For sustainable funding and fees, the undergraduate system in South Africa must be restructured

Abstract

South Africa has the most diverse and differentiated higher education system in Africa – despite some persistent attempts at academic drift and mimetic normative isomorphism. Globally, in the 2008 country system ranking by the Shanghai JiaoTong Academic Ranking of World Universities, the South African higher education system was placed in the range between 27 and 33 along with the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Ireland. It is well known that South Africa consistently has four of the five African universities that appear in the Shanghai top 500.Even more impressive is that The Times Higher Education 2016 ranking of BRICS and emerging economies1 places three South African universities in the top 12: the University of Cape Town (UCT) 4th, the University of the Witwatersrand 6th and Stellenbosch University 11th. Brazil and Russia each have only one university in the top 12, and India, with a billion people, has none. China, with their differentiation policy aimed at producing 30 world-class universities, has six in the top 12.