University politics under the impact of societal transformation and global processes : South Africa and the case of Stellenbosch University, 1990-2010

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Worldwide, national higher education systems and universities are repeatedly confrontedwith global higher education trends and the challenge to handle them in specific national andinstitutional contexts. This observation relates to the broader question how processes ofglobalization affect university politics. The work at hand provides insights into how SouthAfrica and the South African Stellenbosch University (SU) were facing recent processes ofglobalization in a situation of deep societal transformation after the end of apartheid.The dissertation examines how university politics in South Africa were negotiated after 1990.It investigates which local and global actors were involved and with what kind of intereststhey influenced the process. For SU, it is analysed how the different levels making up theUniversity understood current international trends in higher education and how thisunderstanding brought about institutional change leading to inter- and transnationalization.The thesis applies a qualitative multi-method approach drawing on document analysis andinterviews. The research is grounded on major research reports and national policydocuments on higher education, institutional documents of SU (e.g. the Senate and Councildocumentation, brochures and speeches) as well as on a total of 52 semi-structuredinterviews that were conducted with current and former representatives of SU as well as ofthe national South African higher education system between 2010 and 2012.Theoretically, the study draws on debates from higher education research and transnationalhistory concerning the internationalization and transnationalization of higher education. Itfollows an analytical perspective for exploring and understanding higher educationdevelopments that goes beyond the conventional state-centric nation-state model used toanalysing social processes and interactions. Therefore, the dissertation traces the impact ofthe different spatial references of the local and the national level for university politics andlooks at how the local relates to the national and both of them to the regional and the global.By approaching the topic historically, the study challenges the often referred to hypotheses ofacademic isolationism and SU's increasing insularity due to the international academicboycott against South Africa during the apartheid era. It accentuates that prior to 1990 therewere many international activities going on at SU. Furthermore, the findings show that SUhas embarked comparatively early on a purposeful and strategic process ofinternationalization, which occurred prior to its national opening in the form of transformationand redress. Only by the turn of the century, processes of internationalization were paralleledby an open transformation attempt. This was quite in contrast to the post-1990 dealing withhigher education on the national South African level and by many other South African universities. The study demonstrates that in approaching the challenges of societaltransformation and global processes, SU's management initially favoured the 'efficiencydiscourse over the 'redress discourse in order to pave the way for becoming aninternationally esteemed research university.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University