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COMMENTARY
The debate in mid-March between the university administration and student representatives regarding the release of students from university accommodation in light of the Covid-19 outbreak has proven scientifically valid.
The design of student housing at our residential universities was conceptualized with overcrowding and limited resources in mind. The 2011 Ministerial Task Force Report on Student Housing revealed that student accommodation in South Africa is geared towards accommodating as many university students as possible in the least amount of space available. As a result, our post-1994 student housing properties are high-rise buildings that can accommodate 1,000 students on a single property. Undoubtedly, a single Covid-19 infection in a student under such conditions would have produced a complete outbreak at the end of a week and would have plunged the university system into a complete crisis.
The arguments of the student leadership were also, to a certain extent, valid. They were right in raising the injustices of the South African communities from which the students come, which would make it almost impossible for them to have a fair and just learning experience if teaching were to switch to online platforms.
For example, at the beginning of the year, the Minister of Higher Education, Blade Nzimande, in his budget voting speech to Parliament stated that for the academic year 2020, more than 50% of the students enrolled in our entire higher education system come from from poor households. The National Student Financial Aid Plan (NSFAS) is now responsible for most of the fee income received by universities and professional colleges, and the government pays for basic student life services such as transportation, stationery, meals, and textbooks for each of those students.
In other words, the face of higher education in South Africa is a poor working-class young black man who comes from the towns and villages of this country, a positive indicator of equitable demographic shifts in the transformation efforts of our democratic era.
But here are three problems that Covid-19 is bringing to these developments:
• South African towns and villages do not have the basic infrastructure that students need to function. Furthermore, most homes and communities are not conducive to a successful learning experience.
• South African universities were conceptualized as residential institutions using traditional teaching and learning contact.
• Even with the technological advances and innovations that our universities have rated so far, they still require that their cohort of undergraduate students physically stay on campus in order to use them.
In other words, no technological shortcut has managed to sweep the socioeconomic inequalities of our country under the rug.
Universities know this. Under normal conditions, multi-campus universities with more than 15,000 students tend to have a high concentration of disadvantaged students residing in off-campus residences.
Providing a perfect teaching and learning experience for such students has been a struggle, and as a result, universities are further researching their own resources to subsidize their own daily transportation service, WiFi service for students throughout the city, and flexible systems of NSFAS administrative permits that allow campus students to shop at retail stores and also withdraw cash from their bank accounts to finance their emergencies. These efforts show that even before the Covid-19 outbreak, running a fair and equitable university system without having a 100% student population on campus was a nightmare.
These structural issues are the main questions facing the post-apartheid South African university: they go to the core of its historical conceptualization and geographic location, including its contemporary existence and socio-political legitimacy.
But the main question remains how Covid-19 will affect students currently in rural homes and what is the way forward.
A short-term plan.
All available teaching and learning methods should be used to flexibly accommodate students of all backgrounds to complete the 2020 academic year. This involves drastically changing assessment deadlines and assessment methods without compromising results and quality of learning.
At the humanities faculty where I am based, I recommend sacrificing undergraduate exams and tests for critical writing of academic, conversational, and reflective essays, which is what the humanities should be about. Shipping methods should be flexible, varying between online methods for those who can pay and traditional methods for others. In some cases, this would require adjusting deadlines to accommodate those who would only be able to view their emails when, hopefully, the university reopens in the second semester.
These students must still be allowed to do their assessments and present them within the academic year; This includes using the upcoming college vacations and the supplemental exam period to “push” them to complete their assessments. Under these conditions, student representation and labor representation must be listened to and considered, including campus social support services: advisory services, campus clinic, hotline complaint mechanisms, etc.
This would work best if all of our universities and vocational colleges could have an equally standardized approach to this question as a sector and not try to compete liberally with each other over who should be publicly perceived as the greatest advocate of human rights in the media.
A long-term plan
We should try to reconfigure residential universities taking seriously their future status as next-generation student community institutions where student life diversifies as a traditional, digital strategy. Universities must rethink ways to maximize the production of their available resources by prioritizing innovation in some of their core functions and support services, thus reducing the waste associated with depending on inflated traditional administrations.
Furthermore, universities must practice their theories of community participation by dethroning their view of the ivory tower and actively participating in a renewed effort to address social inequalities, hold public officials and private companies accountable, and make educational infrastructure a right. basic human in all our communities. They must be active agents in operationalizing the renewal of the urban neighborhood and local government in the rural towns and cities where they are located.
Our universities and professional colleges must enroll new university students in our basic education system and also graduate skilled labor in the economy annually. This public responsibility must be vigorously maintained and pursued, especially in light of our economy that is heading for massive reductions and rising unemployment rates due to Covid-19. These negative trends will affect young graduates the most. In this sense, working to achieve the responsible end of the academic year is a national emergency that we must collectively carry out in the academy.
Pedro Mzileni is a candidate for a doctorate in sociology at Nelson Mandela University. He writes in his personal capacity
