PROFITS AND PRACTICALITY:
How
South Africa Epitomizes the Global Surge in
Commercial
Private Higher Education
By
Daniel C. Levy
WP No. 2 February 2003
Daniel C. Levy,
Distinguished Professor, State University of New York (SUNY)
Department of Educational
Administration & Policy Studies, University at Albany-SUNY
* A list of PROPHE working papers and currently
published papers are available online at PROPHE website http://www.albany.edu/~prophe/publication/paper.html.
Hard copies of the working papers are available upon request.
Program for Research On Private Higher Education
Education Administration
& Policy Studies
University at Albany, State
University of New York
1400 Washington Ave
Albany, New York 12222
Fax: 1-518-442-5084
Email: prophe@albany.edu
ABSTRACT
South Africa’s private higher education largely illustrates the
worldwide surge in commercial private higher education. Beyond typicality,
however, important features in the South African case epitomize the worldwide
growth or otherwise appear in stark form.
At the core of the starkness is the for-profit nature of South African
private higher education. For-profit logic plays out in nearly all matters key
to the country’s private higher education, including missions, actors’ roles
within and beyond the higher education institutions, ties to the job market,
and relationships with public entities. In contrast, private higher education
outside South Africa is usually nonprofit; more aptly stated, however, it is
nonprofit in name and legal status but often for-profit in much form and
behavior.
For its profits and practicality thrust, South Africa presents an
intriguing case through which to explore the nature of the world’s expanding
commercial private higher education. Tendencies in South Africa lead to or
support significant hypotheses about this form of education, particularly in
its for-profit manifestation. In turn, such hypotheses, along with data on
other countries (especially the United States), help guide empirical
exploration of the South African case.
THEME
A common tendency in private
higher education is for countries to see themselves as more uncommon than they
are. Such is the case in South Africa.[1]
Although certain particular characteristics exist in almost any country,
perceptions of exceptionalism—even of uniqueness or strange perversity—are
often exaggerated and misleading. Fueling the perceptions is the sudden,
generally unanticipated nature of the private surge, and the dramatic
differences between it and what most observers think of as “university” or
“higher education.” [2]
But to differ from
preconceptions and from prior tendencies is not necessarily to differ from
contemporary global tendencies in reality. On the contrary, we argue that
salient features of South Africa’s private higher education growth fit
tendencies in much of the world. Left at that, however, the argument would be
rather “ho-hum,” except for challenging perceptions of exceptionalism. It
becomes more compelling when we take into account that private higher education
has internationally assumed many different forms, as it has historically. What
is vital about the South African case is how it epitomizes certain
internationally striking forms in contemporary private higher education growth.
These forms center on
commercialism, often vocational, and quite practical. South Africa shows
remarkably few exceptions to this tendency. Indeed it demonstrates the tendency
across its private higher education forms that differ from one another in other
respects. And the idea of epitomizing the worldwide commercial thrust is itself
epitomized by the clear, legal for-profit status of the bulk of South Africa’s
private higher education. The contrast to most of the world’s private higher
education, legally nonprofit even when commercial, illustrates how our notion
of epitomizing global tendencies can mean not just replication but sharp
manifestations of a general phenomenon.
Thus, South Africa’s
for-profit manifestation of commercial practicality, leads to the paper’s
“Profits and Practicality” title. And it leads to the paper’s main theme: the growth of South Africa’s private higher
education epitomizes the commercial thrust that lies at the core of most
contemporary private higher education growth worldwide. Implicit in this theme
is that most of South Africa’s private higher education differs from the
international private higher education forms lying outside the contemporary
commercial thrust.
As with any case in
comparative perspective, then, we must identify points of similarity and
difference. But this paper emphasizes the similarities. In so doing it pursues
(and seeks to promote) a dual, mirror-image purpose. One purpose is to use
global perspectives to help understand the South African case and the second
purpose is to use the South African case to help understand key global
tendencies.[3]
The second purpose, using
South Africa to help understand key global tendencies, links up with the point
about how South Africa epitomizes these tendencies. Largely recent, the
tendencies have not been subject to intense analysis in the global literature.
On the other hand, South African scholars emphasize how little studied their
case has been. But the truth is that—especially with ongoing work at the HSRC
(Human Science Research Council) and at the Centre for the Study of Higher
Education at the University of the Western Cape [4]—South
Africa probably ranks as one of the best-studied developing or transitional
(post command economy) country cases of private higher education’s surge of the
last two decades. The world can learn much looking at the South African case. [5]
Accordingly, each part of
the paper deals with both South African and relevant global tendencies,
inter-relating the two. The four major parts of the paper concern:
1.
private
higher education’s recent growth
2.
private
types that are limited
3.
predominant
types
4.
the
for-profit focus
GROWTH
Overview
South Africa has lacked
clear, reliable data on private higher education growth. This is a common
problem internationally. Often there is no central compilation of data or
reported data are dubious. South Africa represents a set of countries in which
government is the major collector of data on private higher education, but has
kept much of it confidential and even what is released is difficult to assess.
There is definitional
ambiguity about what gets counted as higher education, full-time students, and
so forth. Much of the difficulty with definitions, counting, and collection of
data stems from the same sudden surge of private higher education that
contributes to impressions of exceptionalism. In South Africa and so much of
the developing and transitional world, considerable growth takes places before
there is organized concern to track, study, or regulate it. Because the growth
does not mostly follow a prescribed and detailed government design, and because
it occurs heavily outside traditional higher education forms, or outside clear
definition about what is legally included within higher education or requires
what sort of licensing or accreditation, data gatherers do not necessarily know
where to look, for what. Mabizela’s depiction of a South African “silent
revolution,” largely on the higher education “fringes,” is apt for many
countries. [6]
Striking both in South Africa and globally is how much growth takes place
without public agreement that this growth should be permitted, or with what
limitations; indeed, South Africa illustrates how the private growth can occur
in the face of a combination of indifference and resistance.
However unanticipated, the
growth of private higher education in South Africa has been notable. Until the
1980s private higher education was limited in South Africa, notwithstanding
historical and incipient and related forms, including both Church and
professional institutes in the nineteenth century, and then many
“correspondence colleges,” many pushing their way into higher education. [7]
The recent growth is now qualified by government freezes imposed in the late
1990s; surprise growth followed by freezes or other regulation that slows
growth is a sequence also seen in other countries. For South Africa, the causes
of slowed growth are debated: private providers and others emphasize
restrictive government policy whereas others argue that views back in 1994
greatly exaggerated how much pent-up demand there was for higher education.
The first serious study on
the overall growth and size of South African private higher education
(Mabizela, Subotzky, and Thaver 2000) has recently been updated (Subotzky
2002). But the update works with only the 60 institutions registered by
December 2000. This contrasts to 86 registered by December 2001 and to the 145
treated in the earlier survey (which identified more than 300 institutions, 113
registered). [8] It also
contrasts to a figure of some 200 institutions involved in private higher
education and included in the Association of Private Providers of Education,
Training and Development, an umbrella organization of private institutions
including but far from limited to higher education (Yeomans 2002). The higher
education enrollment in the 145 institutions was approximately 108,700 (with
the figure for the more than 300 institutions unknown) but the recent study of
just 60 institutions casts doubt on that figure and reports 30,000 (23,000
full-time equivalents). The wide discrepancy in figures appears to stem from
various factors: (1) ambiguity in what is post-secondary education; (2)
inexperience until now in identifying categories and in handling institutions
with many students but only some at the higher education level; (3) more rigid
definitions in the updated study and thus less inclusive reach; (4) some double
counting of private and public partnership enrollments in the earlier study;
(5) the restrictive impact of government moratoriums; (6) the updated survey
taking place at a moment in which few institutions were registered. Given all
the uncertainty and volatility surrounding the numbers, it makes no sense to
insist on any one figure. One could tentatively entertain a guess of roughly 5
percent for the 2000 data, noting there were slightly over 600,000 enrollments
reported on the public side. But 30,000 is lower than most figures shown so far
for the private side. Most importantly, leading researchers of the quantitative
dimensions of the private sector prefer not yet to offer even an estimate on
the percentage of private/total higher education enrollments. What we can
commonly conclude with Subotzky is that enrollment estimates as high as 500,000
can be dismissed (as can estimates of over 3000 institutions), significant
growth in the near future is quite possible, growth to date is significant, and
figures depend much on one’s definitions and methodology. [9]
These quantitative surveys
also show that most of South Africa’s private institutions are quite small. Of
the 60, 48 have fewer than 250 FTEs; of the 145, 120 had fewer than one
thousand students. Despite holding only a small share of higher education
enrollments, the private sector accounts for a clear majority of registered institutions.
Such small size contrasts with what most people expect for higher education
institutions, especially universities, but the smaller size of private than
public higher education institutions has been noted internationally (Levy
1992). Moreover, smallness is particularly evident for commercially or
vocationally oriented institutions that today represent the most common private
expansion. Smallness has probably been even more striking for the world’s
for-profit higher education, though the recent advent of large businesses,
often international, brings a dynamic exception.
One major comparative point
about South Africa’s private growth is that it is part of a global tide. Yet
another point is that the proportional size of its private sector has now probably
slipped toward the low end for developing and transitional regions. Those
regions have had mostly either moderate or spectacular private growth. Prior to
the 1980s the key areas were Latin America and parts of Asia. Since then,
however, in addition to further growth there, including a spread to more Asian
countries (including Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Pakistan, and Vietnam),
private higher education has burst on the scene elsewhere. Central and Eastern
Europe provide dramatic examples in most of their countries, starting usually
from scratch and jumping to 10 or 30 percent. Breakthroughs have also occurred
in a few developed countries but Japan and the United States remain exceptional
for having major private sectors (and “privatization” in developed countries
usually refers more to changes within public higher education).
Africa has joined the
developing county trend somewhat belatedly. This is especially so for
Sub-Saharan Africa. Some North African or Middle Eastern countries (e.g.,
Egypt, Ethiopia, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman) have had longer private higher
education roots or have now opened or expanded private higher education,
sometimes with major international cooperation. Except where otherwise
mentioned, however, “Africa” in this paper refers to the sub-Sahara. As
recently as around 1990, probably only about 5000 students were in Africa’s
private higher education, roughly one percent of the higher education total;
they were in perhaps thirty institutions, mostly religious (usually Christian,
sometimes Muslim), though also commercial (Eisemon 1992; Bamba n.d). Many
institutions had fewer than 100 students. Private emergence and expansion was
generally slowed by various factors: poverty, low total higher enrollments, and
dominant public traditions and norms. But growing demand for higher education,
weak government budgets, and changing political economies have worked for
emergence and growth, as they have in much of the world.
Initially, Kenya and Zaire
led the private expansion, whereas Rwanda probably had the highest
private/total enrollment percentage. By 1997, Benin, which had had no private
higher education in 1990, had 27 authorized private institutions, holding 17
percent of the country’s total enrollment (Guedegbe 1999: 12). Additional
examples where the private sector has substantially increased its share of
enrollments include Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Ivory Coast (19 percent),
Uganda (14 percent), Ghana (6 percent), and other countries, though Francophone
Africa tends to trail (Sawyerr 2002). Kenya illustrates a common pattern in
which government mixes its regulation with a favorable disposition based on how
private higher education can provide access, meet demands from the new
political economy, and lessen the flow of students going abroad, with
consequent loss of foreign exchange as well as human resources. From just three
private universities in 1985, Kenya now has seventeen (eleven of which have
provisional authorization) and these hold roughly 20 percent of the country’s
50,000 university enrollments (Otieno 2002). An intriguing aspect about the
expansion of private higher education in Africa, at least Central Africa, is
the penetration of South Africa’s for-profit higher education.
Thus, although South Africa
was one of the African countries to move to notable private expansion before
most did, it has been overtaken by many sister republics in the percentage of
private/total enrollments. More significant is that the private higher
education we examine in South Africa, including for-profit dimensions, is
increasingly common in Africa.
South Africa’s Categorization
South African private higher
education comes in a variety of institutions, including seminaries, colleges,
schools, professional institutes, and training centers, with some mix of
face-to-face and distance education (Mabizela, Subotzky, Thaver 2000). The
country’s main categorization has been developed at the HSRC and used in its
recent on-site, qualitative survey of sampled institutions (Kruss 2002). We
employ this categorization, later exploring its relationship to categories
developed in the international literature. The South African categories are:
(1) transnational; (2) agency or franchise institution; (3) TVET (technical and
vocational education training institutes); (4) corporate classroom. This
categorization not only helps capture the South African picture,
notwithstanding ambiguous and overlapping cases, but it also lays out types
that are increasingly common outside South Africa; a working hypothesis would
be that, in descending order, the largest presence in the developing and
transitional world is 3, 2, 1, 4.
(1) Transnational. The transnational category has included
local companies affiliated with foreign institutions and paying fees to them
but transnationals are presently foreign owned, resident in South Africa. Those
registered with the government are the following: Bond University and Monash
University (both Australia), BSN (Business School Netherlands), and De
Montfordt, linked to the United Kingdom.[10]
In turn, the transnational may belong to a parent group, as Bond belongs to
Advtech. Notwithstanding the university ties, even the transnational
institutions may be seen as businesses in South Africa. In any event, the
transnational penetration is comparatively limited in South Africa, compared to
the developed world’s penetration into Asian and other developing countries.[11]
(2) Agency.
Agency institutions are local companies giving higher education. Here the
commercial orientation is even more striking, as reflected in many of these
(e.g., Damelin College and Boston City Campus being parts of groups (e.g.,
Educor and Advtech) listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and owning a
number of registered private higher education institutions with their own juridical
status. And this commercial orientation is crucial since these institutions may
account for about a third of private higher education institutions and much of
the sector’s enrollment. Counted by either institutions or enrollment, the
agency category is obviously much larger than the transnational one. Examples
include the two institutions just mentioned, the IMM (Institute of Market
Management), Midrand Graduate Institute (formerly calling itself Midrand
University), Success College, and Varsity College, though some of these might
simultaneously be identified as TVETs.
(3) TVET.
TVETs account for most of the private higher education institutions, but two
important qualifications must be made about weight. One is that here is where
the phenomenon of small institutions is sharpest, so enrollment share lags
institutional share. The other is that this is mostly “level 5” education,
non-university and not what many have traditionally thought of as “higher
education,” and thus a kind of borderline higher education even though included
as higher education in official South African listings. Obviously, TVETs
provide much reason to emphasize the commercial-vocational tilt in South
Africa’s private expansion. And again some institutions are part of larger business
groups, such as the Adcorp Group.
(4) Corporate
Classroom. Finally, like the TVETs, corporate classrooms have grown in
the last couple of decades and have older roots. Corporate classrooms lie
within larger corporations, and may involve contracts for training, as with Old
Mutual. Key is corporations’ desire to train (and retain) their own employees
(Fehnel 2002). The corporate classroom’s training to meet corporate goals
obviously speaks to the commercial and indeed for-profit thrust. This is higher
education for immediate practical use. Immediacy is sometimes a repeated
phenomenon, in a lifelong learning context. In fact, South Africa still has few
corporate classrooms, perhaps six prominent ones. There is also overlap, as
when a corporate classroom has ties to a transnational institution of higher
education. Old Mutual may be South Africa’s largest corporate classroom.
However limited to date, corporate classrooms represent fascinating and
important growth and have international parallels, including in U.S.
institutions that are global. For example, Motorola University has a budget of
some 120 million dollars and operates in twenty-one countries, IBM runs a huge
virtual corporate university in 55 countries, with over 10,000 courses, and
Bell Atlantic forms alliances with existing higher education institutions. Some
estimates are that there are some 15,000 corporate universities in the world,
versus just hundreds perhaps ten years earlier. The future may well bring a
proliferation of small businesses alongside the corporate giants. [12]
All four types of South
African private higher education thus have a practical, commercial thrust. In
fact, that thrust dominates in each type, sometimes almost exclusively,
occasionally as one among other thrusts. Jobs are a key in all. And all feature
the for-profit form both in practice and legal status.
As we proceed, we repeatedly
relate this practical, commercial thrust and this four-part categorization to
the dominant private higher education categorization in the established private
higher education literature worldwide. But a general view already peeks
through. South Africa’s private growth has elements of all three major forms
characteristic of earlier private higher education elsewhere. These three are
religious (or, more broadly, culturally inspired), elite, and demand-absorbing
private higher education. [13]
However, the South African growth overwhelmingly inclines toward practical
forms related to the third, though in ways that require us to adapt that
category and to explore it in depth. This exploration is crucial to
understanding the expansion of private higher education in South Africa. And,
as the South African growth epitomizes major growth patterns elsewhere in the
world, the exploration is also crucial for other countries.
PRIVATE TYPES THAT ARE
LIMITED
Although South Africa has
most forms of private higher education identified in the international
literature for other countries, it is essential to appreciate which forms are
neither dominant nor fast growing in South Africa. In fact, while these forms
are prominent today in some countries, they largely hark back to historical
reality, albeit often recent history, as reflected in the literature. South
Africa may at first appear quite unusual for the only weak presence of these
forms whereas it is largely in step with global tendencies that do not feature
these forms.
We look here at three types,
which often overlap. These are: (1) religious; (2) nonprofit; (3) university
elite.
Religious
For much of the world, the
first “wave” of private higher education growth usually involved religious
institutions. Some “moved up” to “higher education” from ambiguous higher
education status as seminaries. Others emerged when religion was pushed out
from universities that had been simultaneously public and religious. Still
others sprang up as counterparts to a society’s religious pluralism, whether
characterized by tolerance for varied alternatives or an intolerance that
barred certain groups from mainstream institutions.
At least until the
mid-twentieth century, religious higher education probably accounted for most
of the world’s private sector. Even a few decades later it probably represented
the first private higher education form in most countries. Still today, religious
higher education often holds a major share of private enrollments, though it
represents a smaller share of institutions. And continued strength stems not
only from the persistence of prior institutions but also the formation of new
ones. Persistence has to do mostly with the Catholic institutions that have
long formed much of private higher education, as in Peru and the Philippines.
Newness comes with fresh Catholic institutions along with a variety of
Protestant and Muslim ones, as in Africa (Lejune 1998; Otieno 2002).
In South Africa, religious
institutions form a part of the TVET category. This is striking for at least
two reasons. One is the only tiny presence elsewhere in private higher
education. [14] Although
there is at least one liberal arts college, with broad curriculum, this is
exceptional and there are no longstanding religious universities of the kind
seen elsewhere. The other striking
point is that even South Africa’s religious higher education usually has a kind
of technical training focus; some religiously affiliated institutions have a
vocational/commercial orientation, though most are theologically oriented.
In comparative perspective,
then, South Africa’s religious private higher education is limited. [15]
It is limited as it lacks a strong longstanding component and it is limited
because even its contemporary private higher education growth rarely has a
religious element or at least a predominant one. All this leaves South Africa
quite unlike many countries that have much more ample traditions of private
higher education, but within a spectrum of contemporary global growth that
sometimes has a significant religious component and sometimes does not. This
fits our theme of a South African private growth that appears more exceptional
when gauged against global history and impressions derived from it than when
assessed within contemporary global trends.
Furthermore, if we broaden
our category beyond religious to cultural, our conclusions hold. Private higher
education has often arisen internationally to provide institutions for ethnic
groups or for those choosing a cultural niche orientation within the wider
society. Like religious education, such other cultural pursuits involve
offering something “different” (Geiger 1986; Levy 1986) from what public higher
education (or other private higher education) offers. Few South African
privates have such profiles. Instead, as we will see, the crucial difference
offered by South African privates has to do with practical orientations.
Nonprofit
South Africa is much more
exceptional when it comes to its small nonprofit presence. Historically,
private higher education internationally basically meant nonprofit, at least
legally. Virtually all religious and even most non-religious education has been
nonprofit.
Once again, however, we
should note the difference between historical and contemporary global reality.
Whereas for-profit higher education had been rare or marginal internationally,
now it is rapidly growing, as shown when the paper treats the for-profit focus.
Nonetheless, most private higher education enrollment remains in nonprofit
institutions. To the large extent that many countries’ nonprofits functionally
pursue missions of profits and practicality, South Africa appears less unusual.
Even so, South Africa stands out for the smallness of its legally nonprofit
subsector compared to its private sector overall.
In fact, other than
religious institutions, themselves rather peripheral, South Africa appears to
have few nonprofits. Some have a considerable number of full and part-time
students, many “Black” (African, Colored, and Indian). But most have commercial
foci that make them like many nonprofit commercial institutions proliferating
worldwide. Intriguing is one agency institution using modern technology and
partnerships with corporations to try to serve disadvantaged students, often
part-timers, and earning praise from government.
Clearly, even the nonprofit
subsector of South African private higher education has major practical,
vocational ends. Indeed, the HSRC sample survey (Kruss 2002) produces at least
two findings that underscore these ends. One is that the nonprofits examined
are highly specialized; specialization is again quite common for the world’s
proliferating commercial private higher education, but nonprofits were
historically associated with somewhat more breadth. The other finding, related,
is that the South African nonprofits, usually older than the for-profits,
incorporate many of the for profits’ practices in order to compete in the
vigorous new market. Their high tuitions underscore their commercial nature.
Yet by far the most striking comparative point about South Africa’s nonprofit
private higher education is its very small share of the country’s total private
higher education. [16]
Academic Elite
The fabulous success of “Ivy
League” and other fine private research universities in the United States leads
many to think of elite universities as a major component of private higher
education. In fact, the United States has historically stood alone for this
major presence (Shils 1973). But if we are flexible with what is “elite” or
what is “university,” then there are more examples globally. Latin America’s
elite privates are elite largely in a socioeconomic sense but also manage higher
overall academic standing than commonly found in those countries. There and
elsewhere, the last two decades have brought intriguing attempts to establish
elite private university education, with research, graduate studies, and
general high quality. A combination of success and failure means the jury is
still out as to the prospects in South Asia, the Near East, and elsewhere. To
date, a fair generalization is that true university elite private higher
education remains rare outside the United States.
Thus, when it comes to its
own lack of such elite education, South Africa is once again less unusual than
some would think. More complicated to assess both in South Africa and globally
is the size and shape of the subsector that is elite by more flexible definition.
South Africa’s limitations might be within a range that is common elsewhere;
that is, the world sees many national cases in which there is little elite
effort as well as cases in which there is more than in South Africa.
Part of the South African limitation
clearly overlaps the limited nonprofit and religious presence, for elite
private efforts have historically (outside the United States) often been
religious and rarely have been for-profit (with no sustained successes to
date). Despite perhaps two or three agency institutions and even a few TVETs
that have elite claims regarding educational substance, where South Africa
appeared to have prospects of launching elite university education was through
international means. Transnational institutions included prominent universities
elsewhere, sometimes entering South Africa at the graduate level. Yet the surge
in the mid-1990s is now aborted, largely through government restrictions on
foreign provision.[17]
Most transnationals have withdrawn. This helps explain the limited
transnational presence noted above. Furthermore, even where these universities
offer programmatic and other breadth back home, they tend again to be
specialized, narrow institutions within South Africa (Subotzky 2002).
Few providers attempt to
gain official title as universities in South Africa. Others have made the
attempt but failed. Monash retained its aspirations longer than Bond, but they
now both acquiesce. Government has insisted that these institutions have
existed as programs rather than full-fledged universities within South Africa.
Internationally, some other countries are very lax about usage, and a private
institution can call itself a university if it wants, whereas other countries
set standards for what can be called a university. Yet even in the latter
cases, (e.g., Brazil) it is common for more private institutions to hold the
university title than in South Africa. Much of that difference ties into the
predominance of nonprofit institutions elsewhere versus for-profit ones in South
Africa.
A key to the limited
university elite presence and also to the somewhat greater elite presence
flexibly defined lies in the limited nature of public university “failure” in
South Africa. Compared to much of the Third World (Levy 1986, 1992), certainly
including Africa, there is not a widespread reality or perception in South
Africa that once fine universities have plummeted in academic quality or
greatly lowered academic standards (Cloete and Bunting 2000). South Africa is
more like China and those other Asian countries that have maintained the
prestige and selectivity of their public universities. Moreover, quite unlike
most of the Third World, South Africa is not witnessing demographic pressures
that translate into massive public higher education expansion (public
enrollments fell at least in the late 1990s) and thus elite exits to privileged
private niches.
Like many other countries,
however, South Africa has suffered political disruptions in its public
universities and this leads to some flight to safety.[18]
Moreover, South Africa shares with most of the Third World profound social
inequalities and it is inevitably affected by its apartheid past. Thus,
alongside public policy concern and rising aspirations for long deprived groups
to gain higher education access, elite (and semi-elite) social groups seek to
protect their advantage, their security, and so forth. The racial divide
represents a sharp way in which South Africa stands out internationally. On the
other hand, the United States has historically shown some parallels in the
aftermath of legal segregation and there and in much of the world private
higher education is often a vehicle for social separation (when negatively
labeled) or social pluralism (when positively labeled).
It is perhaps mostly in
socioeconomic terms that South Africa’s private sector has some elite flavor.
However academically modest they are, most of the country’s private
institutions appear to have rather privileged socioeconomic profiles. Although
the racial composition of the private and public sectors is similar, Blacks in
the private sector may be from fairly privileged backgrounds (Subotzky 2002).
But international references to socioeconomic elite private higher education
generally compare to public higher education. And in South Africa, the most
prestigious institutions continue to be public universities. They appear to
have the highest percentages of students from privileged private secondary
schools. Additionally, some private institutions attempt to broaden their
student socioeconomic base. South Africa therefore differs from two common
though by no means uniform patterns established in the international
literature. On the one hand, its private growth does not stem fundamentally
from an elite exit from increasingly inclusive public universities (seen in
most of Spanish America); on the other hand, the growth does not fundamentally
involve a nonelite demand-absorption in the face of public elite dominance
(seen in much of Asia). Instead, South African private higher education
apparently lies toward the moderately privileged end of a contemporary
international spectrum for flourishing commercial private higher education.
In sum, an elite university
presence is notably absent in South Africa. Some of its private institutions
have a semi-elite niche, especially along socioeconomic lines. But most lack
almost any elite character in selectivity, standards, or content. There is no
major presence in basic research, academic graduate education, and similar
matters conventionally associated with the high rungs of academic elite work
internationally. [19]
PREDOMINANT PRIVATE TYPES
As academic elite,
religious, and even nonprofit types do not predominate in South African private
higher education, what does? The answers are nearly all inter-related and
heavily involve profits and practicality. These answers are increasingly apt
for private higher education growth elsewhere as well. But the profits aspect
is especially clear in South Africa, and the country’s overall emphasis on
practicality epitomizes what is often happening less sharply and more
ambiguously than in South Africa.
How High is Higher Education?
When most people think of
higher education, whether they have attended it or not, they think
mostly of universities. This inclination is reinforced by most higher education
policy discussion and scholarly literature. Thus, the rapid growth of
non-university higher education in much of the world creates dissonance. Where
some of this growth occurs in private institutions, as in South Africa, some
see a national private sector development that falls short of what is properly
or internationally considered higher education. In fact, however, the emergence
of various forms of non-university post-secondary education is now common
internationally and it increasingly comes in private institutions.
Much private and public
non-university higher education fits the standard UNESCO definition of “level
6,” or “first-degree” higher education. But other non-university higher
education is “level 5.” Some countries that allow private provision for level 5
do not allow it for level 6, or make similar distinctions. Poland prohibits
private institutions from going beyond the first three post-secondary years,
and Canadian provinces have usually restricted degree granting to public
universities (Pike 1991).
Among countries that allow
private provision for all levels of higher education, South Africa is striking
for the small private share above level 5. Including the 15 percent of
enrollments in diploma programs, level five reaches 57 percent of the private
sector, with only 35 percent at the first degree level, and the remainder
mostly at the Masters level, with only a tiny doctoral presence.[20]
Furthermore, Africans in private higher education are disproportionately in
level 5, in contrast to their representation in the transnationals or most
other private institutions with some elite aspects. To many observers,
therefore, private level 5 provision is part and parcel of a discriminatory
system. Others emphasize how the African presence in level 5 is crucial to the
African presence in higher education.
Moreover, the private sector
has a major presence in South Africa’s “further education.” This is not legally
or popularly considered part of higher education. Yet it is related in its
vocational training and the borders between higher and further education have
blurred and become “softer,” including through upward creep by private (as well
as public) further education institutions (Kraak 2002). As noted, attendant
ambiguities have made it difficult to determine the size of South Africa’s
private higher education. It may be that rigid definitions of higher education
tend to understate the prominence of related private provision. In the 1990s a
number of professional institutes started up short courses. Many institutions
offer both higher and further education. Others, including many TVETs, offer
some level 6 but mostly level 5. The main point here is that what predominates
on the South African private side is academically more modest than what has
traditionally been thought of as higher education, instead assuming a practical
commercial role. Again South Africa is a sharp case within a strong private
higher education global tendency that has some precedent but differs
importantly from prior patterns.
The Commercial Thrust: Categorization
Whether in level 5 or 6,
South African private higher education is overwhelmingly commercial. The same
holds even for its graduate level, which, judging from the example of other
countries, could grow as part of the overall commercial tendency. We need to
identify the commercial core of South African private higher education more
closely.
Through reference to the
basic private higher education literature, this task can be initiated but not
consummated by process of elimination. Insofar as that literature concentrates
on three types of private higher education, we have already seen that
two—religious and elite are comparatively very limited in South Africa. That
leaves the type of private higher education often born internationally through
demand that exceeds the supply offered through at least somewhat selective
public institutions. But the South African commercial surge—like that in most
of the contemporary world—is only partly consistent with that third type. This
conclusion matches Kruss’ (2002) analysis of the HSRC findings. Kruss then
poses the possibility of a “fourth” type, essentially for specialized
commercial institutions. In fact, given the small religious and elite presence,
she posits basically a large “fourth” subsector alongside a small elite
subsector, so that South Africa would almost have just two private subsectors
of very unequal size. This is an example of where the South African case can be
very helpful in reconsidering and reconfiguring conceptual categorizations for
global use.
For the most part, the
commercial core in South Africa and elsewhere fits the third type of private
higher education. The reticence of just leaving it at that, and the need for rethinking,
comes from two inter-related points. The first concerns the demographic thrust
of growth and apt terms to depict it. The literature often refers to a “mass”
private sector. South Africa’s private sector is not mass in the sense of
holding a majority of total enrollments. Nor is “excess demand” satisfying in
the South African context, since there is not huge enrollment growth in the
higher education system.[21]
“Demand-absorbing” suffers similarly, though less so. To be sure, none of the
three terms is squarely inaccurate, as secondary school leavers who cannot get
into public higher education (or at least into the public institution they
prefer) gain access to private higher education.
The other major reservation
about considering the commercial growth as part of the third type is that this
type is generally regarded as inferior to much of the public sector. Yet a
strongly negative image is more the product of critics’ denunciations than of
scholarship. Scholarship usually depicts a mixed situation, both because of
problems within the public sector (less severe in South Africa) and
achievements within the private sector. These achievements do not include much
advanced theory, basic research, or the like, but they do include important
practical tasks, especially concerning higher education’s link to the job
market. Furthermore, over time, and even as early as a decade ago, there has
been increased reason to refer to a kind of type 2.5, between demand-absorbing
and elite (Levy 1993). The idea is that much of the commercial growth can have
quite attractive aspects for some, and not serve as just an option of last
resort. Related to this is the finding that some institutions initiated much
like type three institutions endeavor seriously to improve or broaden
themselves. Examples have been found from the Dominican Republic to China.
So what really lies before
us in many countries—including South Africa—is a spectrum between substantively
weaker and stronger commercial institutions. The spectrum can extend all the
way into the elite (or religious) category, but in South Africa only rarely and
partly. [22]
In fact, it is not a spectrum so much as spectra since certain institutions
make their mark in one or a few ways but not in other ways. This is an
especially pertinent point as South Africa's and others’ commercial surge
largely involves small, specialized institutions; forty of the sixty private
institutions identified by Subotzky (2002) function in just one field of study.
The spectra need to be investigated with regard to variables such as true job
orientation versus just pretense, updated versus outdated curriculum, serious
hands-on teaching by skilled practitioners or erratic teaching by those who are
neither such practitioners nor scholars, useful if modest facilities versus
pseudo institutions, and a concern for learning or just profits.
We lack an empirical base
upon which to compare countries extensively and confidently along these lines,
especially since there is often such a wide range within countries.
Nevertheless, a tentative impression is that South Africa’s commercial private
higher education probably more often comes closer to the favorable side of
these dualities than does commercial private higher education in countries such
as Colombia. Student responses in the HSRC study suggest that some students
have strong reasons to have chosen their private institutions, though others do
not paint a dynamically positive picture. South Africa shows that a private
commercial sector that is academically no competitor with leading public
universities may nonetheless achieve quality in important practical tasks and
rank well on those within the higher education system.
Midrand Graduate Institute,
an agency institution within the Educor group, illustrates key aspects of a
status well above demand-absorbing. [23]
Midrand was one of those institutions calling itself a university until the
government clamped down on such designation. It is also an institution mixing
further and higher education, with only hundreds of students in the latter.
Midrand students have often
chosen Midrand over other options. Common is a business family background and
good performance at private schools; Midrand’s Black population has increased
as the country’s Black middle class has increased. Tuition is higher than in
most of South Africa’s private higher education institutions. And what is
attractive to students is mostly practical. Midrand offers only commercial
fields and is keenly linked to the job market. It has pioneered in offering multiple
exit points from study to work. It provides for extensive campus visits by
companies and boasts a placement service paid for by the employers. Yet Midrand
does not see itself as merely a commercial institution. It has a real campus
(unusual outside the transnational sphere) and claims to insist on a demanding
learning environment. It wants to be the first choice for students in graphic
design, where it is close, journalism, computer science, and others. Although
such aspirations are lofty in Johannesburg, they appear realistic where Midrand
will open new sites, with one site targeted now and others both inside South
Africa and perhaps in Botswana, Namibia, and Tanzania contemplated. Midrand
looks to sites where there is demand from business class families not keen to
use their local public university or to send their children far from home. It
is not surprising, then, that Midrand sees its accomplishments and aspirations
in far from demand-absorbing terms. Yet however superior it is to most private
higher education in the country, Midrand also shares many characteristics with
it, including a jobs and for-profit orientation.
The Commercial Thrust: Training for Jobs
Job preparation heads the
practical tasks at Midrand and throughout the country’s private higher
education. Internationally, this is a salient feature of the commercial wave or
at least a successful commercial wave. Indeed it is often the abiding
preoccupation.
Such a preoccupation echoes,
but fortissimo and con brio, the job concern identified in the international
literature on type three demand-absorbing or mass private higher education. But
the variation is great within type three. In some institutions, jobs are the
concern of students and likely some well-meaning professors and administrators,
but the preparation is weak. Students may get a job boost more from gaining a
credential that other secondary school graduates lack than from learning much
that is practical. Coupled with a drive for social status, students often flock
to weak institutions of the third type basically to get into higher education,
with vague additional hopes about the job market; ad hoc evidence suggests they
often feel disappointed. In contrast, students flock to a stronger commercial
core with a firmer, clearer sense of how that will propel them into the job
market. Substantively weak type three institutions are “practical” in that they
pursue “profits,” called that or not, by appearing to offer some job edge to
students who have little choice. Substantively stronger commercial institutions
boast a more powerful profits and practicality nexus.
The HSRC study produces data
on student views of job preparation that are pioneering for South Africa and
still quite unusual outside the United States. The HSRC data tend to support a
depiction of viable commercial private higher education more than a type three
excess demand sector with dubious job links. There has been some government
praise of institutions helping students of modest background, including rural,
get to the job market.
The job orientation of
commercial private higher education worldwide is indicated by the featured
fields of study. Here too there is international variation. One approach is the
fields are not so tightly tied to jobs, so that the idea is mostly to learn how
to learn. That approach makes sense for much of higher education, but the
private commercial side is usually much more focused if it is successful. At
any rate, such focus is key to how South Africa’s commercial private higher
education presents itself, just as it is for the United States and probably
most other for-profit higher education, as well as a good chunk of the world’s
growing commercial nonprofit private higher education.[24]
At the sixty identified
private institutions (Subotzky 2002), 47 percent of enrollments are in business
and commerce. This compares to 28 percent, with science included, on the public
side. The public sector’s 46 percent in social science and the humanities and
its 26 percent in engineering and technology form even much starker
inter-sectoral contrasts, as the rest of the private side is 21 percent
education and 13 percent sciences. [25]
South Africa reflects private field profiles found in other countries, but
especially for the third type or even more especially for new private surge,
heavily commercial. The exceptionally sharp field profile in South Africa’s
private higher education buttresses the idea of South Africa epitomizing the
global commercial trend. Although the world’s private higher education usually
lacks much representation in science or agriculture, the South African figures
for many of the other fields are comparatively low. A related sharp
manifestation of global commercial tendencies is the short time span of South
Africa’s private programs, as in computer studies and management (Smit 1998a).
The TVETs and corporate
classrooms naturally are prominent in South Africa’s field profile of
practicality, and the agency institutions are mostly in business, with some
information technology. South Africa’s nonprofits and transnationals have a
somewhat broader and less purely vocational span, but they too show a mostly
commercial orientation and of course they account for only a small share of the
country’s private enrollments. Moreover, with its mostly commercial Masters
programs (and the tiny doctoral component also mostly in business fields),
South Africa mostly fits the global pattern for expanding private graduate
education, except in the rare circumstances around the world where there are
academic elite missions. According to Cloete and Bunting (2000: 29), several
companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange help students find work. Clearly,
some institutions promise to assist students find work, while noting they
cannot guarantee placement; formal tracking data appear non-existent. The loop
between private higher education and jobs sometimes goes beyond just offering
studies that should help a student find a job.
However notable the
private-public distinctions regarding jobs, probably even greater in South Africa
than often seen elsewhere, the distinctions blur to the extent that public
institutions also become more commercial in their fields of study and
curriculum. Other blurring occurs where countries have technical public sectors
that aim to be more practical and direct for jobs than are their university
counterparts. Such is the case with South Africa’s technikons, many created in
the 1970s. Divided by race, as with universities, some were to provide job
relevant training to Blacks. As shown in countries like Hungary, with its
public “colleges,” the private institutions strive to find an edge in studies
for jobs. The technikon performance is debated. Some emphasize the practical
training requirements and job rewards. Others claim that they have allowed a path
for a private edge as they are overly tied to the old economy, with outdated
curriculum, poor relationships between theory and practice, drift toward soft
subjects rather than their proper mission, limited quality management—and a
desire (as seen in public non-universities in much of the world) to be like
universities. In contrast, TVETs and many other South African private
institutions relish their job-oriented field distinctiveness and approach.
These are “make or break it” for-profit commercial institutions.
The link between higher
education and jobs obviously goes a long way to explain why students pay for
private institutions. Reliance on tuition is common especially for the new
surge of global private higher education and is especially sharp where this
education is for-profit. The status of student as paying client is clear. Thus,
almost all of South Africa’s private institutions depend fully on student
payments. Notwithstanding some philanthropy for education (including from Oprah
Winfrey), private higher education is not a major recipient. Nor does private
higher education receive government money. Neither absence is unusual
internationally, but there are important exceptions.
For their rarity in South
Africa, a few institutional exceptions underscore the national rule about
tuition-dependence. At least one, though a for-profit, has additional income
sources. And one nonprofit claims to be unique in offering full scholarships to
all first-year students, many disadvantaged, and then employing them in a
variety of campus jobs such as filing and cooking, so that there is no
non-student staff for such jobs. But the widest exception, which hardly
undermines the commercial focus, is the corporate classroom. Students need not
pay because the corporation is training its own work staff, as well as
advertising. In a couple of cases, corporate classrooms are open to
non-employees as well, but again all in keeping with the companies’ for-profit
pursuits and strict job orientation (Fehnel 2002). For the most part, however,
South Africa’s private higher education survives as long as students are
willing to pay for job-directed training.
All in all, South Africa
epitomizes the global trend in job-oriented commercial private higher
education. Nothing better exemplifies the emphasis on practicality.
FOR PROFIT
We have seen that the
for-profit type predominates in South African private higher education and its
practical emphasis. The point is so important for international concerns about
private higher education that this last part of the paper fleshes out further
dimensions of the for-profit phenomenon.
South Africa in the Forefront
Unlike the situation in most
of the world, South Africa clearly allows for-profit higher education; the law
requires South African private higher education institutions to declare
themselves as for-profit or nonprofit. For-profit provision, labeled as such,
forms the great bulk of the country’s private sector and this is quite unusual.
Mabizela, Subotzky, and Thaver (2000) found that five companies on the
Johannesburg Stock Exchange owned 43 of the surveyed 145 private institutions
and these 43 accounted for 60 percent of the private enrollment. Delistings
from the Exchange have since occurred, but even the private higher education
unrelated to the Exchange is overwhelmingly for-profit, including small
proprietary institutions and some corporately owned institutions. [26]
Most of the world’s private
higher education is legally nonprofit. That statement holds even for recently
established private higher education in most countries. But it holds less
strongly now than before. Moreover, increasingly, if we get beyond legal
designation to focus on actual functioning, for-profit reality is widespread.
Constitutional or other law typically bars for-profit higher education or is
silent on the point so that for-profit is neither clearly disallowed nor
clearly allowed. One can often read about the private higher education of a
given country without learning whether it is legally for-profit or not. In a
variety of such circumstances, then, many commercial private higher education
institutions pursue profits but avoid running afoul of the law by not formally
distributing profits to shareholders. They may instead give inordinately high
salaries or perks to relatives on the payroll, or build facilities that lack
educational justification. Yet other institutions or some of the same ones may
also reinvest profits into bona fide expansion or improvement and there the
line between legitimate nonprofit and for-profit behavior blurs. If we talk
about the actual functioning of private higher education institutions, whether
legally for-profit or nonprofit, whether honest about their pursuits or not,
they are in much of the world increasingly and significantly for-profit. [27]
At the same time, however, as both the South African and U.S. cases remind us,
legally for-profit institutions need not actually turn a profit.
Even legal for-profit higher education is on the rise. A vital aspect of this is the penetration of global companies into many countries. For example, Jones International now has some 40,000 students in some 40 countries. The University of Phoenix, part of the Apollo Group, and already the largest private university in the United States,