Introduction

South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994 heralded a number of significant changes in the country's political, education and economic systems. The restructuring and reconfiguration of higher education was set out in a major policy document that was published in 2001: the National Plan for Higher Education (NPHE). Prior to this document, the vision for the transformation of the higher education system was encapsulated in the Education White Paper 3: A Programme for the Transformation of Higher Education (DoE 1997).

As part of transforming the higher education system, the NPHE (2001) sets out five main goals, including the building of new institutional and organisational forms, and the creation of new institutional identities and cultures. The following are five key policy goals and strategic objectives of the NPHE (2001:12) aimed at transforming the higher education system:

• • To provide access to higher education to all, irrespective of race, gender, age, creed, class or disability and to produce graduates with the skills and competencies necessary to meet the human resource needs of the country.

• • To promote equity of access and to redress past inequalities by ensuring that the staff and student profiles in higher education progressively reflect the demographic realities of the South African society.

• • To ensure diversity in the organisational form and institutional landscape of the higher education system through mission and programme differentiation, thus making it possible to address regional and national needs in social and economic development.

• • To build high-level research capacity to address South Africa's research and knowledge needs.

• • To build new institutional and organisational forms and new institutional identities through regional collaboration between institutions.

Most importantly, the proposals of the NPHE (2001) included the establishment of a ‘single, dedicated distance education institution’. Subsequently, the new Unisa was established as a result of the merger on 1 January 2004 between the former University of South Africa and Technikon Southern Africa and, on 2 January 2004, the incorporation of the Vista University Distance Education Campus (Vudec). During the writing of this book, Unisa based its operations on its 2015 Strategic Plan, An agenda for transformation. In order to meet the obligations encompassed in this plan, certain systems and processes were being implemented. One of the central policies that sought to address Unisa's mandate in terms of the Higher Education Act (1997) and the NPHE (2001) is positioning Unisa as an open distance learning (ODL) institution.