Introduction
This is a report on R. W.
Johnson’s assessment of African higher education in his African University: The Critical Case of South Africa and the Tragedy
of the UKZN.[1] This is a different matter, of course, from
lay education and ministerial training.
Yet it is relevant at several levels.
First, in the West, ministerial training has largely been tied to
academic models associated with the university system. One can already find this trend in the Middle
Ages as monastic orders tied their training to, for example, Oxford and
Cambridge universities in England. The
relationship of ministerial training and university education is presently a
question also facing African countries, whether students seek that training
within the university or under the validating or accrediting purview of the
department of education and universities.
As theological education became possible in the post-communist world of
Eastern Europe after 1989, various churches eagerly pursued Western, academic
models for theological education. As
African churches continue to develop quality theological education, one of the
burning questions to ask before things go too far is whether the academic model
of the university is really a good model for the Church’s training of persons
for ministry. That discussion, in part,
also has to do with the ‘health’ of academic institutions in Africa.
To be sure, the Church does need academically trained scholars
who know Greek and Hebrew, the history of the Church and its theological
traditions, and the ability to engage the dialogue of higher learning in
general. How are the Church’s scholars to
be trained—in theological colleges with confessional commitments or in
university programmes guided only by academic criteria?
The University in Africa
So, a look at the state of
university education in Africa is helpful in considering a mission focus on
theological education for the African Church.
Following are points taken from Johnson’s African University; the points are my own list from several
chapters in this brief work.
Globally competitive university education
in Africa: Universities have been in steady decline in the post-colonial
era in Africa. 4 universities on the
continent are listed in the top 400 universities of the world: University of
Cape Town, Stellenbosch University, University of the Witwatersrand, and Cairo
University—the 1st three being located in South Africa. All four are threatened with decline, and
those outside the top 400 list are also facing decline.
Language: Universities concerned with
post-colonialism and therefore trying to teach in local languages have not
prepared top ranking students. There is
a need to prepare for global interaction at the higher academic levels—in
Africa, education should be in French or English.
Primary vs. Higher Education: In 1986,
the World Bank pressed African
countries to invest in primary education.
This is now viewed as a major mistake: shifting resources away from
higher education has led to underdevelopment.
Foreign Study: A 2010 report, Financing Higher Education in Africa,
criticizes sending students abroad. On
average, 18% of all expenditure on higher education has gone to this program,
and awards are typically given to privileged social classes rather than the
academically gifted and qualified. Aid external
to Africa contributed $600 million for higher education in 2002-2006, but less
than 30% ever got to Africa. The other
70% was spent in donor countries for Africans studying there. This means that the money has not gone to
develop higher education in Africa.
Return to Africa after Study Abroad:
African students are more likely than others to stay in the countries outside
Africa where they studied rather than return to help their countries.
Development of African universities:
Fast and new development programmes in the post-colonial era included opening
university education to larger numbers.
This democratization of education—an affirmative action plan—has greatly
reduced quality. Numbers of students grew
from 2.7 million university students in 1991 to 9.3 million in 2006. This meant an increase in expenditures that
put universities in worse situations financially due to the need to build new buildings,
expand libraries, diversify research, increase faculty size, etc. Faculty also had greater tasks in
administration and teaching that kept them from research. This further meant that qualified professors
often sought teaching opportunities abroad.
Now, less than 20% of faculty have doctorates in African
universities. One has to ask a question
that sounds elitist—but then, is higher education
not, by definition, elitist? Would not fewer,
better trained students contribute more to the development of a country in
every area than a large number of poorly educated students who have the dignity
of a degree without a quality education?
Post-colonial African countries have at times sought to establish new
universities to create a legacy for the new leaders. The proliferation of campuses divides the
limited assets a country has for education and produces mediocre and poor
programmes. It also undermines any
leading university in the country: instead of building on an established
university’s strengths, the post-colonial government diverts funding
elsewhere. Finally, post-colonial
governments have seldom appreciated the relationship between higher education
and development within the country.
The State of Higher Education in South
Africa
R. W. Johnson next
turns his attention to universities in South Africa, where the university
system was strongest on the continent during the twentieth century but where it
is, in his view, in decline since the 1990s.
If so, while one may wish to turn to South Africa to build on a solid
educational tradition for all of Africa, one quickly realises that the
university system in that country is under great stress. Following are several points taken from
Johnson. While specific on occasion,
they nevertheless raise important issues for university education in
post-colonial Africa in general.
Politics
and Education: The Minister for Higher Education and Training in South
Africa, Blade Nzimande, has intervened at the level of a local university,
disciplining faculty and staff at the Central University of Technology in
2012. He sought to extend his powers
when a court ruled that he had superseded his authority. This raises the concern of personal power
versus policies and procedures and academic autonomy.
Financial
Corruption: At the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (once a strong university
but now an allegedly failing institution), the Vice-Chancellor’s salary in 2012
was the highest in the land, while hundreds of contract staff went unpaid for months.
Social
Engineering versus Academic Excellence: The University of Cape Town has
instituted racial quotas for admissions, thus privileging the previously
oppressed minority but at the expense of academically stronger applicants. The medical school at Stellenbosch University
has been told to embrace the values of diversity, equality, and
transformation—meaning not only in admission policies but also in teaching in
English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa. (There
are no medical textbooks in Xhosa.)
Also, faculty appointments go preferentially to black professors.
Collapse
of Primary and Secondary Education: According to the World Economic Forum‘s Global Competitiveness Report (2011-2012), South Africa rates only 127th
in the world in education. (The 2015-2016 report gives it the same rank out of
140 countries. Zimbabwe, an African
country on the verge of some form of major unrest, is, nevertheless, ranked 47th
in the world.) Yet the South African government
has insisted on opening universities to increasingly more students; the
Minister for Higher Education and Training has the goal of quintupling the
number of university students by 2030 and to gain state control of admissions
at universities. This inevitably
translates into a programme of requiring acceptance at the university level of
large numbers of poorly educated students.
Financing
Education: The Minister for Higher Education and Training, the African
National Congress (ANC) Youth League, and the South Africa Communist Party want
all education to be free. (Note: this
was written before the destructive campus protests in 2015 and 2016 at
universities around the country calling for reduction in, even free, tuition.) Making matters worse, the SA government’s
support of universities has declined.
Two new universities were opened, however—Sol Plaatje University
(Northern Cape, opened in 2014) and the University of Mpumalanga (opened in
2014). Universities are trying to build
up private endowments to survive the dissemination of funds for higher
education among more and more universities.
Yet, when Wits (the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg) gained a surplus of R100m in 2011, unions insisted on
raising wages and argued that no university should make a profit. As the ANC party took power of the government,
they claimed that tribal universities (institutions started in the homelands
under the Apartheid government) had been historically underprivileged. Therefore, the government diverted large sums
to them, weakening other universities.
Three have collapsed and are under administration (Zululand, Walter
Sisulu and Tshwane University of Technology), and Vaal University of Technology
is under review. South Africa now has 25
universities, but only six are, for the time being, viable: Wits, UCT, SU,
Pretoria, Rhodes, and Kwa-Zulu Natal.
Conclusion
Johnson’s analysis is hard-hitting,
although it is supported with examples and statistics that seem difficult to
dispute. One only wishes he were able to
expand the work. The argument does need
more detail for countries outside South Africa, so the work needs to be
considered indicative of issues to evaluate more than final words on any
particular institution. His most
hard-hitting comments centre on South Africa and, especially, the University of
Kwa-Zulu Natal (and this report does not cover all of Johnson's analysis).
We might, as of the last two
academic years, add to Johnson’s concerns about higher education in South
Africa. The present academic year is
coming to an end with rioting throughout the country--more serious rioting and protesting than last year. Two issues, in particular, have instigated
the protests—which have been destructive and even violent on many university
campuses: (1) the cost of tuition—leading to a ‘Fees Must Fall’ campaign of the
protesters; and (2) an interest in ‘Africanising’ education—which is a rather
unclear demand and does not bode well for international respectability in
academic circles. The unrest, however,
has been very disruptive for serious academic work, no matter what one thinks
of the pertinence of the issues.
The main purpose of this
presentation of Johnson’s work is to raise issues about the academy’s relevance
for theological education and, in particular, ministerial training. One
conversation that needs to happen is whether Western models of theological
education that give the process of ministry
training over to academic
institutions is advisable either in theory or in practice. This is particularly an issue in
Africa, where there are serious challenges for the academy per se. Surely there is
value for higher level academic theological degrees, at least for scholars in
the Church, and, if this is to happen, the hope is that the few strong
universities on the continent will survive the social unrest to be able to
offer worthwhile degrees. Preferably, the universities will partner
with the Church in one way or another to bring academic strengths and
ministerial relevance together. Still,
theological education will always suffer greatly at the hands of any purely academic pursuit, and orthodox Christianity will suffer greatly under liberal theological assumptions—as the West is increasingly coming to realise for itself. Cooperation with the academy can yield important benefits to theological education at the higher academic levels--particularly in historical, grammatical, and primary source research but also in socio-political analyses of the context for ministry. As the Church grows in Africa, such studies will be increasingly important.
[1] R.
W. Johnson, African University: The
Critical Case of South Africa and the Tragedy of the UKZN (Tafelberg Short,
2012).
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