South Africa and the Rest of Africa

Nico Cloete14 October 2015

UWC Institute of Post-School Studies

Presentation

1. Africa is not a country

2. The importance of research universities in Africa

3. A few diagnostics about South Africa

4. The Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in Africa (HERANA)

5. Knowledge Production Profiles

6. Rankings in Africa

Africa needs research universities

1. Traditionally, universities in Africa focussed on ideology, elite selection and training, and performed poorly on knowledge production.

2. Africa needs to shift to increased participation (from low base of under 10% ) and increased knowledge production- massification and differentiation.

3. Research universities in low- and middle-income countries have crucial roles to play in developing differentiated and effective academic systems.

4. Understanding the characteristics of the research university and building the infrastructures and the intellectual environment needed for successful research universities is a top priority (Altbach, 2013).

Africa’s research performance

1. Publications in Africa increased from 11 776 in 2002 to 19 650 in 2008 – 66.9% growth (world average = 34.5%).

2. Africa’s share globally increased from 1.6% to 2.0%, Latin America from 3.8% to 4.9% and Asia from 24.2% to 30.7%.

3. From 2000-2008 Asia’s share of researchers rose from 35.2% to 38.2%, Latin America from 3.0% to 3.8% and Africa’s global share of researcher share fell from 2.2% to 2.1%.

4. African Union publication output grew by 43% compared to the world average of 18% (Source: Scopus).

5. If the African Union were a country, it would be just behind India, China and Brazil, but ahead of Russia in publication output in the BRICS. Sources: African Observatory for Science, Technology and Innovation;

Zaleza P. 2014. The Development of STEM in Africa.

Capacity constraints & challenges facing Africa

1. Zeleza at Dakar Africa Summit on Higher Education: Massive expansion and support for HE required.

2. The underlying assumption of Zeleza’s argument is, More for Everybody, because in Africa no government or university sector wants to openly promote differentiation.

3. Research universities are a small percentage of the HE system:

1. US 5% (220 from 4000) 2. China 3% (100 from 3000) 3. UK 25% (25 from 100)

4. Many smaller developing countries only have one research intensive university and many none (Altbach 2013).

The South African Post-school System 2010 vs 2012

Compiled by Charles Sheppard

Source: DHET HEMIS 2012

2000 20120%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Govt15.93 Govt

19.89

Student fees7.80 Student fees

15.47

Third stream8.78

Third stream14.54

27%

24%

49%

29%

31%

40%

Higher education income sources, ZAR (billion)(Source: DHET, Financial Statements in Annual reports submitted by Universities)

Cu

ba

Fin

lan

d

No

rwa

y

Ma

laysi

a

Gh

an

a

US

A

Se

ne

ga

l

Au

stra

lia

Ind

ia

Arg

en

tin

a

Bra

zil

Ch

ile

So

uth

A

fric

a0.00

0.50

1.00

1.50

2.00

2.50

3.00

3.50

4.00

4.50

5.00

4.47

2.182.04

1.761.44 1.39 1.38 1.24 1.20 1.15

0.95 0.930.71

Expenditure on higher education as % of GDP, 2012

Compiled by Charles SheppardSource: OECD 2010

SA HE System:Diagnosis of National Planning Commission (2011) From Numerous Reviews (World Bank; Harvard; WEF)

1. low participation and high attrition rates

2. medium knowledge producing

3. insufficient capacity for adequate skills production

4. differentiated (but not a formal policy)

5. minority (+/- five ) of ‘chronic crisis’ institutions (gives HE bad press)

Shift from Equity to Development, and the Return of Equity (Transformation Oversight Committee, 2013)

SA continually paralyzed by inability to prioritize between competing interests

More PhDs

1. Castells – the university as engine of development in the knowledge economy (1991 Kuala Lumpur, World Bank; UWC 2001)

2. Knowledge more important than capital or materials3. Talent, not capital is the primary source of competitive advantage 4. Unprecedented growth – China 50 000 p.a., University Sao Paulo more than

the whole SA system – traditional systems US, UK much slower5. Number of doctorates far exceed number of places in US in 1970 50% of

PhD’s got tenure track position, by 2006 15% (100 000 new PhDs, 15 000 new academic jobs). In Germany only 6% aim for academic position

6. What do they do – finance, research organisations, pastors7. Silicon valley – innovation8. Ms Zuma, (AU commissioner, 2013) – Africa must produce ten’s of

thousands of PhDs – as long as they stay in SA.9. Naledi Pandor DST Budget speech, July 2014 – SA must produce 6 000 per

year and will ask government for ZAR 5 billion10. The PhD factories – is it time to stop? (Cyranoski in Nature, 2011)

PhD production in SA vs a number of selected OECD countries, 2000 and 2011

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CountryAverage annual

growth rate in total PhDs 2000 - 2011

Population 2011

2011 SET PhD graduates per 100,000

of 2011 population

2011 total PhD graduates per

100,000 of 2011 population

Australia 4.7% 22 324 000 15.9 27.2

Canada 3.3% 34 483 980 10.3 16.5

Czech Republic 9.6% 10 496 670 14.5 23.5

Finland -0.2% 5 388 272 21.1 34.4

Germany 0.5% 81 797 670 24.2 33.4

Hungary 5.1% 9 971 726 6.5 12.4

Ireland 10.1% 4 576 748 20.3 31.6

Italy 11.1% 60 723 570 11.8 18.6

Korea 6.0% 49 779 440 14.0 23.4

Norway 6.4% 4 953 000 16.7 26.2

Portugal 3.5% 10 557 560 11.4 21.9

Slovak Republic 12.8% 5 398 384 16.1 31.0

Switzerland 2.2% 7 912 398 30.1 44.0

Turkey 7.4% 73 950 000 3.5 6.3

United Kingdom 5.1% 61 761 000 19.5 32.5

United States 4.5% 311 591 900 13.0 23.4

South Africa 4.5% 51 770 560 1.6 3.0

Source: OECD (2013) Graduates by field of study, data extracted on 4 July 2013.

Doctoral graduates by race (1996–2012)

1996 2000 2004 2008 2012

58

154

298

384

821

17 36 50 56

100

23

53102 97 142

587 591

654 645

816

African Coloured Indian White

Doctoral graduates produced by universities in 2012

Mangosuthu

Vaal

Walter Sisulu

Venda

Central

Durban

Limpopo

Cape Peninsula

Zululand

Fort Hare

Tshwane

Rhodes

Western Cape

Nelson Mandela

Free State

Johannesburg

Witwatersrand

South Africa

North West

KwaZulu-Natal

Cape Town

Pretoria

Stellenbosch

0 50 100 150 200 250 3000

2

3

4

5

6

17

24

28

43

44

67

75

86

94

109

150

152

154

177

199

200

240

Black doctoral graduates produced by universities in 2012

Mangosuthu

Walter Sisulu

Vaal

Central

Venda

Durban

Limpopo

Cape Peninsula

Zululand

Tshwane

Rhodes

Fort Hare

Free State

North West

Nelson Mandela

Johannesburg

Western Cape

Pretoria

Witwatersrand

South Africa

Cape Town

Stellenbosch

KwaZulu-Natal

0 50 100 150 200 250 3000

2

2

3

4

4

16

19

26

33

34

41

42

42

51

52

62

83

92

94

98

107

138

PhD graduates by nationality (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012)

Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education

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Average annual growth rates by nationality and gender (2000–2012)

Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education

South Africa a PhD Bargain 1. SA has 5 Universities in Shanghai top 500

2. Full time research PhD Costs• UK (Bath) – $21 450 fees (foreigners) + $18 000 living = $46 050 • US (Berkeley) – $31 900 fees + $23 000 living = $54 900• US (NYU ) – $41 300 fees + $26 000 living = $67 300• SA (US) – $2000 +$1000 (foreigners) + $10 000 living = $13 000

SA three times cheaper than Bath, four times cheaper than Berkeley and five times cheaper than NYU

3. Golden triangle – Efficiency, Transformation Quality (perceived)

4. But the Africans from the rest of Africa are not SA Africans, not black, not disadvantaged or not “ours” (nationalism or middle class xenophobia?)

5. Too few doctorates at African flagship universities

Policy Choices – SA a PhD hub for Africa? 1. SA wants to triple its PhD output and has made considerable investment in

doctoral studies!2. SA does not have the student interest/availability or the staff capacity to

reach the targets (capacity exhaustion) 3. “As we are all acutely aware, we do not have the supervisory capacity in

South Africa to produce the number of PhDs the government has set as a target. I suspect that we also don’t actually have the local candidature either. It thus seems logical that given our skills shortages and capacity challenges that where skilled workers wish to remain, they ought to be welcomed.” (Cloete et al 2015, Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions)

4. SA Emigration policy – loose control over lows kills (township conflict- xenophobia) but restrict high skills (academic xenophobia)

5. Knowledge economy hubs – Silicon Valley, EdHubs (San Francisco)6. Currently Government, and Universities on a Nationalistic path

Email 6 May from a established scholar from the rest of Africa:Nico, In retrospect, the odds were stacked against me, as the order of preference the selection committee had agreed upon beforehand was first a black South African, then coloured SA, then Indian and then a non-national.

• Network of 50 participating academics and senior administrators (mainly planners) in 12 countries

• Project is currently in its 7th year. Carnegie, Ford, Norad.

• Participating African countries and “flagship” universities– Botswana – University of Botswana – Ghana – University of Ghana– Kenya – University of Nairobi – Mauritius – University of Mauritius– Mozambique – Eduardo Mondlane University– South Africa – University of Cape Town– Tanzania – University of Dar es Salaam– Uganda – Makerere University

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Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in Africa

• Started in 2008 many participating institutions had fragmented information systems – both for student and staff data

• Took almost 3 years to collect a comparable data set from 2000 to 2007• Collecting the data also became capacity development in planning

departments, and also involving in some cases the registrars and research directors

• By 2012, and with a simplified and common data manual, it took us less than 3 months to compile the 207 to 2011 data

• We are now, with a improved and published data manual collecting the 2011to 2013/14 data, which will be available by June 2015

• The aim of this project is not to rank institutions, and to compare Harvard or Beijing with Makerere, but develop a set of Academic Core data for institutional reform, with a focus on knowledge production – OECD doctorate and publications

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Data for Diagnosis, Comparison and Reforms

Proportion of undergraduate enrolments too high (2011)

21Source: Bunting et al. (2014) An Empirical Overview of Eight African Universities

22

Problematic ratios of masters to doctorate enrolments (2011)

Source: Bunting et al. (2014) An Empirical Overview of Eight African Universities

Low percentage of academic staff with PhDs (2011)

Source: Bunting et al. (2014) An Empirical Overview of Eight African Universities

Too few doctoral graduates (2001, 2007, 2011)

Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Universities

25

Publication output too low (1996–2013)

Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Universities

26

Mixed performance in % increase in publication output (1996-2013)

Source: Web of Science. Compiled by Robert Tijssen and Hannah Williams

Ratios of high-level knowledge outputs to academic staff with doctorates

Source: Bunting et al. (2014) An Empirical Overview of Eight African Universities

• Rankings in Africa: Important, interesting, irritating or irrelevant? (Ellen Hazelkorn): Pretoria, Makerere and Eduardo Modlane

• Rankings pose different kinds of challenges and opportunities for universities in Africa. The goal is not necessarily to make it to the top 500 but to achieve what global rankings achieve for institutions that are in the top ranks. They want to be at the top of their own race, remain competitive in their own regions and amongst their peers, prove their worth so as to attract funding from governments and international funding agencies, and attract the best students and faculty members. This does not mean that rankings do not lead to perverse effects; such as interpreting Webometrics to be an indicator of academic and research performance when it actually measures ‘web presence’. Or that they are in the wrong race! (Jamaica)

• HERANA intention (and demonstrated success) is to develop a set of comparable indicators that can inform specific university strategies to strengthen knowledge production in universities in Africa.

28

Rankings

Nico Cloete Ian Bunting Charles Sheppard &François van Schalkwyk

Data from CHET, CREST & African HE Open Datawww.chet.org.za/data/african-he-opendata