The state of transformation in South Africa' public universities: research report

Abstract

This report seeks to provide an assessment of the state of the transformation project in South African higher education. It brings to a conclusion the work of the second Ministerial Oversight Committee on Transformation in the South African Public Universities (TOC) appointed by the Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, Honourable MP, Dr Blade Nzimande in 2017. The report is a comprehensive overview of the higher education system from a macro perspective. It offers an assessment of where the universities in the country stand in the current period in relation to key commitments they have made to transform themselves. It follows and builds on important developments and reports which have been published since the report of the 2008 Ministerial Committee. The most important of these are the study produced by the first TOC in 2013 out of which came the Equity Index; a report on the factors hindering transformation by the South African Human Rights Commission in 2016; a study in 2015 to evaluate and assess the extent of gender transformation in higher education by the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) and the Higher Education Transformation Network; a discussion paper produced by Universities South Africa (USAf) in 2015, 'Reflections on Higher Education Transformation'; the report on the 2nd Higher Education Summit of 2015, a Council on Higher Education (CHE) 20-year review in 2016 of the state of health of the higher education sector and various sectoral reports developed within USAf and by the South African Students' Congress.