Transforming Universities in South Africa

Book excerpt: The idea of transformation in higher education underpins all policy documents, academic literature and on-going debates in South Africa. Transforming Universities in South Africa: Pathways to Higher Education Reform responds to the pressing need to comprehensively review the post-apartheid experience and assess where South Africa’s higher education stands across the continent and globally, particularly within the country’s efforts to overcome decades of socio-economic imbalances. It addresses the question of whether South Africa’s transformation strategy from apartheid to democracy was simply a symbolic new flag-raising and new anthem singing exercise reflecting a transition akin to those limited decolonization projects elsewhere in the world, or whether something more fundamental was possible and was achieved with political and policy implications for other countries in Africa and globally. This volume's ultimate purpose is to provide a basis for imagining new futures in which South Africa higher education in the context of Africa and the global world takes centre stage.