan which already is beginning to steer the institution's future course towards Figaji's vision of becoming "the MIT of Africa.". Already this has led to significant decisions, such as a zero-growth policy for some departments.
"That was quite an emotional issue. We had a science-technology focus and everybody, it seemed, agreed with that focus. But the business school had an easier growth trajectory because of the students that come in. They come in without math and science. It's difficult to place them in engineering, so they go to the business school. It's growth by accident more that anything else. And we said, 'If our focus is science and technology, and we've agreed that we want to increase the number of students, then we want to have more students in science and technology than in business or the humanities-related programs.' David produced some data for us and we had to decide what our growth pattern is going to be for the next three years. Well, the only way that you could get more science and technology students was to give the business students a zero growth. So we had to make that decision - a lot of heartache, blood, sweat and tears, but eventually we agreed that's the way we're going to go."
And without USAID support, Figaji states forcefully:
"We would not have had a strategic planner in place. That's really the bottom line. It would have taken us six years to do what we did in one and a half years."
One of South Africa's best-known historically disadvantaged universities is the University of the Western Cape, also located in Bellville. Prof. Colin Bundy serves as UWC's Academic Vice Rector. A historian by training, he describes how after the university was created in 1960, at "the high noon of apartheid," it rejected its classification as a "colored" institution, resulting in great turbulence on campus during the 1980's. He adds:
"From about 1986, the university did three things simultaneously. Firstly, it doubled its size in about six years. At the same time, it became an extremely visible, and many people would say a very important, center of intellectual critique of the then-government, and increasingly in the early 1990's, a kind of think-tank for the government-in-waiting. And then the third thing that UWC did simultaneously with those two others was to develop quality in areas that we hadn't really had before. We increased our proportion of graduate students, we increased our publications quite spectacularly"
Bundy defines strategic planning as "thinking in the future tense." He notes that the university already had substantial planning experience by the time the ACE project began, dating back to the mid-1980's. Mr. Narend Baijnath, emphasizes the value of the senior American educators whom the project fielded.
"Fred Hayward [Director of ACE's South Africa Project], with his contacts in the U.S., was able to bring a number of senior associates - mostly presidents of universities, some of them retired. Many of them were not only experienced, but also highly accomplished as managers and as strategic planners at their institutions. He linked one to each of the HDIs here."
Baijnath and Bundy list several other benefits from the ACE project, including external consultants, training workshops on topics such as fund-raising and proposal-writing, internships in the United States, and regular meetings of HDI vice chancellors and planners. Bundy adds:
"Another area where ACE has probably played an unexpected part has been regionally. We've got five tertiary institutions in Greater Cape Town, and those five institutions have cooperated across a range of projects, the most spectacular being the movement towards a single integrated library system. More recently, in the last year or so we've begun exploring possibilities for regional collaboration on the academic front. I'm going out on a limb here, but I would propose that neither UWC nor Pentech would have had the confidence to go in and play the part that they're now playing had they not been through their own recent histories, including the planning success with ACE."
The university is just now completing its formal strategic plan. Baijnath notes that without USAID's support, much of the progress in this area could not have been achieved. For example, UWC's commitment to a new management information system for planning resulted directly from his internship in the United States. He comments:
"I'd also add that [the APU] office was set up not only with the support of the ACE project, but that a lot of the funding for gearing the office and setting up the infrastructure came through the funds we got through the ACE project. And now it's being sustained by the university. That was also a very important outcome, not only to develop capacity but also to create a planning infrastructure."
Without USAID support, Bundy adds:
"We probably wouldn't have an [Academic Planning Unit], certainly not in the same way that it is now. And I would guess that our planning capacity would be more tentative and perhaps less sophisticated than it is at the moment."
The term "historically disadvantaged institutions" now refers to all 17 of the technikons and universities originally established to serve South Africans of color. For some time their leaders hesitated to form a separate, exclusive organization for fear that this would appear divisive. Over time, however, it became evident that they shared some basic objectives which they did not have in common with historically white institutions. Therefore, in 1994 the Forum of Vice Chancellors of the historically disadvantaged universities convened an inaugural meeting to identify and discuss common problems and to develop strategies and programs for the development of their universities. The forum eventually expanded to encompass technikons, creating the present HDI Forum.
Thanks to a grant from USAID, the HDI Forum could establish a secretariat through the African Institute for Policy Analysis and Economic Integration (AIPA). Incorporated in 1992 as a non-profit, independent organization, AIPA defines its mission as engaging in high-level, non-partisan, interdisciplinary economic policy analysis. After a small initial seed grant to establish the original forum, in 1995 USAID gave AIPA a larger grant of just under $340,000 through TELP to create the secretariat. USAID has so far been the only financial backer for this project.
Coordinating the HDI Forum at AIPA is Mr. Tembile Kulati. He summarizes its five key foci.
"The centers of excellence is the critical area of intervention at this stage. But there were four other areas that we identified: academic development, staff development, management capacity and linkages."
UWC's Vice Chancellor, Prof. Cecil Abrahams, chairs the HDI Forum. He explains the "centers of excellence" concept.
"We have identified certain campuses as having enough staff and enough infrastructure and enough of a record to actually become a center of excellence for the HDIs in a particular field. For example, our university was designated as having strength in economics. We train most of the black economists of South Africa on this campus. The idea here is that one of us will take the lead. All of us might offer these areas, but what the one who's taking the lead will do is also provide research and graduate capacity for the others."
The Forum has enhanced its participating institutions in several ways. It has made them more aware of the policy process and how to intervene in it. In so doing, it has helped their leaders transcend the technikon-university divide and begin to start thinking of the higher education system as a whole. Finally, it has helped to build the capacity required to engage effectively in the policy process. This empowerment represents perhaps the Forum's most significant achievement. It ensures that the voices of its member institutions are heard, and assists them to develop new systems and capacity to better serve their constituents.
One of the best demonstrations of this can be found in the recent development of new policies for South African higher education. Dr. Yusuf Sayed serves as a faculty member in the UWC Department of Comparative Education and works as an AIPA consultant on HDI Forum activities. He emphasizes the Forum's impact on these policy proposals.
"They were materially affected. The key area was that redress became central to the discussion. I think the Forum put strongly on board the argument that any change in higher education should not continue to disadvantage already-disadvantaged institutions. I think the area of governance of the system [is another] key area where the Forum's analysis has had a very significant impact - for example, the endorsement that we needed a strong ministry of education able to work in higher education as opposed to the present situation, which is largely a chaotic, unplanned, hands-off, do-as-you-like system."
Another example of how the Forum can impact policy and practice is improved financing. Abrahams explains:
"We are at the moment exploring with the United Negro College Fund [in the United States] the possibility of establishing a similar fund in South Africa which would assist all HDIs, because the single most difficult issue for historically disadvantaged institutions is that of student finance. We don't as yet have in place a proper government loan scheme that could provide the assistance to [poor] students if they are eligible to participate in university education. All of the institutions, particularly the black institutions, are in serious trouble because they are unable then to meet all the needs of running a quality university and a quality program."
USAID's funding provided critical support to this work. AIPA suggests that without it, the HDI Forum "wouldn't have been as successful as it is today." The Forum's chairperson, Cecil Abrahams, concurs.
"I think we've really come alive. I think we've moved from a name to something active. And if we get this college fund, I think there's so much enthusiasm and excitement about it that it will be another way of bringing us together and focusing us on the issues. So I'm quite excited about where we're going."
South Africa's new democratic government has initiated two major investigations of the policies needed to reform higher education and further education. USAID played a major role in supporting both.
Responding to the challenge of higher education reform, a Presidential proclamation established the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE) in February, 1995, with the general purpose of advising the Minister of Education on all aspects of South African higher education and making policy recommendations to Parliament. It explored issues such as the goals of higher education, the types of institutions required to meet those goals, the functions and missions of such institutions, governance and administrative structures, and funding mechanisms, with the aim of developing recommendations for an Education Omnibus Bill for Tertiary Education in South Africa. The Commission was based in Pretoria, Gauteng Province.
To head the new commission, the government turned to Dr. Jairam Reddy. He notes the importance of the Commission's process as well as its reports.
"The commission went about its work from the beginning in a very consultative way. In this country, during the apartheid years people were excluded from decision-making. So right from its inception we wanted to be very inclusive.
"Our core work was undertaken by five major task groups: finance, governance, the system, the future needs and priorities of the country; and the present context. When we put our preliminary findings together in a discussion document, we were invited to present it in Salzburg, Austria. About 50 leading scholars from different parts of the world were invited to discuss and to critique our work. Then our discussion document was circulated widely in the country. That was critiqued through many responses. Eighteen months later we were able to give the minister the final report, in August of last year, 1996."
The biggest contributor to the Commission's work was the South African government itself, which budgeted the equivalent of $1.6 million through the National Department of Education. USAID, through TELP, offered $1 million in 1995 and 1996, by far the largest supporting grant. Additional donors included the Ford Foundation, British ODA, and other governments such as Australia.
Reddy says that foreign assistance "facilitated a great deal of our work" by compensating for the Commission's difficulties in accessing government funds. For example, USAID funds paid for a sophisticated computer system, including email for communications. Of course, the TELP grant found many other uses.
"The second aspect was hiring consultants from various parts of the world to work on research. USAID paid for them. Thirdly, there was the Salzburg seminar. All of the U.S. participants and the commissioners from South Africa - their entire trip was paid for by USAID. Fourth, a number of the consultative conferences, such as on student financial aid, was paid for by USAID funds."
The Commission's final report, A Framework for Transformation, contains more than 400 pages of background material and proposals. Many of them focus on governance, proposing a single coordinated system of higher education managed, governed and financed from the central department of education. Others propose new financial systems to facilitate strategic planning and fund redress for historically disadvantaged institutions and students. Reddy suggests that without USAID funds, this report would have suffered in terms of both quality and timing.
On the basis of the Commission's report, government prepared a preliminary set of policy proposals, or green paper, which it circulated at the beginning of 1997. After reviewing the resulting comments, it drafted a final policy framework, or white paper, plus a new higher education bill, both of which are now ready to go to Parliament. Reddy comments that "80 to 90 percent" of the Commission's recommendations have been incorporated into these documents, which should be adopted by the end of the year.
The National Institute for Community Education (NICE), a non-governmental organization with headquarters in Johannesburg, Gauteng Province, seeks to develop, advocate, and support the implementation of a policy for the provision of education and training to adults, workers and out-of-school youth who are beyond the age of compulsory school attendance. Founded in 1993, it began its work by exploring the potential of community colleges for South Africa. Mr. Silas Zuma, its Executive Director, explains:
"In the South African context, the community college was seen as an institutional form that would operate on the basis of open access. The second principle was that of a flexible type of institution that could operate up to late in the evening, on weekends and during holidays, focusing more on the times when the learners are available than the times more convenient to teachers themselves. Over and above that form of flexibility was the whole notion of optimum utilization of existing resources. A number of educational institutions and facilities were under-utilized, while thousands or even millions of people were seeking access to education and training opportunities."
Of all external donors, USAID has provided the most funding to NICE. Through STEP, it gave almost $470,000 from 1993 to 1996 to conduct an in-depth feasibility study aimed at identifying and developing a national strategy for successfully piloting the community college concept in South Africa. In 1996 USAID awarded a new and substantially larger STEP grant, $1.8 million, to help NICE assist the national Ministry of Education, provincial departments of education, civil society organizations and other sectorial stakeholders in developing a comprehensive further education policy framework for South Africa. Zuma comments on the two grants.
"The [initial] investigation was, largely funded by USAID. The funding that we have now is to support the policy process as it begins to be located within government. The end product will be the white paper, which we believe should be produced by the end of this year.
"In terms of system design, another area which USAID supports, we're looking at working with a pilot project, setting up governance structures, setting up satellite multi-campus delivery. And under capacity building, we are already assisting the provinces. We have run training sessions for the people who are coordinating these processes in the different provinces. We will also be looking at further workshops in the provinces themselves to try and develop a cadre of people who can help take the process forward."
He reflects that without STEP funds:
"...community education and the community college debate would have developed. But it certainly would not have developed the same way as it has done now. The development would have been pretty slow if we had not found funding from USAID."
In August, 1995, NICE published a report entitled A Framework for the Provision of Adult Basic Education and Further Education and Training. This framework covered, among others, issues related to governance and stakeholder participation in the community education system, NQF accreditation and articulation processes, assessment and certification procedures, registration and financing of community colleges, and integration of technical and teacher-training colleges into community colleges. It provided the Ministry of Education with a policy framework for the sector, one which found acceptance among government departments (education and labor), the private sector, educators, trade unions, NGOs and other stakeholders.
South Africa's new further education initiative grows directly out of the NICE report. Government created the National Committee on Further Education to develop a policy position for the sector. Zuma, seconded from NICE, served as its chairperson. The final report has already been submitted to the Minister of Education, and work on the policies and legislation can now go forward.
NICE's logo is a circle enclosing a map of South Africa and its nine provinces. Around the inside of the circle are the phrases "community education" at the top and "reconstruction and development" at the bottom. Over the map itself is a silhouette of a key above the words "to success." Zuma comments:
"Community education, in the way we interpreted it, is the only key to reconstruction and development."
The stories recounted above of individual South African programs in further and higher education reform testify to the effect of USAID support on specific institutions and initiatives. But what of the broader impact? Can any conclusions be drawn from these specific cases about the overall success of USAID's strategy for helping South Africa reform its tertiary education system? From the grantee's point of view, what future challenges remain for the programs themselves and for the Mission's strategy? And what lessons have the participants in this process learned about making educational development work?
How can one assess the impact of USAID's support for South African further and higher education, as perceived by the grantees who have implemented that support? One obvious way is to examine the impact of its partners in the three target areas of policy, systems, and capacity.
Three grantees have made significant contributions to the development of new national policies. For higher education, USAID added its funds to the government's own support of the National Commission on Higher Education, resulting in policy and legislative frameworks which promise to transform the sector. Another program, the HDI Forum, has made major contributions to these new policies, ensuring that they adequately addressed issues of redress and equity vital to the future of historically disadvantaged technikons and universities. For further education, the National Institute for Community Education provided a valuable NGO perspective on equivalent policies and strategies for that sector. Furthermore, its chairperson eventually directed the government's own committee on further education, allowing him to insert NICE's perspective directly into that discussion.
Even initiatives aimed exclusively at capacity building and systems development occasionally have made policy inputs. One demonstration of this is the Science Foundation Program, which has offered its model to government at a national conference. Universities such as UDW and UWC provide another example, rightfully claiming to have influenced their colleagues and sister institutions on a variety of policy issues.
In the realm of systems development, external assistance from donors such as USAID has been essential because of past inadequacies. Apartheid systematically deprived South Africa's black students and the institutions established to serve them of the resources, the infrastructures, and even the skills necessary to succeed. The ten programs examined here include a variety of relevant initiatives that respond to this problem, including:
Finally, virtually every one of these grantees can point to enhanced institutional capacity. In some cases USAID assistance targeted such capacity-building directly. TELP's support of UDW and M.L. Sultan provide good examples of this. In many other cases, capacity developed as a side-effect of funding targeting at policy or systems development, such as with the bridging and academic support programs already described. In either case, USAID grants helped liberate institutions from the isolation that has afflicted them for many years, freeing them from the apartheid-created "bush college" legacy so that they can begin to take their rightful place on the national and, eventually, the world stage.
Another way to measure impact is by asking grantees the question, "What would have happened if there had been no USAID funds to support you?" Leaders in each of the programs examined here confirm that their work would have been hindered at the very least, aborted at worst, in such a case. Entire initiatives (such as the Science Foundation Program or the modularization work at UDW and M.L. Sultan) and offices (such as the strategic planning units at Pentech and UWC) could not have come into being without support from the STEP and TELP projects. In the words of PRIDE's Ian Sutherland, without USAID the situation would have been "quite desperate."
In other cases, the difference made by USAID funds lies in the level of impact. Fewer students would have graduated from bridging programs such as PRISM, or from tertiary institutions with bursaries from SAIRR. Innovative systems such as the Tutu Trust's work-study and academic development programs could not have been developed as fully. The policy impact of initiatives such as NCHE, NICE, and the HDI Forum would have been substantially diminished.
Whether examined at the programmatic or personal level, the ten USAID development partners discussed here clearly have contributed significantly to improved access and equity for disadvantaged South African students. But all agree that much work remains to be done. Will they be able to continue their contributions in the years to come? Leaders of these programs cite three key challenges for the future: finding new funding sources, overcoming constraints, and developing an effective relationship with the new government.
From the perspective of those working to transform South African further and higher education, one challenge towers above all others: limited funding. Not just in education, but in every development sector, programs and institutions that enjoyed generous support from external and domestic donors in the years prior to 1994 now face an era of declining budgets. More and more assistance is delivered directly to government. Yet government has not always channeled that assistance back to the NGO community and to the educational institutions themselves, at least not at pre-election funding levels. In some cases this problem arises from capacity problems in government departments. In others, it reflects changing national priorities as South Africa tries to dismantle in just a few years the effects of decades of apartheid rule and government addresses competing priorities with limited resources.
Initiatives such as the NCHE have a narrowly-focused task. Having completed their work, they can go out of existence without repercussions. However, most of the programs examined here see a continuing need to provide their services. This seems particularly important for those organizations that offer ongoing support to historically disadvantaged institutions and students. Many of these now fear for their very survival, as the Tutu Trust's McLean emphasizes.
"I'm continuously reminding people that we need funding. It's central to our work. We have not yet reached the stage where we can say that South African NGOs involved in education do not need foreign donor funding. The demand is always greater than our ability to deliver at that level. We just cannot cope with the demand because we don't have enough money."
Some programs within technikons and universities are succeeding in shifting their funding base from external support to institutional budgets. The Science Foundation Program and the work-study systems at UWC and Pentech provide encouraging examples of this trend. Providing services directly to government and the private sector is another common strategy for dealing with this issue. For example, some South African companies have out-sourced their internal bursary programs to SAIRR. PRISM, on the other hand, projects much of its future income as coming directly from the provincial government, to which it plans to sell its academic development services.
However, the viability of such strategies has not yet been tested over time. For example, PRISM's anticipated government funding still awaits approval. In the meantime, the program must rely on donor financing. Recently, when one promised infusion of such funds failed to materialize, the project came very close to shutting down in the middle of the academic year. Such stories illustrate the dangers faced by small, non-profit organizations as they navigate the treacherous waters from donor-reliance to new funding sources without the lifeboat of financial reserves.
A second significant challenge for the future is overcoming constraints that could threaten past accomplishments and future progress. One such problem that faces the HDIs in particular is endemic instability and high staff turn-over. Singh explains this in the context of UDW, where the situation became so turbulent that President Mandela had to appoint a judicial commission of inquiry.
"We've lost so many senior people because of these troubles. Even now, the mood is one of depression, one of great concern for its future. For the five [top] people, we've not had a permanent [appointment] since two and a half years. We call them the 'Hollywood boys.' They're all actors. The latest crisis is that the present acting Vice-Chancellor is leaving [soon]."
Such problems have hard consequences for development and transformation. For example, they delayed the preparation of strategic plans under the ACE project at UDW, M.L. Sultan, and UWC. Beyond them, Jairam Reddy sees two broader constraints standing in the way of implementing South Africa's new higher education policy: lack of capacity and, as already noted, lack of funds.
"The first constraint is a lack of capacity, of skills - skills at the level of government, at the level of the buffer bodies, and at the level of the institutions themselves. One reason for that is that during the apartheid era the skills base was restricted to three or four million whites and denied to the African majority. At every level institutions are finding it difficult to get good people. In order to drive this major reform process we need skills.
"The second constraint is funding. Good programs don't always come cheap, and we have great inefficiencies in the system which will not be weeded out overnight. I think the government will have to provide some additional money, but there is competition from housing, from labor, from elsewhere. Foreign funds are not going solve our problem, but may help to kick-start the process."
NGOs and educational institutions alike mention a third challenge for the future: developing effective relationships with the new government. For example, NICE's Mokaba Mokgatle comments:
"Some of the difficulties have been getting the new government to begin to realize that the new environment is an environment of partnership, an environment of collaboration, an environment of networking. We have spent lot of time, painful times, making sure that government officials will understand what we are all about."
Speaking of the NCHE's work, Jairam Reddy adds:
"There were initial difficulties with the Department of Education. We were supposed to be an independent commission, but we were functioning under the structures of the Department of Education, which, like typical government departments, are very cumbersome, very bureaucratic, very slow. We had a reasonable amount of funds - not adequate, but reasonable - from the department, but to access those funds was very difficult. This is where the foreign assistance came. It smoothed our work a great deal."
Those who have carried out the work of transforming further and higher education with USAID/South Africa's support draw several significant lessons from their experience, lessons for USAID itself and for their own organizations.
Listening to grantees describe their relationship with USAID, a surprisingly consistent picture emerges. It is primarily positive, portraying a well-intentioned agency whose people care about development that definitely has made a difference for their partners.
Grantees express appreciation to USAID for two major inputs. First, of course, is the "generous" funding that it has provided. As has already been demonstrated, they regularly acknowledge that without such funds vital programs would have been hindered or even aborted. Beyond this financial assistance, however, USAID's staff receive generally high praise for their contributions. They are described as "very flexible" and "ready to listen," as "caring" and "very genuine."
Not surprisingly, some concerns also emerge. USAID's complex bureaucracy tops this list. Although grantees demonstrate sympathy for the fact that the same bureaucracy often challenges their American colleagues, they nonetheless point out that it can impede field work and damage their own credibility. "Complicated and difficult" reporting mechanisms consume more energy than those of other donors. Limits on funding use, however carefully their rationale is explained, sometimes frustrate recipients.
Most grantees, however, differentiate between this problem and the strict fiscal controls required by USAID. They portray the latter as fundamentally positive, speaking with some appreciation of the financial management lessons they have learned and the consequent development of their organizations. As Thandiwe McLean at the Tutu Trust says, "if you can live up to [USAID's] needs and requirements for financial reporting, you can do anybody else's."
A second concern heard from more than one grantee is shifting priorities. Again, this issue can frustrate Mission staff. To some extent it reflects the Agency for International Development's re-engineering efforts to promote development more cost-effectively. However, the impact on the field of such changes can be worrisome. Plans made on one set of assumptions must be altered, even cancelled, when the rules change unexpectedly.
The mechanism for providing services through institutional contractors garners mixed reviews. Not surprisingly, many of these reflect grantees' experience with individual American firms and organizations. Often grantees portray these contractors as valuable partners in their own success. Sometimes, however, they suggest that their work would have been better served without an intermediary less familiar with the local scene.
Related to this issue is the concern expressed by a few grantees that donor funds can create over-reliance on outside experts. Everyone understands that they cannot simply import models from elsewhere. The challenge, as Lesley Cooke at M.L. Sultan notes, is that "of striking the balance between what is necessary in South Africa and what is necessary to stay abreast of developments in the rest of the world." Generally the consultants provided through the STEP and TELP initiatives described here receive praise for their useful technical inputs. Some partners, however, recommend greater reliance on the expertise already resident in South African institutions, both historically disadvantaged and historically advantaged.
As grantees suggest lessons for USAID as a donor, so they also suggest lessons for their own success as programs. Some have learned to focus on their "core business," to concentrate on delivering a very good development product. The corollary to this principle is efficiency. As AIPA consultant Yusuf Sayed suggests:
"What donors don't like is swallowing up the entire donor funding into infrastructure itself and not focusing that money on where it should be getting to, which is the institution."
A second concern that preoccupies donors and recipients alike is dependency. When grantees become too comfortable with large grants, with "filling in a disbursement reports and getting funding," they do not always build up sustainable revenue sources. Many embrace the classic model of development funding, using donor support to galvanize a process until host institutions are prepared to take over the work. In several cases reviewed here, this is precisely what has occurred.
However, real-world complexities sometimes defeat theoretical models. In the case of South Africa, the severe resource constraints facing government, educational institutions and the NGO sector mean that even the most successful donor-supported initiatives may not be fully sustainable. Colin Bundy sounds this cautionary note in the context of UWC.
"We actually set up a number of units and centers and institutes almost entirely on donor money. Some of the most high-profile and most successful outfits on campus were founded in that way. Now, in a period when you've got a kind of double whammy about pressure on our own funding resources and shifting donor climate, those activities and those units and those structures are peculiarly vulnerable. There's a lot of alarm and demoralization within them.
"The donors will say to us, 'We're going to fund this for another two years, but if you think it's such a good idea - you keep telling us this is a brilliant project - then you must put something in as well.' And if you're being told that, as I am, on 40 or 60 fronts, in a year where we're freezing academic posts and creating no new posts at all, it's going to be impossible to do what the donors, from their point of view, quite properly are asking us to do."
Bundy suggests that, with hindsight, the answer lies in better strategic planning. With a clearer set of priorities on one hand, and the ability to reallocate institutional resources internally on the other, universities (and other organizations) could make more realistic long-term commitments while moving posts and funds to support them.
Finally, in the complicated South African political and social context many programs have had to learn how to build unity from diversity. Jairam Reddy describes the NCHE as a "government of national unity," a commission that had to be carefully balanced along lines such as race, gender, and ideology. NICE's Silas Zuma suggests two important lessons for working effectively with broad constituencies: not being drawn into stakeholder politics (in other words, not taking sides) and listening carefully rather than telling people what to do.
The development of South Africa's education system from its apartheid past to its democratic future is still a work in progress. Most other African countries can already look back on a few decades of educational transformation; South Africans see a job that began just a few years ago. Yet even in that short time much progress has been made. Racist laws are gone. New policies on further and higher education await their turn to be translated into legislation. Work has begun to compensate previously black tertiary education institutions for their history of disadvantage and to support their efforts to move to the forefront of a new, united education system. Government and communities are establishing new structures such as community colleges. Bridging and support programs continue to assist students of color in compensating for the limits of their secondary education and in succeeding at their post-secondary studies.
The United States, through its Agency for International Development, has played an important role among the many donors assisting South Africa. Prior to the 1994 elections, USAID's support strengthened a large number of non-governmental and community-based organizations working to compensate for apartheid's ravages and to prepare for a new political dispensation. That dispensation achieved, USAID is now spending approximately $30 million a year to help government as well as its long-term NGO partners transform the education system, to give all South African's equal access to quality education, on the basis of a foundation laid in policy formulation, systems development and capacity enhancement.
At the University of Durban-Westville, Alan Brimer suggests that fundamentally, USAID's assistance is about helping South Africans transform their society..
"Their support is really very gratefully received. It is going to have a significant effect on the lives of people in South Africa from day to day and from year to year, for a long time to come. What we're attempting to do is to take the man in the street or the woman in the street and give that person an education which is keyed specifically into transforming South African society into a just and kind society, into a society where people work to help one another. It's Utopia. It's an attempt, and it will not fail entirely. It won't succeed entirely, either, but the attempt is going to make a difference."
ABET Adult Basic Education and Training
ACE American Council on Education
AIPA Africa Institute for Policy Analysis and Economic Integration
APU Academic Planning Unit
CAAA Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act
CBO Community-Based Organization
DTET Desmond Tutu Educational Trust
HDI Historically Disadvantaged Institution
NCHE National Commission on Higher Education
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
NICE National Institute for Community Education
NQF National Qualifications Framework
ODA Overseas Development Agency
PRISM Planned Route into Science and Math
SAIRR South African Institute of Race Relations
SFP Science Foundation Program
STEP Support to Tertiary Education Project
TELP Tertiary Education Linkages Project
UDW University of Durban-Westville
UNESCO United Nations Economic and Social Council
USAID United States Agency for International Development
UWC University of the Western Cape
Africa Institute for Policy Analysis and Economic Integration (July 25, 1997)
Ms. Lula Gebreyesus, Deputy Executive Director
Mr. Tembile Kulati, Coordinator: HDI Forum
Prof. Bax D. Nomvete, Executive Director
Dr. Yusuf Sayed, Senior Lecturer: Department of Comparative Education, UWC
American Council on Education (June 13, 1997)
Dr. Fred M. Hayward, Director: South Africa Project
Desmond Tutu Educational Trust (July 31, 1997)
Ms. Thandiwe January-McLean, Executive Director
Ms. Marguerita Omotoso, Program Manager
M.L. Sultan Technikon (June 23, 1997)
Mr. Theo Andrew, Dean: Faculty of Engineering
Mr. Anand Cheddie, Director: Student Administration
Ms. Krish Chetty, Dean: Faculty of Arts, Director/Head: Communication
Ms. Lesley A. Cooke, Lecturer: Academic Development (Modularization Project)
Dr. Christopher F. Cresswell, Acting Principal and Vice Chancellor
Mr. Pritz R. Dullay, Manager: Fund Raising and Development
Ms. Rhoda Fowler, Media Link: Public Relations and Communications
Ms. Naziema Jappie, Dean: Student Services
Ms. Dimes R. Naidoo, Head of Department/Director: Biological Sciences (Modularization Project)
Dr. Rumilla Naran, Director of Public Affairs
Mr. David Sidey, Studio Head: PRIDE
Mr. Ian G. Sutherland, Head of Department: Design Studies
Mr. Robin Toli, TELP Coordinator
National Commission on Higher Education (July 5, 1997)
Dr. Jairam Reddy, Chairperson
National Institute for Community Education (July 10, 1997)
Mr. Joe Maluleke, National Coordinator
Mr. Mokaba Mokgatle, Coordinator and Acting Executive Director
Mr. Silas Zuma, Executive Director and Chairperson, National Committee on Further Education
Peninsula Technikon (August 4, 1997)
Mr. David Bleazard, Strategic Planning Facilitator
Mr. Brian de L. Figaji, Principal and Vice Chancellor
PRISM (June 24, 1997)
Mr. Mark Allison-Broomhead, Project Manager
Mr. Dewet Brandt, Head of Math Department
Ms. Rejoice Bongiwe Hadebe, Student
Ms. Silindile Winnie-Freha Hlongwa, Student
Ms. Thobeka Florencia Jona, Student
Mr. Deeps Karma, Head of Science Department
Mr. Mervin Marais, Math Teacher
Ms. Indushni Moodley, Science Teacher
Ms. Constance Mthembu, Community Outreach Coordinator
Ms. Robyn Noble, English Teacher
Ms. Ingrid Smoog, Principal: Umlazi
Science Foundation Program (June 25, 1997)
Ms. Joan Houston, Project Manager
South African Institute for Race Relations (July 3, 1997)
Mr. Dennis Venter, Bursary Director
University of Durban-Westville (June 23, 1997)
Prof. Alan Brimer, Acting Academic Registrar
Mr. Yeshwant Sharma Maharaj, Program Manager (DCS)
Dr. Prem R. Singh, Head of Development
University of the Western Cape (July 29, 1997)
Mr. Narend Baijnath, Director: Academic Planning Unit
Prof. Colin Bundy, Vice-Rector (Academic)
University of the Western Cape (August 4, 1997)
Prof. Cecil A. Abrahams, Rector and Vice Chancellor
USAID/South Africa (various)
Mr. Dean Alter, Project Development Officer
Mr. William Duncan, SO 2 Team Leader
Ms. Lisa Franchett, Education Officer
Ms. Mathata Madibane, STEP Project Officer
Ms. Dipuo Mde, STEP Project Officer
Dr. Ngoato Takalo, TELP Project Advisor
Ms. Susan Wolfe, External Liaison Specialist
Mr. John Wooten, Jr., Program and Project Development Office Director
Africa South of the Sahara 1994, Rochester, Kent, England, Europa Publications Limited, 1994.
Andrew, Theo, "M L Sultan Technikon and Tertiary Education Linkages Project: Report on visit to North American Institutions of Higher Education and other relevant organisations, December 2 through December 22, 1996," unpublished report, Durban, April 20, 1997.
"A Brief Description of The University of Durban-Westville," unpublished report, Durban, undated.
"Basic Education Sector Assessment," Pretoria, DevTech Systems, 1995.
Cape Times (daily newspaper), Cape Town, various editions as cited.
Community Education in South Africa: Conference Report, 5-7 July 1995, Johannesburg, Creative Associates, 1995.
"Desmond Tutu Educational Trust Semi-Annual Reports," Cape Town, Tutu Trust, undated.
The Europa World Year Book 1996, Vol. 2, Rochester, Kent, England, Europa Publications Limited, 1996.
Fast Facts, No. 6/97, Johannesburg, South African Institute of Race Relations, June, 1997.
"Funding Proposal to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation," Cape Town, Tutu Trust, October, 1996.
"Gencor Science Foundation Programme," brochure, Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal, undated.
Houston, Joan, "Science Foundation Report: End of Agreement Report," unpublished report, Pietermaritzburg, April, 1997.
Johannesburg Star (daily newspaper), Johannesburg, various editions as cited.
MacGregor, Karen, "Underfunded Colleges Will Get Money from Schools," The Sunday Independent, August 31, 1997, p. 3
Marcum, John A. and Walter J. Kamba, "Review of Project on Strategic Planning for Historically Disadvantaged Universities and Technikons in South Africa," April, 1997.
Ngcai, Sabata, "Ivory Towers Set To Open Doors: White Paper Takes Long, Hard Look at Higher Education," Cape Town, The Cape Argus, Tuesday, July 29, 1997, p. 8.
Pretoria News (daily newspaper), Pretoria, various editions as cited.
"PRISM Annual Report: 1995," Durban, Planned Route into Science and Maths, undated.
"PRISM '96/97," Durban, Planned Route into Science and Maths, undated.
Science Foundation Program, various unpublished and undated display materials (including student stories, statistics, and program descriptions)
South Africa Institute of Race Relations, South Africa Survey 1995/96, Johannesburg, SAIRR, 1996.
"South African Institute of Race Relations," world wide web site, <http://www.pcb.co.za/sairr>
"South Africa Project Summary: Strategic Planning for Institutional Development," Washington, D.C., American Council on Education, undated.
The Sunday Independent (weekly newspaper), Johannesburg, various editions as cited.
"Support to Tertiary Education Project (STEP): Project Paper," Pretoria, USAID/South Africa, June, 1990.
Sutherland, Ian, "Positive Response in Design Education 1996/97, unpublished report, Durban, undated.
"Tertiary Education Linkages Project (TELP): Project Paper," Pretoria, USAID/South Africa, November, 1993.
"UDW in Brief," Durban, UDW Office of Public Affairs, undated.
"UDW Mission Statement," Durban, University of Durban-Westville, undated.
"USAID Mission to South Africa: Strategic Objective 2" (draft dated 2 August 1996), Pretoria, USAID/South Africa, 1996.
USAID/South Africa organizational fact sheets and program descriptions for institutions and programs described
van Rensburg, Heila Janse, South Africa Yearbook 1995, Second Edition, Pretoria, South African Communication Service, 1995.
This page was last modified on March 22, 1998.