Aligning the Purpose, Function & Mission of a Historically Disadvantaged South African Public University: The Case of the University of Venda
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32674/jcihe.v13i5S.4024Keywords:
International higher education, South African internatonalization, Third missionAbstract
Higher education institutions (HEIs) have recently come under increased pressure to internationalize their campuses through increasing study abroad offerings and international student recruitment and retention rates. The internationalization of higher education however, has mostly been theorized from a Euro-American perspective, often not taking into account actors in periphery contexts. This paper highlights the important role of an emergent voice within the field that relies strategically on its third mission to balance transnational pressures to internationalize and local demands for education equity. Drawing on insights from a mixed-methodology case study at a historically disadvantaged public South African university, it is argued that this institution’s increased reliance on non-academic stakeholders within their internationalization decision-making processes, holds together these conflicting imperatives.
References
de Wit, H., Hunter, F., Howard, L., & Egron-Polak, E. (2015). Internationalization of Higher Education. European Parliament Policy Department: Brussels, Belgium.
Fairclough, N. (1989). Language & Power. Longman.
Gee, J.P. (1999). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory & Method. Routledge.
Lee, J.L.,Vance, H., Stensaker, B., & Ghosh, S. (2020). Global rankings at a local cost? The strategic pursuit of status and the third mission. Comparative Education, 56:2, 236-256. 10.1080/03050068.2020.1741195.
Majee, U.S., & Ress, S.B. (2018). Colonial legacies in internationalisation of higher education: racial justice and geopolitical redress in South Africa and Brazil. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 50:4, 463-481. 10.1080/03057925.2018.1521264.
Marginson, S. (2006). Dynamics of national and global competition in higher education. Higher Education 52 (1): 1–39. 10.1007/s10734-004-7649-x.
Nudzor, H. P. (2009). Re-conceptualising the paradox in policy implementation: A postmodernist conceptual approach. Discourse: Studies in Cultural Politics of Education 30 (4): 501–513. 10.1080/01596300903237255.
Rodriguez-Pomeda, J., & Casani, F. (2016). Legitimating the world-class university concept through the discourse of elite universities’ presidents. Higher Education Research & Development, 35:6, 1269-1283. 10.1080/07294360.2016.1160877
Salmi, J. (2009). The Challenge of Establishing World-Class Universities. World Bank Publications.
Stensaker, B., Lee, J.J., Rhoades, G., Ghosh, S., Castiello-Gutiérrez, S., Vance, H., Çalıkoğlu, A., Kramer, V., Liu, S., Sayed Marei, M., O’Toole, L., Pavlyutkin, I., & Peel, C. (2019). Stratified university strategies: The shaping of institutional legitimacy in a global perspective. The Journal of Higher Education, 90:4, 539–562.10.1080/00221546.2018.1513306
Swartz, R., Ivancheva, M., Czerniewicz, L., & Morris, N.P. (2018). Between a rock and a hard place: Dilemmas regarding the purpose of public universities in South Africa. Higher Education, 77, 567-583. 10.1007/s10734-018-0291-9.
Univen strategic plan 2012. The University of Venda. https://www.univen.ac.za/about/strategic-plan/
Univen strategic plan 2016. The University of Venda. https://www.univen.ac.za/about/strategic-plan/
Valeau, E. J., & Raby, R. L. (Eds.). (2009). Community College Models: Globalization & Higher Education Reform. Netherlands: Springer.
Weaver-Hightower, M. B. (2008). An ecology metaphor for educational policy analysis: A call to complexity. Educational Researcher 37: 3, 153–167.
Yanow, D. (1993). The communication of policy meanings: Implementation as interpretation and text. Policy Sciences 26: 1, 41–61.
Additional Files
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The findings, interpretations, conclusions, and views expressed in Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education (JCIHE) are entirely those of the authors and should not be attributed in any manner to CIES, HESIG, or the sponsoring universities of the Editorial Staff. These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. Readers are free to copy, display, and distribute articles that appear in JCIHE as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and JCIHE, it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. All other uses must be approved by the author(s) or JCIHE. By submitting a manuscript, authors agree to transfer without charge the following rights to JCIHE upon acceptance of the manuscript: first worldwide serial publication rights and the right for JCIHE to grant permissions as its editors judge appropriate for the redistribution of the article, its abstract, and metadata associated with the article in professional indexing and reference services.
