Why Go Global?

February 11, 2005

By Martin Hall

What are the benefits of internationalization for higher education in South Africa? How should South African universities position themselves now the heady enthusiasms for global reintegration of the early 1990s have faded, and the Internet bubble has burst?

Professor Martin Hall, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Cape Town, gave the keynote speech at the September 2004 Conference of the International Education Association of South Africa (IEASA) in Cape Town.

He asked some probing questions: What are the benefits of internationalization for higher education in South Africa, and can these benefits be assumed? How can an expanding network of international contacts be reconciled with the goals of a public higher education system that faces immense challenges of reconstruction and social justice? How should South African universities position themselves now the heady enthusiasms for global reintegration of the early 1990s have faded, and the Internet bubble has burst?

Twenty years ago, South Africa's Higher Education system was so peculiar that it defied categorization. There were four education departments, a two-tier differentiation between university and technical education, vertical divisions by race, further subdivisions by language of instruction, and governance systems that ranged from substantial autonomy to tight governmental control. The participation rate for white students was amongst the highest in the world, and white South Africans were the beneficiaries of a systematic affirmative action policy. Participation rates for black students were among the lowest, and official policy was that black students should be prepared for low or middle level technical occupations.

This system was the focus of sustained international interest. Most governments condemned it. An academic boycott kept many away, while South Africa's pariah status and internal repression drove many of the best and brightest to other countries, where they have pursued successful professional careers in London, Toronto, Sydney, Seattle and elsewhere, to South Africa's enduring loss. South Africa's apartheid driven diaspora has forged an extensive international network, driven outwards and away from the shadows of shame, guilt and denial.

Twenty years on, circumstances are in some respects different. After Nelson Mandela waved to the world from the gates of Pollsmoor Prison, everyone wanted to come here. Vice Chancellors flocked to South Africa to sign agreements of mutual friendship and intent, and overseas institutions sized up the affluent sector of the South African student market, looking for franchise agreements and in some cases setting up campuses. South Africa became a favoured destination on the Study Abroad circuit, and remains so. The next few years will see the final stages in the restructuring of the higher education system, with a set of proud new institutions forged from mergers and incorporations. Within a few years, we will begin enrolling students who were not yet born when Mandela was set free, and we will need to teach apartheid as a historical subject.

In one sense this new internationalism - grounded in the normalization of South African society, rather than in its isolation - is an easy and appropriate cause for celebration. International exchange programmes, bilateral research connections and collaborative partnerships are seemingly beneficial and benign. But it might be as well to reflect a little on this assumption. Firstly, it is clear that many people - and some governments - do not consider internationalization as a de facto public good. In the early 1980s, when the academic boycott was gaining momentum, the condemnation of South Africa was framed in terms of universal principles of human rights and within the domain of international organizations. There was, for many, an ideal of world government and global principles of justice, including the right to basic resources such as education. But today, the successors of the campus protest movements of twenty years ago are mobilizing against globalization, the activities of international corporates, and organizations such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. There is a new emphasis on local identities and specific ethnic lineages. There are new forms of xenophobia, and new restrictions on world travel. Such cultural and political tendencies cannot just be dismissed: they are influences to be reckoned with, and the case for internationalization must be made, rather than assumed.

Further - and more specifically - it is not automatically apparent that internationalization is beneficial to higher education in South Africa. While the roll out of the National Plan for Higher Education might change the outer appearance of our universities, huge challenges remain. Participation rates are low, and are heavily skewed by race: young South Africans are much more likely to attend university if they are white than if they are black. The higher education system is inefficient. At a good South African university, only four out of every ten students will qualify according to the curriculum, and a further four will take almost twice as long as expected to pass sufficient courses for their degree. There are new patterns of social exclusion, as poor prior schooling and high fees keep many who could succeed away. And there is an emerging pattern of graduate unemployment, again skewed by race and in the face of a proven skills shortage, suggesting that higher education is not well geared to the needs of the economy. International connections often lead to one-way flows. Britain recruits shamelessly for South African nurses and teachers. Canada has recently been able to reduce public expenditure on health education because it is so successful at recruiting foreign doctors - in effect, South African taxpayers are subsidizing Canada's public health system. Multinational corporations redistribute intellectual capital to the benefit of their shareholders, rather than in accord with the wishes of national electorates. Again, it would seem that the case for internationalization needs to be made, and cannot be assumed.

There are several ways that such a case could be made. The approach which I will take here is to look at the structure behind the concept of internationalization. Internationalization can be conceptualized as a network of connections - as pathways regulated by agreements that position universities in sets of relationships. In such a model, to focus on internationalization is to focus on the outer circle of such connections - those parts of the network that are beyond the local and regional sets of inter-relationships. What benefits can such networks bring, and at what cost? How can the outer circle of connections be used to specific advantage of locally-situated universities, replacing the dichotomy between the local and the global with a unity of purpose? And how can such networks advance the interests of South African higher education institutions, replacing the old diasporas of apartheid-era internationalization with relationships that result in better opportunities for South African students and accelerated social and economic benefits that are a return for the large amount of money that South African taxpayers provide to their public institutions?

Seen in this way, it is of course necessary to ask what other participants in such international networks seek to gain - it takes two to sign an agreement. And here I need to introduce another factor from our recent history. While overseas universities were rushing to re-position themselves in relationship to South Africa after 1990, the phenomenon of the "network society" was gaining momentum, enabled by new information and communication technologies, bandwidth that enabled the transmission first of graphics, and then of sound and video, and the phenomenon of real-time, that made distance irrelevant in a far wider range of media, at far lower prices. By the mid-1990s, the conventional university had been declared dead or doomed, and international strategic energy was directed to massive consortia of higher education institutions and media interests that would provide the e-learning of the future. By 2000, a number of substantial consortia had been formed (for example Universitas 21, and the partnership between News International and twenty-one Scottish universities to market and distribute distance learning courses). "Fathom" brought together Columbia, the London School of Economics, the British Library, the New York Public Library, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and Cambridge University Press, and Columbia was reported to have committed "tens of millions of dollars" to the enterprise. The British government's e-university initiative was based on a commitment of £200m for set-up costs over two years, and was to comprise a consortium of universities, private sector corporates and overseas partners that would market on-line education in China, India, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa in conjunction with the British Council.

Four years is an age in the life of the Internet. Universitas 21 has yet to bring substantial benefit. Fathom has been abandoned, presumably at considerable loss, and the British government's e-University has been ignominiously abandoned and its assets sold off. It seems that the conventional university has survived after all. The mood now seems to be one of cautious re-exploration. Few Vice-Chancellors are likely to revive the grand schemes of the later 1990s, and universities seem rather to be establishing lower-key networks that work for their particular interests. These interests vary according to local circumstances. In some cases, a Study Abroad programme at an exotic destination gives competitive advantage in recruiting the best students. In other cases, shipping students out brings relief to student housing crises. In other cases again, international alliances bring students paying full and premium fees. For some universities, networks assist in differentiation and branding, or enhanced access to research funds, or commercial links. There is, in other words, an academic pragmatism at play. As South African higher education institutions seek to connect into such networks - building in turn their own systems of alliances that help with definition, differentiation and resourcing - they will become aware of the mutual interests of their intended partners. And these interests will be modulated by the complex politics and economics of international alliances over the last decade.

So the current state of the network, seen from within South Africa, is this: the bloom of 1990 is long since faded - South Africa is an interesting place to be associated with, but so now are many other places. Grand alliances are as unfashionable as over-stated claims for the potential of the Internet. Overseas universities are forming cautious international networks that seek to meet specific needs, and such needs are often given definition by national higher education policies. South African universities may be considered potential partners in such networks, but then again may not bring much advantage. Within South Africa, the landscape is changing fast. There are no longer any technikons, and the majority of institutions are re-branded, competitive, and seeking definition: in many cases, such definition will include participation in international networks. This is an interesting time.

Given this situation, it is useful to look for a benchmark for the benefits that participation in such networks can bring to a South African public higher education institution. This is provided by the combination of the 1997 White Paper on Higher Education and the Higher Education Act of the same year - the cornerstones of contemporary public policy in South Africa. Current policy and legislation identifies three primary purposes for publicly funded universities: research, teaching, and social responsiveness. And the same policy and legislation recognizes two primary categories of beneficiaries: individual participants, and the collective contribution to social and economic development. Overlaying both categories of beneficiaries are the goals of transformation - for individuals, the personal transformation that education can bring, and for the collective, the continuing project of achieving social and economic justice. How, then, should public higher education institutions in South Africa build their networks of inter-institutional relationships to further these objectives?

For research, effective and appropriate networks are essential. In some cases, the research enterprise will depend on an international network of collaboration, while in other cases it is difficult to imagine how anything much could be achieved without such a network. Even fields that depend on a strongly individual creativity thrive within networks, and good music conservatories or creative writing programmes have international performances and guest writers in residence, expanding individual creativity. But it may often be the case that formal agreements between universities are the worst thing that can happen in promoting research development and collaboration. Formal agreements tend to limit options through regulation, restricting flexibility and maneuverability. Good researchers will establish their own networks, and the best role of the institution may often be facilitation, following after good leads and reducing bureaucratic drag and friction. Burton Clark recognized this in his seminal work on university governance: academics have dual allegiances, of which the primary allegiance is to their discipline, and the secondary allegiance is to their institution. Attempting to reverse this works against the ways in which new knowledge is created. In any case, most researchers will either ignore such restrictions, or successfully dispute them as restrictions of academic freedom.

This said, there is a complication for South African universities that stems from the specifics of our history. The legacy of racial discrimination in the development of human capital has made the transformation of our research community a particular challenge. If South African universities are to renew their research staff and realize the natural intellectual potential of the South African population at large, they must move rapidly to create a diverse pool of young, qualified researchers to provide drive and creativity for the immediate future. Given the tight connection between research and postgraduate education, it may not be enough to allow the research community to find its own way in developing international networks. A particular interest for South African universities, as we build reciprocal relationships that address our needs, will be international arrangements that accelerate postgraduate training and development, and the repopulation of our laboratories as the beneficiaries of apartheid's affirmative action programme reach retirement. Such arrangements could include short-term placements in overseas laboratories, arrangements for registration for specialized Masters level courses, teaching fellowships to widen experience, and joint supervision and co-qualification arrangements, such as the increasingly-popular cotutelle programmes. If appropriately organized, such bilateral arrangements can foster research collaboration, as research communities build interest and respect through the shared supervision and training of one-another's postgraduate students.

The second benchmark for South African public higher education institutions is teaching and here, of course, we are in the heartland of conventional international agreements. At first sight, all would seem to be well here, evidenced by the rush of foreign student participation since 1990. But if we disaggregate Study Abroad programmes from bilateral student exchange agreements, current circumstances seem less rosy.

Study Abroad programmes may have limited academic benefit for the host institution: because students are here for, at most, only a year, they may not be able to benefit from the cumulative learning experience of a three or four year curriculum. While it is certainly the case that individual Study Abroad students can bring great personal contributions to the classroom, and can help South African students through bringing their experience and perspective to bear in a variety of ways, most institutions will want to keep the proportion of incoming Study Abroad students to appropriate levels.

Student exchange programmes have a more substantial benefit, and are at the heart of the internationalization project. In many respects, South Africa's future will depend on its ability to participate in a world economy. Incoming exchange students build up an understanding of our country that will yield rich benefits when such students themselves graduate, and take their close knowledge of South Africa into the world of their work. Outgoing exchange students will benefit from the knowledge they acquire of the world, and the contacts they make. In terms of the objectives of public higher education in South Africa, student exchange programmes are both individual and collective benefits, and assist the goals of transformation by moving South Africa more rapidly away from its historical condition of isolation.

The problem, of course, is that there are very few genuine student exchange programmes in place: much of what passes for "exchange" is in fact Study Abroad. Undergraduate students are hostages of both the under-valuation of the South African currency, and the structure of our first degree curricula. The lack of parity of the rand with other currencies makes standard student exchanges based on mutual fee waivers and transported living allowances either impossible, or limited to wealthy students. The curriculum, with its dual majors and diverse course requirements, makes it difficult for an undergraduate student to negotiate a year away in terms of credit recognition. The solution is likely to be an extra year at university - again limiting the option to well-off students. A further problem is the lack of undergraduate student exchange programmes with other countries in Africa - a vital sphere for future linkages. I would suggest that sustained international networks between South African higher education institutions and overseas partners will depend on solving the challenge of viable student exchange programmes, set up to complement Study Abroad options.

The third benchmark is social responsiveness - an area with many possibilities for international networks, and one that seems very undeveloped at present. We can understand social responsiveness as the contribution that a university makes to cultural, social and economic development in its regional and national context. In South Africa, this is a key area of return for the public investment in higher education. How can a university contribute to objectives such as technology transfer for economic development, the stimulation of small and medium enterprise development, social and economic policy issues, governmental and NGO programmes such as urban improvement, public health and education, the enrichment and enhancement of cultural life, and critical citizenship, underpinning the key objectives of democracy? These - of course - are local objectives, and the very inclusion of them in a consideration of internationalization problematizes the distinction between the local and the global in a valuable way.

The key to the contribution that international academic networks make to regional and local challenges in social responsiveness is the realization of the value of comparative studies. South Africa is a developing economy with a steep gradient between poverty and wealth, chronic unemployment and underemployment and a rapidly urbanizing demographic structure. As such, it shares key similarities with Latin America, India, China and other African countries, and the translation of the intellectual capital of the university into useful solutions to problems is facilitated by such comparative studies. This, of course, is no new insight to a wide range of people working in developmental disciplines such as economics, sociology, anthropology, public health, urban engineering, planning and architecture. But it is rare to see these network benefits incorporated into formal internationalization projects, and this may be limiting the potential of formal, inter-university networks and agreements.

Let me illustrate this point with one example. South African universities are today large and growing repositories of knowledge about HIV/AIDS. This knowledge ranges from biomedical research, through public health and women's studies to economics, actuarial science, sociology, social anthropology, and film and media. There is an increasing understanding of the effectiveness of voluntary counselling and testing programmes, peer education, provision of antiretrovirals through public health systems, costs to the public health system and human rights issues. Increasingly sophisticated demographic models, tested against large and growing data sets, are enabling more accurate assessments of costs, and concomitant benefits of different forms of intervention. At the same time, it is widely expected that the HIV/AIDS epidemic will accelerate rapidly in some Asian countries, and particularly in India and China, where it will move through these large countries in ways that may parallel the epidemiology of the epidemic in Africa. Australian universities are increasingly involved in Asian issues, both directly, and through networks of partnerships with other Asian universities. There is every opportunity for networked partnerships between Australian and African universities to take the local knowledge of HIV/AIDS in Africa and use such knowledge to better understand the local form of HIV/AIDS as it takes hold of Asia. Such socially responsive programmes, facilitated by international university networks, could contribute to saving many thousands of lives.

If we see academic internationalization as a flexible network of bilateral agreements with specified and well-defined objectives, then it is essential to align the development of such possibilities with the technical resources that will ensure their success. This requires the reintegration of information and communication technologies into the heart of the internationalization debate. It seems to me that IT is the unwelcome ghost at the conference, perhaps because of the memory of those inflated claims for a virtual world of educational delivery. Such exclusion would be a mistake. It would be quite impossible to develop the potential of international academic networks without the use of effective communication, and a reluctance to explore the untapped value of IT may be limiting the potential of future arrangements. Several examples will serve to illustrate the point.

* A consortium of universities is currently developing SAKAI, an open systems learning platform that will avoid the licensing fees of commercial applications such as Web-CT and Blackboard. Such a learning platform can be used to soften the boundary between Study Abroad and student exchange programmes, allowing the more effective integration of incoming Study Abroad students on host institutions;
* Asynchronous discussions and moderated web-based forums can be used to allow students who encounter one another through Study Abroad and exchange programmes to continue to build personalized networks that meet their individual needs. Such approaches can, in particular, be used to build and strengthen research-oriented exchanges;
* Web-based databases and portals allow the development of on-line resources that are in the public domain, allowing access to project materials on a sustained basis. This allows the construction of more sustained international exchanges in which face-to-face contact is only part of the teaching and learning arrangement;
* Web-based voice and video feeds are allowing synchronous communication at affordable prices, and without the expense and complications of traditional video conferences. This could facilitate a range of joint, international projects that would otherwise be unattainable because of resource constraints.

This rather cursory and preliminary benchmarking exercise gives some indication of the shape of an internationalization policy for South African universities that is responsive to our history and historical needs and respects the objectives of our public funded universities. Higher education institutions - as with universities elsewhere in the world - need to position themselves in regional and international networks that bring clear and defensible academic benefits. Academics will always form connections among themselves, inspired and nurtured by mutual respect and carried along through disciplinary connections at conferences and through joint research projects. Formal agreements - the web of bilateral arrangements that are the shape of internationalization after the bursting of the Internet bubble - can bring specific benefits: arrangements to fast-track the transformation and renewal of human capital in South African universities; exchange agreements that seek parity between incoming and outgoing student numbers; and alliances that further the localized objectives of social and economic development through comparative studies across and between continents.