A ministerial task team, appointed to look into the recruitment, retention and progression of black academics, has found that black and coloured academics remain underrepresented in the academic field.
Higher Education Minister, Blade Nzimande, released some of the task team’s findings on Wednesday.
He said the under representation of black and coloured staff was more pronounced in historically advantaged universities and previously Afrikaans universities.
"It appears that some universities may be seeking to address staff transformation imperatives through the recruitment of black academics from the continent. The progression impediments are multiple, with factors relating to research participation highlighted as particularly important," Nzimande said.
The task team was appointed in 2015 and was chaired by Professor David Mosoma. Its mission was to investigate the issues that were blocking the advancement of transformation in the higher education sector.
The task team has also found other areas that were impeding transformation of the sector and these include:
- Postgraduate pipeline impediments in which the South African postgraduate pipeline is woefully inadequate to support the aspirations of a developing and transformed South Africa. It is inadequate in size and continues to be inequitable in terms of participation and success of South African black and female students.
“What is extremely worrying is that while overall postgraduate numbers are growing, the proportional share of South African postgraduate students is steadily declining,” Nzimande said.
- Staff participation and progression impediments; despite some gains, black academics, specifically African and coloured academics, and female academics remain under-represented in the academy.
- Institutional cultures that work in overtly and covertly racist and sexist ways to maintain the postgraduate student profile and/or the staffing status quo in certain spaces, competing academic responsibilities, the lack of appropriate role models and mentors, and inability to embark on a research trajectory are significant barriers that work against the recruitment, retention and progression of black and women academics.
- Fourthly, the task team highlighted the existence of policy and strategy impediments. In regard to staff transformation at universities, a policy-strategy disjuncture appears to exist in some spaces. Whilst universities are implementing a number of strategies to transform the staff profile, these appear to be executed in the absence of clear, well-defined policy, and in the absence of time-bound staff transformation plans that seek to achieve specific targets.
- Finally, resource impediments continue to impact on the pace at which the postgraduate pipeline and the staffing pipeline can be transformed. The task team noted the raft of instruments that the NRF and the DHET were implementing to support staff capacity development and transformation at universities.
Nzimande said he expects the sector to engage with concerns raised by the task team and report back in two months. He will also take the report to Cabinet for approval.