cape town

South Africa's parliament last week approved a major reform of the country's higher education system, despite concern about language policy and centralized control.

The bill's most important consequence will be the creation of a Council on Higher Education to accredit degree programmes, allocate funds to universities and technikons (advanced technical colleges) on a three-year cycle, and audit quality assurance. The council will also advise on the intractable problem of student financial aid.

The Council on Higher Education will comprise 14 voting and 6 non-voting members, but its real power is vested in a five-person executive committee that can act on the council's behalf. Although the full council can revoke the executive committee's decisions, action taken as a result of an executive committee decision before its revocation will remain valid.

The government hopes to appoint the members of the council by the end of the year. The first six months of next year are likely to be spent allocating places for programmes to institutions, and deciding the financial value of subsidies for different degree programmes.

This process is likely to be controversial if the council pursues the government's stated aim of redressing the present huge bias in favour of subsidized places in arts and social science — as opposed to natural-science-based disciplines — as this bias is most prevalent in the former black universities. But the process should be helped by the government's decision to provide additional earmarked funds to correct past imbalances.

Earmarked funds for research are provided for in the subsidy formula of the higher education white paper's final version — unlike an earlier version (see Nature 387, 327; 327; 1997) — which was officially published in April. This provision allows the minister to allocate funds for preserving and strengthening areas of research excellence, as well as for developing new ones.

Specifically, the white paper emphasizes that enrolment levels in doctoral programmes are not only too low but are also biased in terms of race and gender. The new system is intended to support postgraduates in fields where institutions have demonstrable research training capacity. Provision is also made for institutions to apply for earmarked funds to enhance the infrastructure necessary to support expanded postgraduate training.

The right-wing Freedom Front was one of the parties opposing the bill — the party is concerned about the future of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in universities. Freedom Front students in the public gallery disrupted the bill's debate in parliament. They were protesting against a provision allowing the education minister to decide the language policy of tertiary institutions on the advice of the Council on Higher Education.

The National Party and the Democratic Party also voted against the bill, the latter on the grounds that it gives the government increased control over higher education institutions.

Walter Claassen, vice-rector for academic affairs at the Afrikaans-medium University of Stellenbosch, says this centralization of power is “very worrying”. While acknowledging the government's desire to change the system in accordance with national goals, he feels that “this should not be done in such a way that the autonomy of universities is threatened”.

But Claassen describes the decision to allow the new higher education council to allocate funds to universities and technikons on a three-year cycle as a “very promising development, as it could provide a more secure basis for institutions in planning enrolments”.