MAKHI FENI | No time for universities to manage hostility between councils and officials

The instability setting in at our universities requires strategic intervention and should be stopped in its tracks.

A country without a stable university system is like a rotten potato and is susceptible to all kinds of vulnerabilities, such as bought qualifications in the long run. In South Africa, we are still far from that eventuality.

Various universities in South Africa have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. If not governance challenges, it had been councils fighting with vice-chancellors. The most recent and ugly spat was between the vice-chancellors of Fort Hare University and the University of Cape Town .

The sad and curious similarity about these institutions is how they handled their vice-chancellors, former and incumbent, who seem to be elbowed out for no apparent reason, and the treatment of the incumbents.

How students are to learn if institutions are under some sort of “cleaning” or investigation, as well as in and out of courts, is not clearly unpacked. But it is certain that vice-chancellors are elbowed out and offered some reward to leave.

Universities are, by their very nature, centres of excellence specialising in research that is, and ought to be, relevant to the conditions of the communities in which they are located. Outside these environments, universities ought to complement workplaces through producing graduates who can innovate and/or change lives. This is the standard against which universities should be measured.

The instability and chaos that have set in have the potential to compromise the image of the sector and require proven leadership among those we are tasked with leading these institutions

The council-management fights do not add value in line with what a university should do. These fights, if unmitigated, can affect university operations in the long run and can potentially affect research output and culture.

Sadly, the kind of news we have become accustomed to overshadows whatever good work gets done at institutions, both by way of research and teaching. The focus shifts and compromises the student experience of university education, which ordinarily should be enriching.

In the recent bout of instability, it is the University of Venda , the University of Pretoria and the Cape Peninsula University that are affected.

At Central University of Technology, the vice-chancellor announced early retirement at the end of the year. The madness seems to be spreading to the technical vocational institutions. And of late, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has not been spared from the madness.

The instability and chaos that have set in have the potential to compromise the image of the sector and require proven leadership among those we are tasked with leading these institutions.

Academics do not find joy and excellence when they find themselves in chaos, unstable work environments and toxic academic cultures. Toxicity has the potential to filter down to unsuspecting students who are meant to learn, be innovative and lead these institutions in the future.