Chapter 5: Universities, internal restructuring and mergers – academic freedom
3. A case study of restructuring at the former University of Natal and University of
3.3 Findings and discussion
While the major findings of the study and evaluative conclusions about the success or otherwise of the restructuring process have been written up elsewhere,454 they are only very briefly sketched here. In this chapter I am primarily concerned with attitudes and perspectives on disciplinarity and the effect of restructuring on the disciplines which also emerge from an examination of the data.455
452 In my capacity as Director of the Quality Promotion Unit, I was responsible for designing the study and the instruments used, for administering and processing the data, and for writing up the reports emanating from the study. The interviews with Heads of Schools were carried out by groups of at least three of the task team, with one particular Dean and me as the common factors in each interview session.
453 As one of the Faculties was still in the process of restructuring, those Heads of School were not interviewed. Thus 34 of a possible 35 were in fact interviewed.
454 Denyse Webbstock and Pete Zacharias for the Post-restructuring Audit Team, Preliminary Report on Post-Restructuring Audit, December 2001, Unpublished document, University of Natal.
455 These findings were not written up as part of the reports on the study.
In general, from the points of view of the Heads of School who had been managing their schools for three years, in the majority of instances the transition from discipline- based departments to interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary schools had been very successful. In some schools, so-called threatened or marginal disciplines had been ensured of survival through having a larger and more financially stable context in which to operate. As one Head noted, a benefit has been “the new developments and revivification of marginal disciplines.”456 There were many reports of the expected synergies between disciplines having been unlocked in order to create new areas of multi-disciplinary studies – in one instance a graduate studies conference involving 26 formerly separate disciplines had been held, and an increase in research output had been experienced.
In other instances, the formation of a school had enabled disparate disciplines to come together with an applied emphasis, or relating to a central research theme.
Interestingly, one Head of School found that “we discovered that the different ideological differences between disciplines in our school were not as profound as people had initially thought”. The schools that appeared to be the most harmonious were ones in which there had been a physical relocation of staff and breakdown of old departmental barriers, and in which new social spaces for collegial activity had been created. Both teaching and research across the old discipline and department boundaries were also reported. Listing the benefits, one Head said that they were that “we have interdisciplinary initiatives in teaching and research, a community of academics and achieved some kind of critical mass, improved morale, skill sharing across disciplines, performance appraisal and efficient central office support staff.”
However, not all schools had experienced the same level of success. Different models of structural organisation of schools were in existence, some unitary, some federal, with some schools resembling mini-faculties keeping the old departmental structures unofficially intact. There were problems reported of uniting very different
456 All italicised quotations in this section, unless otherwise indicated, are drawn from the raw data emanating from the study‟s interview transcripts as well as questionnaire responses.
disciplinary cultures, and in experiencing active resistance from the disciplines. Indeed, in some cases the disciplinary differences were considered to be “lethal”, with dispossessed former Heads of Department, “resenting their loss of authority”, said to be actively “sabotaging” the new structures. The most problematic schools appeared to be the smaller ones which were composed of two formerly separate disciplines, in which academics in one discipline felt that they had been overpowered by the other. A comment from an academic in one such school serves to illustrate this: “No benefits from restructuring that I can discern. A shotgun marriage. The Head of School operates, of necessity, two separate outfits.”
Of the Heads of School interviewed, 44.2% were of the opinion that the restructuring had led to greater interdisciplinarity in their school‟s educational offerings than had been evident in the pre-restructuring phase, with 41.2% neutral on the issue and 14.7%
negative. Some commented that while there was now greater interdisciplinarity than before, they were not sure whether it was accurate to ascribe this to the restructuring process in the main. With respect to whether their schools were functioning as integrated units rather than a collection of discrete disciplines, 61.7% of the Heads of School were positive, 14.7% neutral and 14.7% negative.457 Almost 80% found that there was an obvious underlying academic rationale for the inclusion of the particular disciplines that formed their schools. Indeed, this was regarded as the most important factor in the success of certain schools, and where such a rationale appeared to be absent, schools were experiencing difficulties in achieving an acceptable level of integration.
Almost 60% felt that there was an appropriate balance between nurturing the disciplines and developing new interdisciplinary areas in their schools, with nearly 9%
disagreement on this issue. In the interviews it became evident that many schools (approximately 65% of them) had unofficially created titular posts of Heads of Discipline in addition to those recognised in the restructuring parameters, that is, the Heads of School and Programme Directors.458 In a sense, in a number of schools there was a
457 There was an 8.8% no response on this item.
458 Programme directors are responsible for the academic aspects of running both disciplinary and multi- or inter-disciplinary programmes. Many of those appointed are younger academics, and interested not only in research, but in developing teaching quality as well.
layer of “shadow” heads operating under the level of the Head, which led to a number of comments about an extra layer of bureaucracy added, when the intention had been to diminish administrative loads. The unofficial appointment of Heads of Discipline, particularly in the sciences, was clearly intended to counter a concern about the perceived weakening of the disciplines. While in some cases this appeared to be working well, in others there was very strong resentment that power appeared to have shifted from the disciplines. Some comments received from senior professors459 bear this out: “The roles need to be more clearly defined. Heads of School should not be commanding officers but rather seen as a (sic) coordinator and servant for the discipline heads. Discipline heads need control over their share of the budget and a strong say in probation reports”, and “go back to the old system or give more power to Chairs and Discipline Heads. A Head of School should be acting as a Chairman (Chairperson) under the leadership of an executive committee (Chairs and Heads of Disciplines).
Power should be given back to the disciplines.” Other comments in the same vein:
“Make mini-faculties and return to disciplines run by persons appointed to do the job.
Your professors with scientific background”, and “Disciplines are losing their characters and ethos. Chair holders and Discipline Heads are powerless; they have been turned into silent stooges.”
In comparison with the Heads of Schools, opinion from academics was less positive on the whole about whether an appropriate balance between nurturing the disciplines and achieving greater interdisciplinarity had been achieved, with 32% neutral on this item, 34% negative and 23% positive (the rest not responding to this item). There was also about 40% negative opinion on whether the roles of Heads of Discipline (where they exist) were clear. However, many comments from academics reiterated the positive sentiment towards restructuring and the facilitation of interdisciplinarity that was evident among the Heads of School. Examples of such comments are: “there is a greater freedom to explore research and teaching among similar cognitive disciplines, far less
459 Questionnaires were returned from 125 staff members, the vast majority of whom were academics. The largest group of respondents comprised senior or associate professors, many of whom had been employed at the University of Natal for 21 years or more. A second large group of respondents comprised senior academic staff who had been employed at the University of Natal for 5 years or less.
The way the data have been captured in SPSS makes it possible to ascertain the biographical details (but not the name) of each commentator.
red tape, greater freedom and management flexibility, a management style which allows for input from a much wider range of people and direct lines of communication”; “closer contact between staff across disciplines, teaching a wider range of students”; “staff of different disciplines have got to know each other and this can lead to a breakdown of perceived barriers”; and “there is now some interdisciplinary teaching and research. Also some new areas of teaching and research”.
The enthusiasm in the above scenario was short-lived. In 1998 already, Bertelson was pointing to the dangers of market-related approaches being adopted in higher education in South Africa. On the results of restructuring efforts in South African universities, she writes that “Academic confidence, loyalty and commitment are at a low ebb. So preoccupied are they with the ultimatum that they repackage their professional activity to suit the market or risk redundancy, that academics appear not to have noticed that their prerogative of intellectual authority has been assumed by management in what might best be described as a palace coup. The collegial mode of decision-making … is being replaced by a corporatist mode in which management have a „vision‟ which staff are expected to „buy in‟ to and implement. Academics are understandably disturbed by the expropriation of their authority, the colonisation of their core activities by business practice, and the consequent „dumbing down‟ of intellectual culture, but so far have made little progress in naming this process or mounting a critique.”460
While the first major post-apartheid restructuring at the former University of Natal was driven largely by an internal vision of making the institution responsive to an external postmodern reality that included globalisation, programmes-based education and a need to align the institution to be well-placed to produce Mode 2- type knowledge461 to address the socio-political realities of South Africa, the second major restructuring was a response to an externally-imposed programme of institutional mergers in higher education in South Africa. Under the second post-apartheid Minister of Education, institutional mergers became part of a plan to rationalise and restructure universities in an attempt to undo some of the obvious racially-based social engineering of apartheid,
460 Eve Bertelson, “The real transformation: the marketisation of higher education”, Social Dynamics, 24 (2) 1998, p.144.
461 See discussion on Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge on p.213.
and also to use the limited management capacity in higher education to its greatest effect.