Consultative Conference 1999: South African Higher Education at the Beginning of the New Millenium: Realities, Problems and Challenges

Introduction


Higher Education policy development - from the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE) of 1995, through to the Higher Education Act of 1997 and the White Paper on Higher Education (HE), A Programme for Transformation of Higher Education in South Africa - has taken as its point of departure a triple challenge:



  • Overcoming social-structural inequities,

  • Contributing to reconstruction and development, and

  • Positioning South Africa to engage effectively with globalisation.


In this it way, policy development sought to ensure that South Africa would be both a better place in the 21st century and better equipped for the challenges of the 21st century.

The gravity, the enormity of the challenge becomes more evident when one grasps that for various reasons it is not an option to postpone one or other elements of the triple challenge or to tackle them in sequence, but that they have to be confronted, by and large, simultaneously.


Date