When Visions of the Rainbow Nation Are Not Enough: Effect of Post-Apartheid Higher Education Reform on Social Cohesion in South Africa

Abstract

Under the apartheid state, higher education was structured to maintain and reproduce the subordinate social and economic position of non-Whites. The post-apartheid higher education sector suffered from fragmentation along racial lines, a lack of sustainability, and a structural incapacity to meet the challenges of restructuring and development. After more than a decade of reform, the Ministry of Education announced the plan to restructure the higher education system, consolidating 36 institutions into 21. Institutional mergers were perhaps the most significant structural change to the higher education system since post-apartheid desegregation of universities. This article examines the role of these new higher education institutions in promoting social cohesion within the university and by extension, the society at large. The institutional functions of the new universities are evaluated on the basis of the following indicators: (a) curriculum, (b) institutional climate, (c) perception of fair treatment of all students and (d) mechanisms to adjudicate community differences. Although all these aspects of institutional functions are important, it is the perception of fair treatment across the higher education system that informs desirable behavior that can promote social cohesion in society as a whole.