South African Universities Grapple With the Growth of Distance Learning

Key issues include quality control, language, and centralization

By LINDA VERGNANI

Officials at public universities in South Africa are chafing under a temporary moratorium on expansion of university distance-education programs in this country, imposed earlier this year while government officials develop a blueprint for a wide-ranging reorganization of higher education in South Africa.

The moratorium reflects concerns over a recent tectonic shift: Several Afrikaans-language universities, which historically admitted only white students, have begun to attract growing numbers of black students through new distance-education programs offered in English. Those programs are apparently drawing students away from South Africa's two principal distance-education institutions, where enrollment has plummeted.

In grappling with this situation, government officials and university administrators here find themselves facing issues that also bedevil their counterparts in othernations: How can they foster high-quality distance instruction -- and determine whether they have succeeded in that task? Can and should distance education be a tool for private colleges in advancing themselves in a national educational system dominated by public institutions? Is the deep involvement of private companies in offering and promoting distance instruction a good thing?

The moratorium on new distance-education programs may be lifted as soon as next month, when Education Minister Kader Asmal is expected to release the plan to reorganize higher education in South Africa. Government officials suggest that the proposal may include even greater regulation of distance education, to ensure that instruction is of high quality.

But university officials say that, given the rapid pace of change in distance education, the moratorium already may have damaged their institutions' prospects for developing distance-learning partnerships with private companies in South Africa and abroad, with the result that South African universities will lose students -- and the tuition and government subsidies that they represent.

The Council on Higher Education, an independent body that advises the government, estimates that enrollment at the University of South Africa and Technikon SA -- which provide only distance instruction -- dropped by 41,000 students, or 21 percent, from 1995 to 1999. Meanwhile, residential institutions drew 31,000 new distance students -- an increase of 111 percent, according to the council.

This year, there has also been a sharp rise in distance enrollment at residential universities in South Africa: The six campuses with the largest distance-education programs have about 65,000 students in distance courses.

Most of those students are black teachers trying to upgrade their qualifications, in pursuit of promotions and raises. Many such teachers are poorly trained because they were forced to attend inferior, segregated schools and colleges, the only facilities open to black people during the apartheid era. Many are seeking to earn a further diploma in education, a credential that supplements a teaching diploma earned after three years of instruction. Earning the further diploma is equivalent to a fourth year of college instruction in education in South Africa.

One of those rural teachers seeking to earn a further diploma by distance instruction from the University of Pretoria is Constance Wakeni, who teaches biology and agriculture at Zweliwele High School, in Idutywa, a village in the eastern part of the country.

"I am interested to know how to manage the school," she says. "I want to become a deputy principal or a principal one day." Although the further diploma is taught in English, Ms. Wakeni is not fluent in the language.

Distance courses offered by the University of Pretoria may lead to a bachelor's degree in banking or to various master's and doctoral degrees. Students include several hundred from Britain, other European nations, Australia, and several African countries.

Hans Boon, professor and director of "telematic," or technology-enhanced, education at the University of Pretoria, said the institution uses different instructional technologies, including printed materials, the Internet, and television. Although the university has a partnership with Lyceum College -- a private institution -- which handles administrative tasks, Mr. Boon said the University of Pretoria delivers the academic side of the distance programs, including study guides, examinations, and degrees and diplomas.

Education is the most popular subject among the university's distance students. Of the 30,000 distance learners, about 25,000 are studying for a further diploma in education management, taught through correspondence classes, Mr. Boon said. Supplementing the correspondence classes, members of the university's education faculty also teach two-week-long classes at study centers around the country during a break in high-school and college instruction in June and July.

In addition to the education students, about 3,500 postgraduate distance learners at the University of Pretoria receive study material electronically, via e-mail, World Wide Web sites, and television.

Meanwhile, there are currently 27,000 full-time residential students at the University of Pretoria -- meaning that, although the institution once was purely residential, it now has fewer residential than distance students. While residential students are lectured in Afrikaans and English, distance students are taught only in English. Offering distance education in English broadens the potential audience for the course, to include black Africans and non-Afrikaans white South Africans.

A similar pattern has emerged at the University of Port Elizabeth. Conrad van der Westhuizen, director of distance education there, said that the institution has 13,863 students enrolled in distance programs that offer undergraduate diplomas, further diplomas, and master's degrees -- more than double the 6,000 students registered for conventional classes at the institution. The majority of distance students were "unqualified or underqualified teachers" who are upgrading their training, according to Mr. van der Westhuizen.

The university operates 23 study centers throughout the country and in Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. He said the University of Port Elizabeth employs 85 tutors on a contract basis to serve its undergraduate distance students. Full-time lecturers and faculty members travel all over the country to give lectures to postgraduate students. "Distance education is not a cheap thing. It's very expensive," he said.

Rand Afrikaans University has more than 7,000 students registered for distance courses and about 13,000 students in traditional instruction. Basil G. Rhodes, director of the university's Centre for Distance Education, said that 82 percent of the distance students are registered for a further diploma in education, and their average age is 36. About 6,000 of the distance-education students are black Africans.

The growth in distance education at residential universities appears to have been at the expense of the University of South Africa, which has delivered distance education in the form of correspondence courses since 1946, and Technikon SA, which was started in 1980 with an emphasis on vocational training.

Conrad Dockel, deputy vice chancellor in charge of planning at the University of South Africa, said student numbers at that institution declined from 128,000 in 1996 to around 109,000 in the first semester of this year.

Competition from new distance-education programs at residential universities is "worrying," he said, but added that it was difficult to determine whether this was the main factor in the drop in student numbers. Other factors, such as the nation's economic situation and the declining number of students who passed exams qualifying them to enter college, also may have played a role, he said.

Nevertheless, the rapid expansion of distance-education programs at residential universities has stirred considerable concern among the country's educational leadership. Saleem Badat, chief executive officer of the Council on Higher Education, said the quality of the new distance-learning programs is among his priorities.

"If you suddenly enroll 30,000 students, how do you quality-assure your courses?" he said. "Good distance education is not necessarily cheap in terms of developing curricula and materials. It's not a matter of taking existing lecture material and turning it into a correspondence course."

If the quality of distance education was poor, Mr. Badat said, "then we are back to the problem of disadvantaged students getting shortchanged."

He said residential universities should hire more employees for curriculum development as well as for tutorials with distance students. Correspondence material should be supplemented with multimedia materials and face-to-face sessions.

As a result of the rapid growthin distance education, private institutions that collaborate with public institutions to offer distance courses benefit financially from public subsidies paid by the government for each enrolled student, Mr. Badat said. More students may be trained than are needed, he also said.

"You have to ask yourself: 'Do we need 25,000 people in education management in the country? Is this really a priority?'" he said.

In the face of such concerns, Mr. Asmal, the education minister, wrote to the vice chancellors of all South African universities in February, ordering them not to expand their distance-education programs and not to enter any further partnerships with the private sector.

"The minister is not saying that the [residential] institutions will be restricted forever," said Ahmed Essop, chief director for planning in the Department of Education. But more regulation is needed, he said.

In 1997, the South African Parliament passed a law that empowers Mr. Asmal to forge a single, integrated educational system from the fragmented one that developed under apartheid, the policy of government-sanctioned racial segregation that was repealed in the 1990's. In public speeches, Mr. Asmal has said that the government's plan probably will result in merging some institutions and changing the missions of others.

Mr. Essop suggested that certain universities might just be "taking existing lecture notes and putting them into electronic form." Mr. Essop said universities seemed to be targeting the "lucrative market of unqualified and underqualified teachers."

Like Mr. Badat of the education council, Mr. Essop raised concerns about public universities' relationships with private companies to offer distance programs. He said the department is investigating whether the private colleges that work with the public universities are only administering and advertising the courses, as officials claim, or whether they also provide teaching staff for academic work such as grading assignments. Mr. Essop said that if a private-sector partner is providing lecturers and doing the academic work, then the public institution should not be claiming the subsidy for those students.

Mr. Essop said the government is concerned that the proliferation of distance-education programs might "impact negatively" on the University of South Africa and Technikon South Africa.

However, Mr. Boon, of the University of Pretoria, dismissed the idea that distance courses there had led to a decline in enrollment elsewhere. "At the time we started the further diploma in education management, it was not offered by any other university," Mr. Boon said. "We serve a particular niche market in terms of secondary-school teachers, and it has become a success story."

The moratorium on distance education "is affecting our programs quite extremely," Mr. Boon said. "We think it will affect the South African higher-education system very badly." He added that, because of the restriction on South African universities, private providers in the country are seeking overseas universities as partners and would soon start offering programs that South African universities cannot, due to the moratorium.

For example, Mr. Boon said, the minister's restrictions had prevented the University of Pretoria from introducing new distance programs. It had been asked by the South African Democratic Teachers' Union to develop a distance course on human-resource development in education. The union estimated that as many as 160,000 teachers might have taken the course. "Now we are not allowed to take that program out. We have been tied down."

Mr. Boon added: "Our fear is that the moment you restrict South African universities and prevent them from moving into this method of flexible teaching and learning, then the private sector and overseas universities will move into this niche market."

But Mr. Essop, of the education department, said that South Africa might take a lead from the proposed new British policy on distance education. Under that policy, the British government is seeking to persuade institutions to collaborate to create a single online university that could compete with distance programs offered by elite institutions in the United States. Mr. Essop said that an uncoordinated approach to distance education in South Africa could doom the programs that already are in place here. "We are concerned that, unless distance-education resources are concentrated, we might not be able to compete in the global market, or even in the Southern African and African markets."

At the same time, overseas competition does not justify "large-scale, poor-quality distance education being offered in some of our public institutions," Mr. Essop said. "I'm certainly not wanting to suggest there should be no competition," explained Mr. Essop.

"Our problem is that it's unregulated competition, and there are not adequate quality controls. Obviously, there's a demand for this, but the question is how best to meet the demand."

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