WHAT IS ‘GOVERNANCE’ IN HIGHER EDUCATION?

Few are those who maintain the view that ‘the university’ remains a legitimately isolated institution, run by the few to address the governance preferences of still fewer. By contrast, and in recognition of the ways in which contemporary universities are embedded in the social, political and ethical realities of their communities, academic governance in higher education (HE) is better understood in the context of organisational theory. From this vantage point, questions are raised as to how decisions are made in and for public universities in South Africa. What is the nature of power, persuasion and legislative influence between and among the different participants? Three models of governance are presented: the bureaucratic model, the collegial model, and the political model, in order to understand more effectively the governance of public HE in South Africa at present. Governance is essentially about decision-making: What issue is to be decided? Who is or should be involved in the decision? When and how should involvement happen? Where or at what level should such involvement happen? It will be argued that the system or sector of higher education has always remained a space where government or the state has intervened constantly. This is true for both pre- and post-apartheid South Africa.

THREE MODELS OF GOVERNANCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Bureaucratic model

In his groundbreaking work on bureaucratic theory, Max Weber (1947) described an organisation as a system of hierarchical roles and formal chains of command acting in unison towards realising a set of defined goals. Core to this theory is the linear and vertical relationship among decision makers informed by role and rank in the organisation, and the formalisation of rules and policies followed by organisational players. The complexity and costliness associated with higher education institutions make the bureaucratic approach attractive in its ability to insert control over public higher education. The leverage provided by the rule-based approach to governance, as characterised by the bureaucratic model, has the potential to offer institutional stability and certainty for both the HE sector and institutions. However, as Riley and Baldridge (1977) have argued, the bureaucratic model tends to focus more on formal power and the hierarchical structures that define it at the expense of informal power relations that often exist in organisations and that, crucially, change over time depending on the issue or policy at stake.