See

discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260105647

Political Economy of Higher Education:

Comparing South Africa to trends in the World

Article in Higher Education June 2014

DOI: 10.1007/s10734-013-9709-6

CITATIONS READS

9 154

2 authors:

Meenal Shrivastava Sanjiv Shrivastava

Athabasca University LMSERA INC.
25 PUBLICATIONS 25 CITATIONS 21 PUBLICATIONS 71 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Tentative Title - Amma's Daughters (creative historical non-fiction) View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Meenal Shrivastava on 21 May 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

High Educ
DOI 10.1007/s10734-013-9709-6

Political economy of higher education: comparing South

Africa to trends in the world

Meenal Shrivastava Sanjiv Shrivastava

 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract Education is one of the major linchpins of economic, social and political
development of any nation. Recent evidence suggests that higher education can produce
both public and private benefits. Thus, the role of the state in making education policy, and
funding education is indeed critical, and cannot be left to be determined by market forces
alone. Nevertheless, the trend of inadequate government funding for universities, loss of
autonomy, infrastructural decay, falling academic standards, politicization and privatiza-
tion of education, etc. appear to be a worldwide phenomenon and not just restricted to the
developing world. South African higher education shows much promise with respect to
knowledge production and dissemination, to contributing to social equity, economic and
social development and democracy, and to the development needs of the Southern African
region and the African continent. However, higher education in South Africa is under
considerable stress from domestic and international trends that are redefining the nature
and role of public sector post-secondary education (PSE) institutions worldwide. The paper
will outline the role of PSE in the knowledge economy and the impact of the neoliberal
context on the evolution of higher education in South Africa and the world. Given the
significant developmental implications of investment in higher education, the authors argue
that relegating this important public policy issue to the market forces is likely to promote
inequality in the society, along with negative consequences for socio-political stability,
economic sustainability, and knowledge generation.

Keywords Post-secondary education
South African higher education

Educational policy
Knowledge economy
Teaching innovation

Cellphone assisted teaching

M. Shrivastava (&)
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Athabasca University, 10011, 109 Street, Edmonton,
AB T5J 3S8, Canada
e-mail: meenals@athabascau.ca

S. Shrivastava
School of Physics, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

123
 High Educ

Introduction

Higher education institutions exist at the intersection of state, market and civil society,
each with their own specific expectations and internal logic. According to Manuel Castells,
universities perform four major functions (2001: 206212): historically, they have played a
major role as ideological apparatusesexpressing and amplifying the ideological struggles
present in all societies. Secondly, universities are a mechanism to select the dominant
elites. Thirdly, universities play a role in the generation of new knowledge. Finally, the
professional university focuses on training the bureaucracy. He goes on to argue that the
balance between these functions changes; because universities are social systems and
historically produced institutions (2001: 212). However, in a climate of worldwide youth
unemployment challenges, the chorus of job-specific education at universities and research
aligned with industry needs is rising in industrialized and developing nations alike. This
has led to a redefinition of the core social purposes and functions of universities to serve
purely utilitarian ends and become instruments of the economy, and industry. In this paper,
we would like to argue that in the context of an era of knowledge-based economies and
societies, universities have to have a more complex and wider social character, which is
compromised by the short term priorities of dominant industry. Most importantly, as the
institutional location of a large number of intellectuals, and as part of their knowledge
dissemination function, universities need to serve as catalysts of public intellectual debate,
and engage vocally and critically with vital questions related to the nature and trajectory of
the contemporary political economy, domestically and internationally.
Our paper is a discussion of the mechanism through which the role of the university is
being redefined and the political economic implications of the shift in higher education. This
paper explores the relevance of higher education in the so called knowledge economy, and
the changing relationship of post-secondary education (PSE) institutions with governments in
the neoliberal context, comparing South Africa to trends in other parts of the world. Finally,
the paper considers the rise of new technology in education delivery along with the tech-
nological viability and the implications of the use of mobile phone technology in large size
classes. Although tertiary or post-secondary institutions includes universities as well as other
institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning or vocational training such as
colleges, technical training institutes, and others, the focus of this paper is consciously on the
changing role of universities and its political economic consequences.
For developing countries in particular, tertiary education can be seen as an investment in
the creation of a middle class in an economy due to the correlation between university
enrolment rates and labour productivity growth (see Wolff and Gittleman 1993). The
growth of the middle class in Asia is well documented and its role in increasing the
economic productivity of their countries is undeniable (see for instance Banerjee and Duflo
2008; Bussolo et al. 2007; Kharas 2010; Ravallion 2009). For instance, by 2008, Asian
countries substantially reduced the number of people living on less than $2 per day, so that
the middle class making $2 per day or more accounted for 57 % of the entire population
based on household survey data. This is substantially higher than Sub-Saharan Africas
percentage of the population in this income/expenditure bracket of 34 % (see Chun and
Natalie 2010; p. 16). Indeed there are signs of progress for higher education in Sub-
Saharan Africa, and some African countries have put in place innovative policies to
strengthen tertiary education systems; but this progress is limited and slow.
However, it would be a fallacy to assume that trends in Africa have little to do with
global trends or that the neglect of tertiary education is only confined to the global south.
The worldwide ascendance of Neoliberalismthe political ideology that supports market

123
High Educ

liberalization, privatization, deregulation, and decreasing the role of the public sector in a
societyhas ensured the redefinition of PSEs in market terms produced and necessitated
by the withdrawal of the state from the funding of its public universities. For instance in the
United States, the percentage of the states contribution to the operating expenses of a
PSEs has fallen from 80 to 10 % or less in the past 40 years (see Saunders 2010). Such
trends have not only fundamentally altered the political economy of the United States, but
also have had a direct bearing on the Washington Consensus, the set of market-oriented
macro-economic policies that guide the international financial institutions influencing
domestic policies in the global south. The next section thus looks at broad trends in higher
education in the context of the knowledge economy (an interconnected, globalized econ-
omy where knowledge resources such as technology and expertise are as critical as other
economic resources) and neoliberalism (the political and economic ideology driving
economic globalization, and the financialization of national and international economies).

Higher education in the knowledge economy

Private benefits of higher education for individuals are well establishedbetter employ-
ment prospects, higher salaries, a greater ability to save and invest, better health and
improved quality of life, higher life expectancy, etc. However, public benefits of investing
in higher education are less widely recognized. Indeed, as recently as the 1980s, the
widespread view ranged from there is no evidence that higher education yields social
benefits to higher education may promote social unrest and political instability
(Friedman and Friedman 1980; p. 34). Therefore, instead of using tertiary schooling as a
vehicle of public investment for human development, the period since the 1970s was lost
due to the myth that there is little public benefit to be had through higher education.
Part of the problem is revealed in the literature review of studies that attempt to quantify
the rates of return of investment in tertiary education, and their inability to measure or
account for social benefits, or other externalities. The earnings of educated individuals do
not reflect the external benefits that affect society as a whole. Such benefits are known as
externalities or spillover benefits, since they spill over to other members of the community.
They are often hard to identify and even harder to measure. If one could include these
externalities in the form of an individuals human capital enhancing the productivity of
other factors of production through channels that are not internalized by the individual,
then social rates of return may well be higher than private rates of return to education (see
Heckman and Klenow 1997; Psacharopoulos et al. 2002; Venniker 2001).
As Bloom et al. (2005) point out, because of the longstanding belief that primary and
secondary education are drivers of social welfare and thus more important than tertiary
education, the international development community has encouraged African govern-
ments relative neglect of higher education. For instance, as recently as 2000, the World
Education Forum organized by UESCO adopted the Dakar Framework for Action, which
emphasized primary education but did not even mention tertiary education (UNESCO
2000). As a result of this belief, from 1985 to 1989, only 17 per cent of the World Banks
worldwide education-sector spending was on higher education, which declined to just
seven percent from 1995 to 1999 (Bloom et al. 2005: p. 1). Naturally, higher education in
Africa has suffered due to this approach and the resultant reductions in spending. Many
African countries struggle to maintain even low enrollment levels, and the academic
research output in the region is among the lowest in the world (see World Bank 2002;
Okome 2007).

123
 High Educ

Partially overcoming this difficulty of quantification, in recent years, organizations such

as the World Bank and major donor governments have begun to concede that tertiary
education may have a positive impact on economic development, thus emphasizing a
policy focus that is not only reliant on rate of return analyses, but also takes into account
the major external benefits of higher education (see for example Psacharopoulos et al.
2002; Psacharopoulos 2004; Tilak 2003; Venniker 2001). In response, UNESCO and the
World Bank convened a Task Force on Higher Education and Society, which brought
together experts from thirteen countries to explore the future of tertiary education in
developing countries. The Task Force report, Higher Education in Developing Countries:
Peril and Promise, argued that higher education is essential to developing countries if they
are to prosper in a world economy where knowledge has become a vital area of advantage.
In 1999, the World Bank published Knowledge for Development, a report that looked at
how developing countries could use knowledge to narrow the income gap with rich world
economies. It showed a correlation between education in mathematics, science, and
engineering and improved economic performance. It also showed that the private rate of
return to tertiary education, at twenty percent was similar to that for secondary schooling.
The report recommended that developing countries train teachers using distance learning
and create open universities that use satellites and the Internet to deliver courses.
Consequently, the spread of distance-learning institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa has
accelerated in recent years. The Open Learning Network of the University of KwaZulu-
Natal in South Africa combines distance learning with off-hours instruction on Saturdays
to rural and disadvantaged students. The University of Namibia and the Universite Marien
Ngouabi in Congo-Brazzaville combine distance learning with face-to-face schooling,
while Tanzanias Open University has over 10,000 students and the Zimbabwe Open
University over 18,000. Nigeria has recently established an Open University, and other
countries such as Ghana and Ethiopia have announced their intention to follow suit. New
regional partnerships have also emerged. For instance, the Southern Africa Regional
Universities Association (SARUA) is a partnership with 46 members from 13 countries, to
help promote leadership; spread best practice; develop public policy dialogues; and
encourage initiatives that respond to regional and continental needs.
To monitor its new emphasis on knowledge, the World Bank has created a Knowledge
Economy Index (KEI). This benchmark measures the performance of countries on four
aspects of the knowledge economythe environment for knowledge development within
the economic and institutional regime; education; innovation; and information and com-
munications technology. As the 2012 figures shows, most African countries languish near
the bottom of the KEI, with the exception of South Africa, Botswana, and Mauritius which
record scores near the middle (World Bank 2012a).
Clearly, public investment in higher education has been negatively affected by the
limitations of the quantification of the economic benefits of higher education, particularly
in the Global South. Additionally, there is another important factor that has been putting
the brakes on public investment on higher educationthe ascendance of neoliberal ide-
ology driving public policy worldwide. Although followed in varying degrees in most
contemporary societies, nowhere is the influence of neoliberalism on higher education
more starkly illustrated than by trends in the United States of America.

Global trends in the commodification of education: or un levelling the playing field

Goldin et al. (2010) propose that the twentieth century was not only the American Century
but also the Human Capital Century, since it was the American educational system that

123
High Educ

made America the richest nation in the world. At the start of the twentieth century, United
States adopted a commitment to universal education as a public policy, which was a novel
and contentious goal at the time. As late as the 1930s, America was virtually alone in the
world in providing universally free and accessible secondary schools and government-
funded college-prep schools for its many well-endowed universities. The leading educa-
tional theorist of the era, John Dewey and other educators argued that the post-literacy
schooling of the masses at the secondary and higher levels would improve citizenship,
develop higher-order traits, and produce the managerial and professional leadership needed
for rapid economic modernization (see Dewey 1897).
The commitment to expanded education past the age of fourteen set the U.S. apart from
Europe for much of the 20th century where, apart from technical training schools, Euro-
pean secondary schooling was dominated by children of the wealthy and the social elites,
and where few youth attended past fourteen years of age. Claudia Goldin argues that the
rapid growth of secondary and higher education in the U.S. was facilitated by public
funding, openness, gender neutrality, local (and also state) control, separation of church
and state, and an academic curriculum (see Goldin 2001). Undoubtedly, along with rela-
tively high wages for the working class and political support for income leveling gov-
ernment policies, the egalitarian approach to education had been a vital component for the
creation of a middle class society of relatively low levels of inequality in the US, as well
as its superior performance in the world economy in the past century.
The abrupt halt and subsequent slowdown of gains in educational attainment began at
about the same time as the trend of high income inequality, dubbed the Great Diver-
gence by Paul Krugman (2007). This trend began in the 1970s, leading to declining labor
union memberships and resulting diminishing political clout, decreased expenditure on
social services, and less government redistribution. This period also saw the transformation
of American politics away from a focus on the middle class, with a transition of the
American elite from pillars of society to a special interest group, as aggressive and well-
financed lobbyists and pressure groups effectively acted on behalf of upper income groups
in the power corridors (see Noah 2013). Starting in the mid-1970s, as incomes became
dramatically less equal in the U.S, educational attainment stagnated. As a result, during the
Great Divergence, the education system was unable to increase the supply of better-
educated workers. Goldin et al. (2010) believe this is not a coincidence; arguing that
technological change, education, and inequality have been involved in a kind of race.
During the first eight decades of the twentieth century, the supply of educated workers was
high in the U.S., directly benefitting technological innovation and operation. This had the
effect of boosting income for most people and lowering inequality. However, the reverse
has been true since about 1980; decades of funding cuts and the marketization of education
took a steep toll on PSEs and this educational slow-down has been accompanied by rising
inequality in the U.S (see CBO 2011).
Neoliberal advocates would argue that income inequality is an acceptable sacrifice to
make in return for income mobility and that it is irrelevant in the face of economic
opportunity in a globalized world (see for instance, Friedman 1980). However, particularly
in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008/09, income inequality is now being understood as
a cause of the decline in social mobility, particularly in the industrialized economies (see
IMF 2011; Krugman n.d). Explanations for the great divergence of income levels in
America include public policy and party politics, aside from the impact of race, gender,
immigration, transformative technology, tax policy, decline of labour, and the rise of
globalized trade. According to Noah (2013) the two biggest contributors to income
inequality in the US are, firstly, the executive capture of corporate governance, which is

123
 High Educ

responsible for 30 % of the post-1978 increase in inequality; secondly the various failures
in the US education system, which is responsible for another 30 percent.
Unfortunately, instead of paying any heed to the lessons of inequality and its rela-
tionship with higher education from the American example, many countries are steadily set
on the same path. For instance since the 1990s, the Canadian welfare model has suffered
from severe funding cuts, marketization, and privatization. Higher education in Canada has
gone from being viewed as a top priority for human development to an area for funding
reductions and cutbacks to operating grants. During the same period, Canada saw
increasing income inequality and a backward slid on many social-political goals compared
to other OECD countries. Some of the factors increasing income disparity in Canada are
the effects of institutional shifts such as dwindling unionization rates, stagnating minimum
wages, and falling top marginal tax rates are (see Yalnizyan 2010; OECD 2011). Addi-
tionally, this downward trend in redistribution can be directly linked to the entrenchment of
the neoliberal view of the role of the state, which is manifested in the reduced role of
means-tested transfers (see Shrivastava et al. 2014).
Rising income inequality also continues to be a key challenge for South Africa despite
the end of the apartheid in 1994. Although South Africa is classified as a middle-income
country, according to the United Nations Development Programmes (UNDP) Millennium
Development Goals country report 2010, high poverty levels in a majority of the popu-
lation qualifies the country as a low-income country. South Africa has the highest income
inequality in the world measured by the Gini Index, which has remained relatively
unchanged between 1990 and 2011 (World Bank 2012b). Therefore, while the South
African economy is witnessing positive growth and declining poverty, it is also experi-
encing increasing inequality which adversely impacts economic development, socio-
political stability, and the progress of health and education (see Sharma 2012).
Inequality is on the rise all over the world; and now in the post-2008/09 era of fiscal
contraction, new waves of austerity measures are washing over both hemispheres of the
globe, posing further threats to developmental goals and equitable policies (Ortiz et al.
2013). In this scenario, how are the PSE institutions faring, how are they responding to the
new challenges, and why should we care?

PSE in the neoliberal context

As mentioned before, the rise of mass higher education and the expansion of public
universities in the U.S and later in the rest of the world, led to an unprecedented
democratization of higher education. This was closely associated with the transformation
of scholarship in the arts, humanities and social sciences. However, due to the imperatives
of commercialization in the past few decades, education has become a positional good in a
highly inegalitarian neo-liberal knowledge economy. The PSE sector has been transformed
from a service to the public, to serving the market with the latter as a source of revenues.
The stratification of universities and education is contributing to various forms of social
stratification. For instance, the Harkin Report (2012) in the U.S castigated for-profit higher
education institutions for poor quality and poor value for money, while pointing out that
for-profit education is disproportionately used by students from disadvantaged back-
grounds. This is true of most countries in the Global North and South where declining
government support for education has led to a massive rise of the for-profit education
industry, accumulation of student debt, precarious employment conditions for education
workers, dependence on corporate donations, emphasis on research commercialization, and

123
High Educ

intensification of academic managerialism. Neoliberal transformations of the university

coincide with PSE executives with bonuses and CEO-like remuneration, ensuring the
complicity of boards and senior administration in the neoliberal ideology (Jeppesen et al.
2012). As a result, in the same week that provincial governments across Canada announced
deep funding cuts to operational grants of universities (see Acuna 2013), the federal
government announced a major funding boost to marketing Canada as an education des-
tination to foreign students who pay five times more than the average Canadian fee (see
Kofmel and Karl 2013).
Additionally, government policy towards higher education appears to be driven by the
notion that global competitiveness challenges will be solved simply by a massive increase
in the output of scientists, technologists, engineers, mathematicians, and medical scientists
by investing in the so-called STEM disciplinessciences, technology, engineering, and
mathematics. Consequently, for many years now, government policies have been pushing
universities to employ industry-facing research with an applied orientation, both in the
Global North and the South. While the STEM disciplines are vitally important, in a highly
competitive and largely borderless world, successful companies, innovative nations, and
healthy communities also depend on management, marketing, communications, design,
languages, culture, and many other disciplines. Undervaluing these disciplines in this
complicated world of intertwined, complex, and social challenges is a very short sighted
strategy at best, and counter-productive at worst since quantitative reasoning, critical
thinking, effective writing and communications, problem-solving; and ethical and social
reasoning are competencies for any skilled job, and for every engaged citizen. The limi-
tation of this notion is obvious in the decline in fundamental or curiosity-driven research
(see Remedios 2000; Calvert and Martin 2001). The move away from unfettered or Blue
Sky research was supposed to improve innovation and competitiveness indicators,
however in the absence of private business spending on innovation and R&D, such policy
has only led to fundamental changes in the kind of research being conducted at univer-
sities, without necessarily fulfilling the promise of economic efficiency. Additionally,
government funding cuts to universities are leading to rising operational costs, hiring
freeze, and large classes.
Even in South Africa, under the direction of the Growth, Equity and Redistribution
(GEAR) macro-economic framework of 1996, the nature of the national discourse has been
altered towards a knowledge system that is driven by the competitiveness of South Africas
industrial products. It is no coincidence then that the country saw a 50 % decline in basic
or fundamental research, compared with 1991 figures where 75 % of higher education
sector research was classified as basic research (see Bawa et al. 2002). During the same
period, university funding declined in terms of the proportion of total state finance com-
mitted to higher education from 4 % in 1999 to 2.5 % in 2007 forcing universities to raise
tuition fees sharply. As a consequence, as student numbers grew steadily due to urbani-
zation and increasing population density, faculty numbers at universities remained static,
further contributing to the disturbing 45 % dropout rate among higher education students
in South Africa (see IEASA 2012; DOE 2010).
South Africa inherited a higher education system which was profoundly shaped by
social, political and economic inequalities of class, race, gender, region and institution
bestowed by the history of Apartheid. Therefore, it was no surprise to see the new con-
stitution and the post-1994 policies emphasizing higher education not only as human
resource development, but as a crucial arena vital to economic and social transformation
and the development of a nascent democracy. However, the general decline in public
subsidies to universities and financial pressures on universities do not augur well for

123
 High Educ

attracting and retaining a new generation of academics, especially from marginalized

communities given the opportunity costs of deferred income for first generation graduates
in the context of family expectations and economic responsibilities. While the tertiary
institutions of South Africa have to deal with critical issues of threats of the legacies of
intellectual colonisation and racialisation (du Toit 2000), and the moral responsibility of
the substantive duties to deracialize and decolonize intellectual spaces (Bentley et al.
2006), this paper limits itself to the more functional aspect of tertiary education in South
Africa, which has relevance for a large number of universities facing funding cuts in the
developing and the developed world.

Why does size matter in teaching a class?

Many studies suggest that large class environments adversely affect the quality of the
educational experience, manifested by poor levels of engagement with the study material,
lower levels of motivation and/or completion (see for instance Mulryan-Kyne 2010; Exeter
et al. 2010). This is particularly problematic in a context where students enter higher
education institutions without significant problem-solving and critical thinking skills, since
large class environments typically reinforce didactic teaching and learning in the absence
of intense studentteacher interactions. According to Benton et al. (2013), in very large
classes, instructors are more likely to emphasize factual knowledge and less likely to
develop communication skills. In turn, in very large classes students are less likely to
report progress on communication skills and creative capacities, such as writing, inventing,
designing, and performing.
A recent study (Hornsby et al. 2013) attests to the expanding size of classes at all levels
and across all disciplines of higher education in South Africa. The authors of the volume
accept the growing size of their classes as fait accompli in the context of declining
government financial support coupled with the push to increase student enrolments to
enhance human and economic development in the country. This study includes perspec-
tives from the social and biological sciences, media studies, library sciences, learning
support, and education, in an effort to analyse conceptual issues facing large class teaching
in higher education in a developing country context.
We would like to contend that large classes do not only pose a potential threat to the
quality of the educational environment, but also have ramifications for developing coun-
tries where higher education is a core element in the economic and societal development
process, as well as developed countries where socio-economic inequalities have grown to
unstable proportions. Albeit not at the PSE level, a stark illustration of the negative impact
of large class size is provided in the most comprehensive study nearly a decade ago;
Project STAR (Steps to Achieving Resilience), a three-year, federally funded research
project consisting of an intervention with preschoolers enrolled in the Head Start program
at Oregon, United States. This project was conducted from 1999 to 2003 and the goal of the
program was to increase literacy skills of at-risk children by improving their learning
environments by increasing the amount of planned and focused activities. Aside from a
comprehensive analysis of the research literature on class size, school funding and the
quality of education, the research showed that small classes of between 15 and 20 students
result in learning gains as measured by standardized tests in reading and mathematics, with
the most marked improvement in the earlier grades. The advantages gained from being in
small classes have been shown to have a lasting benefit into the later years of students
lives. Significantly, this study showed that small classes have a beneficial effect on the
academic achievement of children from low-income families and those learning English as

123
High Educ

a second language and points to a correlation with antisocial behaviour, crime, as well as
future skills (see Kaminski et al. 2003). The findings of this study are in line with the trends
in PSE as well, of much lower student performance and retention in large classes, fol-
lowing from the scaling-up and thinning-down of conventional teaching and assessment
practices. Given the legacy of Apartheid in South Africa that created the persistent socio-
economic divide along ethnic lines, it is easy to see that marginalized communities will be
once again at the receiving end of the negative consequences of this shift in the PSE sector.
However, is it possible to buck the trend by doing things differently?

A technological solution?

Under pressure from receding state support and increasing operating costs, universities
around the world are turning to new technology for coping with increasingly large classes
and static faculty numbersfrom Clicker and whiteboard enabled classrooms to take
attendance, quiz students, or take a survey; to Course and Learning Management Systems
such as Blackboard, Angel, Sakai, Oncourse, and Moodle to deliver and manage
instructional content (see Hornsby et al. 2013 for an overview of the adaptation of some
technological solutions in South Africa). The next big thing in this quest to serve more
students with dwindling resources is Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), online
courses aimed at large-scale interactive participation and open access via the web. Orig-
inating within the open educational resources (OER) movement in 2008, MOOCs are a
recent development in distance education. Nevertheless, by early 2013, scores of univer-
sities in Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia had announced partnerships with the large
American MOOC providers, such as Coursera, Udacity, and edX (see Lewin and Tamar
2013). In addition to traditional course materials, MOOCs provide interactive user forums
that help build a community for the students, professors, and teaching assistants. Typically,
MOOCs do not offer academic credit or charge tuition fees, however, the partner uni-
versities do both. In February 2013 the American Council on Education announced that
they would recommend that its members accept transfer credit from a few MOOC courses,
though even the universities which deliver MOOC courses said that they would not accept
the transfer credit. The high tuition fees charged by these elite universities give them a
major incentive against accepting transfer credit from free classes (see Korn and Melissa
2013).
Massive open online courses are being touted as a major part of a larger disruptive
innovation taking place in the higher education industry (see Barber et al. 2013). In
particular, the breathless advocates of MOOCs are projecting that the many services at
present offered under the current university business model are likely to become unbundled
and sold to their diverse customers individually or in newly formed bundles (Watters and
Audrey 2012). These services include research, curriculum design, content generation,
teaching, assessment and certification, and student placement. MOOCs threaten the current
business model by potentially selling teaching, assessment, and/or placement separately
from the current package of services. Not only does this point to the further corporati-
zation of the traditional university, but it is also questionable whether such a move will
increase or decrease inequality in our societies, and even among countries. It is significant
to note that all the providers so far are corporations based in North America, and that even
the most sanguine advocates of MOOC among the elite institutions in the United States do
not really consider MOOCs as an alternative to small face-to-face group interactions for
themselves, as evidenced by their consistently low ratio of students to faculty.

123
 High Educ

Additionally, producing and delivering MOOCs is a technological challenge, since

unlike traditional courses, MOOCs require several videographers, instructional designers,
IT specialists, and platform specialists. The platforms are designed to be available to
students at all times during the course, unlike traditional courses, and often have high
quality technological requirements for media/content sharing websites due to the large
number of students involved with a class. As a result, MOOCs use Cloud computing and
other applications software technology. Course delivery involves non-synchronous access
to videos and other learning material, exams and other assessment, as well as online
forums. Moreover, it is important to note that despite the apparent attractiveness of the
openness of creation, structure and operation of MOOCs, only about 10 % of the tens of
thousands of students who sign up complete the course (see Duke University 2013).
Using trademark technologies based in the global north is not only expensive, but can
also inhibit home grown innovation that takes into account local social and technological
contexts. For instance, the development and delivery of MOOC presupposes high band
width for internet in regions that are still unable to ensure uninterrupted electricity supply.
An example of a home-grown experiment with locally available technology is provided
here to contrast with the corporate supported technological solutions being offered to
universities struggling with large class sizes.

Here, there, and everywhere a cellphone

While teaching Fluid Mechanics to first year engineering students, one of the authors of
this paper lecturing in the department of Physics, University of the Witwatersrand, at the
time, noted the total unpreparedness of students in terms of their familiarity with the topic,
principles of physics, inability to take lecture notes, and the fear of asking questions in
class. At the same time, he noticed the ubiquitous presence of cell phones in his class of
882 students, who were being taught in four separate sections or diagonals of nearly 200
students each. He noticed that seventy percent of the students brought printed notes or
textbooks to highlight in during the class. However, this was neither helping students to
prepare good lecture notes, nor was it facilitating class participation. Given the large size
of the class, the level of unpreparedness of the majority of the students, and the high
proportion of students from disadvantaged communities, he decided to use the most
commonly used mobile technology at their disposal to facilitate individualized interaction
which would involve no extra cost to the students or the university.
In his class, nearly fifty percent of the students had smart phones, and the rest of the
class was nearly evenly divided between users of picture-only phones and text-only
phones. To accommodate the three different capabilities, he provided lecture notes to
students in three different formatsfillable PDF files for the smart phone users; image files
for the photo-only phone users; and series of short messages for text-only phones. The
objective was to allow students to communicate directly with the instructor via email or
text, as well as to learn to condense the course materials being lectured in class. After the
first week, it was clear that the limited memory of text-based phones was not going to be
sufficient to adequately receive these files; hence, the text messaging was abandoned.
Instead, the fillable PDF files were made available to all students through the course
website. Particularly, 5 days before a test and 2 weeks after the completion of every
section, complete version of the lecture notes were provided to all students on the course
website, since all students had access to the computers at the university library and some
had access to a computer at home. All students had the option of using their phones in class
or the computer at any time to access the materials and to contact the instructor.

123
High Educ

After 4 weeks of this experiment, the results of the first test were disappointingly
close to the general trend of about thirty percent of the class passing the test. However, it
was clear in the tutorials and student-faculty interactions that the students ability for
condensing and processing the lectures was improving, and that the main barrier for
many students during this time had been the shift in the mode of learning from high
school to the university. Another notable trend was increased class attendance due to the
introduction of live slide by slide download of lecture notes via the classroom Wi-Fi,
since the students were not able to copy, print, or forward these secure documents, and
needed a new password every day to access every new batch of notes. Initially battling to
effectively use their mobile devices, such as the comment option in the PDF-readers,
eventually many more students were using the mobile format notes for revision of
concepts, principle, and laws of physics, with significantly positive impact on class
interactions.
The second test was written in the eighth week of the course in which nearly sixty-five
percent of the class passed, showing a significant improvement that defied any previous
exam trends, and proved the value of integrating the ubiquitous mobile technology in
course delivery and student engagement. All this was achieved without the aid of
expensive corporate licensing or additional hardware. By the end of the year, the pass rate
in this Physics course was higher than in other required and core courses for first year
engineering, such as Maths and Mechanics, which historically tend to have a higher pass
rate than Physics. In the next phase of this experiment, the author intends to convert the
power point slides into animation or video files with or without audio. This mode of
content delivery can be easily implemented in a variety of settings, bridging the limitations
of distance as well as campus-based universities, struggling with ever expanding classes in
all disciplines.
However, it is also important to note the limitation of this particular case-study, which is
significant for the applicability of this method in higher level courses in the sciences as
well as the more dynamic or critical-thinking oriented disciplines in the social sciences,
humanities, and others. The underlying pedagogical model of content delivery was not a
concern in this experiment since the core content of first year courses in engineering is
rather fixed and very standardized. Indeed this is potentially problematic since effective
approaches to using technology in higher education often need to be supported by corre-
sponding shifts in content and context (see Watson 2001; Archambault et al. 2010;
Manches et al. 2010). While the emerging political economy of higher education suggests
an increase in the diversity of educational contexts, technology assisted learning could
indeed offer an important toolkit with which to increase choice and respond to the needs
arising. However, it is also important to acknowledge that these technologies are driven by
the same market forces and neoliberal ideologies that are creating inequities and frag-
mentations in the education system in the first place. Therefore, technological solutions
need to be mindful of the large differences not only in levels of penetration of technology,
but also pedagogies between, and within, institutions.

Conclusion

From ancient centres of learning in South Asia, to Hellenic academies, medieval semi-
naries and guilds, to modern institutions of higher education, universities have been
evolving for several millennia. Over the past few decades, this evolution has intensified
significantly, profoundly changing universities worldwide. Some have referred to the most

123
 High Educ

recent version of the evolution of the university as the corporate university, others as the
neoliberal university, claiming that the university has become a place that is driven by
output and profit making and ever increasing levels of competition (See Flood et al. 2010).
This competition is a globalized one, where simultaneously, academic jobs have become
precarious, knowledge generation has been replaced by industry-focused research, critical
enquiry and life-long learning are replaced by degree production, and class sizes have
expanded to unrealistic proportions by any pedagogical consideration. What role, then,
does the university play today in forming and distributing knowledge and critical thinking,
and what role could it play in the near future?
As pointed out by the paper, there is a huge amount of evidence to prove the necessity
of investment in human capital and protecting the capacity of knowledge generation of the
modern university. Additionally, it is well established that education systems play a crucial
role in promoting citizenship, identity, equality of opportunity and social inclusion, social
cohesion as well as economic growth and employment. In the nascent democracies of the
Global South and the increasingly unequal societies of the global north, focusing public
interventions on disadvantaged groups is likely to be optimal in terms of efficiency as well
as equity, since these are liable to be worst affected by market failures such as credit
market constraints, and asymmetric structures and information. Moreover, it is unclear that
technology, which is offered as the panacea for all that ails our interconnected societies
from inequality, the environment, recessions, to large classesif employed indiscrimi-
nately, can solve or further entrench these problems. As the case-study in the paper shows,
technological solutions can be very simple and effective, but need to be rooted in an
understanding of the local social and technological, as well as disciplinary context, rather
than being driven by corporate compulsions of scale efficiencies and profit maximization.
However, technological solutions can only go so far in addressing an essentially political
problem, since government policy making in both hemispheres appears to be stricken by an
anti-intellectual bias in this knowledge economy, where government policy is being driven
by the dominant logic of neoliberalism rather than by the obligations of its role as the
provider of public and social services.

References

Acuna, R. (2013) Whats behind the Education Cuts? Conservative Ideology at Work, Vue Weekly, March
27, http://vueweekly.com/front/story/whats_behind_education_cuts/, Accessed on April 17, 2013.
Archambault, Leanna, M., & Barnett, Joshua H. (2010). Revisiting technological content knowledge:
Exploring the TPACK framework. Computer and Education, 55(4), 16561662.
Banerjee, A., & Duflo, E. (2008). What is middle class about the middle classes around the world? Journal
of Economic Perspectives, 22(2), 328.
Barber, Michael, Donnelly, Katelyn, & Rizvi, Saad. (2013). An avalanche is coming: Higher education and
the revolution ahead. London: Institute for Public Policy Research.
Bawa, Ahmed & Johann Mouton (2002) Research, in Transformation in Higher Education: Global
Pressures and Local Realities in South Africa (pp. 195218). Cape Town: Centre for Higher Education
Transformation.
Bentley, K., Habib, A., & Morrow, S. (2006). Academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and the cor-
poratised university in contemporary South Africa. Pretoria: Council on Higher Education.
Benton, Stephen L. and Pallett, William H. (2013) Class size matters, Inside higher education, http://www.
insidehighered.com/views/2013/01/29/essay-importance-class-size-higher-education#ixzz2UT4zq5hj,
Accessed on May 26, 2013.
Bloom, D., David C., and Kevin C. (2005). Higher education and economic development in Africa, http://
siteresources.worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/278200-1099079877269/547664-
1099079956815/HigherEd_Econ_Growth_Africa.pdf (Accessed on March 28, 2013).

123
High Educ

Bussolo, M., De Hoyos, R. E., Medvedev, D., & van der Mensbrugghe, D. (2007). Global growth and
distribution: Are China and India reshaping the world? World bank policy research working paper no.
4392. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Calvert, Jane, & Martin, Ben R. (2001). Changing conceptions of basic research? Background document for
the workshop on policy relevance and measurement of basic research Oslo 2930 October. Brighton:
Science and Technology Policy Research.
Castells, M. (2001). Universities as dynamic systems of contradictory functions, In muller, J., Cloete, N, &
Badat, S. (eds), Challenges of Globalisation: South African Debates with Manuel Castells (pp.
206223). Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman.
CBO (Congressional Budget Office) (2011). Trends in the distribution of household income between 1979
and 2007, October, http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/10-25-
HouseholdIncome.pdf, Accessed on March 28, 2013.
Chun, N. (2010) Middle class size in the past, present, and future: A description of trends in Asia, ADB
Economics Working Paper Series, No. 217, September 2010. Manila: Asian Development Bank.
Department of Basic Education (DoE). (2010). Education statistics in South Africa 2009. Pretoria: DoE.
Dewey, J. (1897). My pedagogic creed. School Journal, 54, 7780.
dos Remedios, Cris. (2000). The value of fundamental research: A discussion paper for the international
union for pure and applied biophysics. Sydney: IUPAB.
du Toit, A. (2000). From autonomy to accountability: Academic freedom under threat in South Africa.
Social Dynamics, 26, 76133.
Duke University (2013). Bioelectricity: A quantitative approachDuke Universitys First MOOC, February
5, http://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/6216/Duke_Bioelectricity_MOOC_
Fall2012.pdf, Accessed on April 19, 2013.
Exeter, D. J., Ameratunga, S., Ratima, M., Morton, S., Dickson, M., Hsu, D., et al. (2010). Student
engagement in very large classes: The teachers perspective. Studies in Higher Education, 35(7),
761775.
Flood, RR., & Rosalind G. (2010). Breaking the silence: The hidden injuries of the Neoliberal University
in secrecy and silence in the research process: Feminist reflections (pp. 228244). London: Routledge.
Friedman, Milton, & Friedman, Rose. (1980). Free to choose: A personal statement. New York: Harcourt,
Brace and Jovanovich.
Goldin, C. (2001). The human-capital century and American leadership: Virtues of the past. Journal of
Economic History, 61(2), 263290.
Goldin, C. & Lawrence F. K. (2010) The race between education and technology. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Harkin Report (2012). For profit higher education: The failure to safeguard the federal investment and
ensure student success. http://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/for_profit_report/Contents.pdf, Acces-
sed on April 16, 2013.
Heckman, J., & Klenow, P. (1997). Human capital policy. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Hornsby, D., Ruksana, O. & Jacqueline De, M.-A. (2013). Large class pedagogy: Interdisciplinary per-
spectives for quality higher education (forthcoming).
IMF. (2011). World economic outlook. Washington: International Monetary Fund.
International Education Association of South Africa (IEASA). (2012). Higher education in context: Study
South Africa-the guide to higher education in South Africa (12th ed.). Pretoria: IEASA.
Jeppesen, S. & Holly, N. (2012). Beyond academic freedom: Canadian neoliberal universities in the global
context, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies: Out of the Ruins, the University to Come,
Number 28, Fall, 87114.
Kaminski, R., Stormshak, E. A., Good, R., & Goodman, M. R. (2003). Prevention of substance abuse with
rural head start children and families: Results of project STAR. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 16,
S11S26.
Kharas, H. (2010). The emerging middle class in developing countries, working paper No. 285. Paris: OECD
Development Centre.
Kofmel, K. (2013). Canadas education brand gets funding boost to help attract students from abroad, Ed-
monton Journal, 29 March, http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/national/Canada?education?brand?
gets?funding?boost?help?attract/8171578/story.html, Accessed on April 17, 2013.
Korn, M. (2013). Big MOOC coursera moves closer to academic acceptance, Wall Street Journal, February
7, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324906004578288341039095024.html, Accessed
on April 18, 2013.
Krugman, Paul. (2007). The conscience of a liberal. New York: W. W Norton and Company.
Krugman, P. (n.d). Inequality and crisis: Coincidence or causation, http://www.princeton.edu/*pkrugman/
inequality_crises.pdf, Accessed on March 28, 2013.

123
 High Educ

Lewin, T. (2013). Universities abroad join partnerships on the web, The New York Times, February 20,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/education/universities-abroad-join-mooc-course-projects.html?_
r=0, Accessed on April 18, 2013.
Manches, A., Barry P., Charles C., Ian C., & Mike S. (2010). Year three final report: Shaping contexts to
realise the potential of technologies to support learning, CAPITALCurriculum and Pedagogy in
Technology Assisted Learning, mimeo.
Mulryan-Kyne, C. (2010). Teaching large classes at college and university level: Challenges and oppor-
tunities. Teaching in Higher Education, 15(2), 175185.
Noah, T. (2013). The great divergence: Americas growing inequality crisis and what we can do about it.
NY: Bloomsbury Press.
OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2011). Divided we Stand: Why
inequality keeps rising, country noteCanada, http://www.oecd.org/els/socialpoliciesanddata/
49177689.pdf, Accessed on March 28, 2013.
Okome, M. O. (2007). Globalization and the political economy of higher education in Nigeria. http://
mojubaolu.blogspot.com/2007/12/globalization-and-political-economy-of.html (Accessed on March
28, 2013).
Ortiz, I., & Mathew C. (2013). The age of austerity: A review of public expenditures and adjustment
measures in 181 countries. Initiative for Public Dialogue and the South Centre Working Paper, March,
http://www.southcentre.org/, Accessed on April 16, 2013.
Psacharopoulos, G., & Harry A. P. (2002) Returns to investment in education: A further update, policy
research working paper 2881 (The World Bank Latin America and the Caribbean Region Education
Sector Unit).
Psacharopoulos, G. (2004). Economics of education: From theory to practice. Brussels Economic Review,
47(3/4), 341357.
Ravallion, M. (2009). The developing worlds bulging (but vulnerable) middle class. World Development,
38(4), 445454.
Saunders, D. B. (2010). Neoliberal ideology and public higher education in the United States. Journal for
Critical Education Policy Studies, 8(1), 4177.
Sharma, S. (2012). Rising inequality in South Africa: Drivers, trends and policy responses, discussion paper,
consultancy africa intelligence, 16 October, http://www.consultancyafrica.com/index.php?option=
com_content&view=article&id=1142:rising-inequality-in-south-africa-drivers-trends-and-policy-
responses-&catid=87:african-finance-a-economy&Itemid=294, Accessed on April 17, 2013.
Shrivastava, M., & Stefanick, L. (2014). Of democracy and its deficits: Surviving neoliberalism in oil-
exporting economies. In M. Shrivastava & L. Stefanick (Eds.) Beyond the rhetoric: Democracy and
governance in a global north oil economy. Athabasca University Press (forthcoming).
Tilak, J. B. G. (2003). Higher education and development. In J. P. Kleeves & R. Watanabe (Eds.), Handbook
on educational research in the Asia Pacific region (pp. 809826). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers.
UNESCO (2000). Dakar framework for actioneducation for all: Meeting our collective commitment
http://www.unesco.org/education/efa/ed_for_all/dakfram_eng.shtml (accessed on September 26,
2011).
Venniker, R. (2001). Social returns to education: A survey of recent literature on human capital externalities.
CPB (Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis) Report 00/1.
Watson, Deryn. (2001). Pedagogy before technology: Re-thinking the relationship between ICT and
teaching. Education and Information Technologies, 6(4), 251266.
Watters, A. (2012). Unbundling and unmooring technology and the higher ed tsunami, Educause Review
Online, September, http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/unbundling-and-unmooring-technology-and-
higher-ed-tsunami, Accessed on April 18, 2013.
Wolff, E. N., & Gittleman, M. (1993). The role of education in productivity convergence: Does higher
education matter? In A. Szirmai, B. van Ark, & D. Pilat (Eds.), Explaining economic growth (pp.
6577). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
World Bank. (2002). Constructing knowledge societies: New challenges for tertiary education. Washington
DC: World Bank.
World Bank (2012) KEI and KI indexes, http://info.worldbank.org/etools/kam2/KAM_page5.asp, Accessed
on March 28, 2013.
World Bank (2012) South Africa economic update: Focus on inequality of opportunities, 24 July, http://
graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/South-Africa-issue3-report-20120723.pdf, Accessed on
April 17, 2013.
Yalnizyan, A. (2010). The rise of Canadas richest 1%. Ottawa: Centre for Policy Alternatives, Mimeo.

123
View publication stats