Impact of Homeland Universities on South African higher education: A census analysis

The censuses provide some evidential base for the role of universities and post-matric training institutions in building human resources. A careful analysis of this by province points to how, especially in provinces that were in the former homelands, change in the build-up of human resources through institutions of higher learning was accelerated. The question that has to be asked would be whether or not these could serve as a blueprint for access to higher learning in post-apartheid South Africa and, if so, how such could be executed mindful of the ubiquitous rise of information technology and its impact on contact learning.

The latter, which is about technology, raises a different set of questions which apply to all institutions regardless of whether they were part of the homeland system or not and thus nullifies the approach. That being so restricts observations in the successive census data to the trends that have emerged by province.

There are interesting trends in the data of the censuses that reflect significant inflection points in the acquisition of degrees in provinces that had independent homelands under the apartheid system. All these inflect at the point in time of forty years ago, and thus halt what would have continued to be a precipitous decline in the proportion of those with a degree.

In all other provinces where the decline was also halted at that point in time, the decline tended to continue five years later, unlike in all provinces that have homelands where the reversal in the decline continued to be sustained.

The Eastern Cape, Limpopo, Free State, and North West were effected 45 years ago. And unlike Western Cape, Gauteng, Northern Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal (where some of the homeland university institutions such as Ngoye existed in the early seventies), the decline in the proportion of those with degrees continued to decline.

Looking at the actual proportions of those with degrees from the point of inflection for age 40–44, for Eastern Cape 9.5% improved to 10.2% for those aged 25–29. Limpopo improved from 6.8% for those aged 40–44 to 8.2% for those aged 25–29. Free State for those aged 40–44 the record was 5.6% and improved to 7.2% for those 25–29, whilst North West for those 40–44 moved from 4.2% to a value of 5.9% for those aged 25–29. The comparable numbers for Western Cape are 13.8% and 13.7%, Gauteng is 10.7% and 10.1%, KwaZulu-Natal was 8.9% and 7.4%, Northern Cape was 5.3% to 5.1%. Mpumalanga, whose higher education institution was introduced much later ahead of the Northern Cape, showed 4.2% to 4.4%.

As we look ahead into future investments into higher education, the question we should ask is by how much percentage should we anticipate and plan for growth in post-matric progression and how much resource should be placed to bear to create such an ecosystem. The impacts have to be projected to the contribution of higher education to the development of skills and production of goods and services for the country.

The analysis of the census as a time machine provides a perspective on the contribution or otherwise of homeland institutions to human resources development in the population and, if a regional approach has to be devised, there is some history to use on how such could pan out and could be fed into the model to assess.

Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a board member of the Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ) at Wits, and a distinguished alumnus of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.

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