The South African Higher Education Community Engagement Forum, launched in Durban earlier this month, aims to become the authoritative voice on how universities, their staff and students should interact with the communities they work and do research in.
The discussion group at the launch included representatives from the country’s 23 higher education institutions, as well as the independent Monash South Africa, a wholly owned subsidiary of Australian-based Monash University.
According to Mangosuthu University of Technology professor and steering committee member Allan Femi Lana, research has little relevance unless it is applied outside the boundaries of academia to improve the communities within its influence.
By working with the Higher Education South Africa, the Council on Higher Education and its Higher Education Quality Committee, the forum hopes to play a role in enabling this.
The 1997 White Paper on the transformation of higher education states that community engagement — formerly known as outreach — is one of the primary purposes of university education.
With research and development and teaching and learning, community engagement is regarded as ”an integral and core part of South African higher education”. The paper urges institutions to ”demonstrate social responsibility and their commitment to the common good by making available expertise and infrastructure for community service programmes”.
Constitutionally, the forum is committed to promoting, supporting, monitoring, coordinating and consolidating community engagement within the country’s higher education institutions. This includes furthering community engagement to ensure the efforts are economically and socially sustainable.
University of the Western Cape professor Priscilla Daniels said the forum needs to recognise the milestones South Africa has already conquered in community engagement. But, it needs to apply available evidence and take cognisance of best practice to translate that work into tangible outcomes.
”There are vast amounts of innovation not being shared and adjusting that balance means establishing a central access point across the institutions,” Daniels said.
University of the Free State representative and steering committee chairperson Kiepie Jaftha said community engagement should play an important role in higher education. But, learning from international experiences, the philosophy locally had to take cognisance of South Africa’s history and experiences.
”South Africa cannot import and impose a community engagement model in the same way as happened with outcomes-based education,” Jaftha said.
One of the forum’s goals is to set standards for community engagement and put pressure on institutions to build capacity and community service.
”This will develop areas of excellence within the communities rather than convert communities into laboratories,” Daniels said.
In assessing community engagement partnerships, University of Pretoria representative Gernia van Niekerk highlighted the importance of role players benefiting from the relationships founded.
A mind-set shift that incorporates the traditional role players — universities, companies and NGOs — should embrace the community so that it is not viewed as a separate entity. ”For everyone to get something out of it, relationships have to be integrated and unilaterally beneficial,” Van Niekerk said.
Forum representatives were concerned about the demands put on volunteer students and staff members who were working towards enabling community engagement. University of Stellenbosch representative Michelle Pietersen proposed developing service-level agreements to recognise the hard work of volunteers.
Although the forum met for three days, members failed to finalise the constitution, rejected the proposed logo and were unable to decide on the number and geographic spread of the executive committee. The delegates hope to conclude these issues within a month.