Browsing by Author "Cloete, Nico"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    The Contribution of Higher Education to Regional Socioeconomic Development : The University of Buea, Cameroon, as a Growth Pole
    (University of the Western Cape, 2010) Fongwa, Neba Samuel; Cloete, Nico; Ouma, Gerald Wangenge; Faculty of Education
    This research investigates how higher education institutions contribute to regional development, using the University of Buea in the Fako region as a case study. Policy documents reviewed and interviews with major stakeholders in the region, present a significant 'delink' or disjuncture between university policy and regional development efforts. This, from the policy perspective, has been strongly attributed to the national rather than to the regional mandate around which the university was established. However, data from the economic and social indicators investigated, reveal that the University of Buea by its very presence has been a significant agent in the development of the municipality.
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    The contribution of student activities to citizenship education: a study of engagement at a South African research university
    (University of the Western Cape, 2014) Lange, Randall Stephen; Cloete, Nico; Luescher-Mamashela, Thierry
    This study seeks to determine to what extent undergraduate students in a research university in South Africa are involved in activities that contribute to citizenship education. The research design involves a case study at the University of Cape Town (UCT) whereby an electronic survey, called the Student Experience at the Research University-Africa (SERU) survey, was indigenised to fit the South African context and it was conducted at UCT. The survey had a census design and all undergraduate students at the university were invited to participate. At the end of 2012 a sample of 861 surveys were analyzed using SPSS to determine the activities students were involved in during the research period.
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    Examining the incentives for knowledge production : the case of the University of Nairobi in Kenya
    (University of the Western Cape, 2014) Lutomiah, Agnes O.; Wangenge-Ouma, Gerald; Cloete, Nico
    Following the understanding that incentives influence behaviour both in terms of eliciting and sustaining it, this thesis seeks to explore the link between incentives and knowledge production at the University of Nairobi. Given the backdrop, higher education institutions have a key role to play in economic development through knowledge production; the study seeks to see how academics can be steered to produce knowledge. The principal-agent model primarily informs the study, whose primary argument is that for incentives to attract, motivate and retain employees, these incentives have to be sufficient, fair and consistent. Additionally, the model predicts that a higher sum of monetary incentives triggers higher effort, resulting in higher productivity. Using a single case study approach, the study focused on the University of Nairobi in Kenya. The data for the study was mainly provided by the structured interviews, institutional documents and archival. The findings of this study show that there are several incentives related to research at the University of Nairobi. These include: promotion opportunities, time resources, research funding, and financial allowances for publications and successful supervision of postgraduate students. Multiple principals including the government, national research council and the university itself provide these incentives. The general perception of academics is that, the incentives are weak and do not encourage the maximization of the University’s research goals. In addition, academics are also confronted with other principals who reinforce non-research behaviour. These principals offer significant rewards for consultancies, and incentives for teaching on the full-fee-paying stream by providing additional payments, over and above regular salaries, to academics that teach on these programmes. Given the weak nature of the incentives for research, academics at the University of Nairobi seem to respond more favourably to the nonresearch incentives. Overall, the study confirms the economic principle that individuals, in this case, academics, respond to incentives. However, in the context of competing incentives, the research incentives have to be adequate, systematically applied and continuous to reinforce a vibrant research culture.
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    For sustainable funding and fees, the undergraduate system in South Africa must be restructured
    (Academy of Science of South Africa, 2016) Cloete, Nico
    South Africa has the most diverse and differentiated higher education system in Africa – despite some persistent attempts at academic drift and mimetic normative isomorphism. Globally, in the 2008 country system ranking by the Shanghai JiaoTong Academic Ranking of World Universities, the South African higher education system was placed in the range between 27 and 33 along with the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Ireland. It is well known that South Africa consistently has four of the five African universities that appear in the Shanghai top 500.Even more impressive is that The Times Higher Education 2016 ranking of BRICS and emerging economies1 places three South African universities in the top 12: the University of Cape Town (UCT) 4th, the University of the Witwatersrand 6th and Stellenbosch University 11th. Brazil and Russia each have only one university in the top 12, and India, with a billion people, has none. China, with their differentiation policy aimed at producing 30 world-class universities, has six in the top 12.
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    Higher education and democracy : a study of students' and student leaders' attitudes towards democracy in Tanzania
    (University of the Western Cape, 2011) Mwollo-Ntallima, Angolwisye Malaisyo; Cloete, Nico; Luescher-Mamashela, Thierry; NULL; Faculty of Education
    Students in African universities have a long history of political involvement at the institutional level and in national politics. The present study investigates the political opinions of students in Tanzania with respect to (1) their attitudes towards democracy and how these attitudes could be explained, (2) student satisfaction with the way their university and their country, Tanzania, are governed, and (3) whether student leaders (SL) have more democratic attitudes than students who are not in formal student leadership positions (SNL) and if there are other relevant groups that can be identified whose political attitudes differ significantly from those of other groups. The study draws on the work of Bratton, Mattes and Gyimah-Boadi (2005) and employs a survey questionnaire adapted from the Afrobarometer. Using survey data collected at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, a number of questions are investigated, and related hypotheses are tested in order to determine the extent to which students understand and demand democracy, how they perceive the supply of democracy, and what their attitudes are towards university governance and national politics in general.
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    Higher education and democracy in Botswana: Attitudes and behaviours of students and student leaders towards democracy
    (University of the Western Cape, 2014) Kgosithebe, Lucky; Luescher-Mamashela, Thierry; Cloete, Nico
    This study investigates the attitudes of students and student leaders towards democracy in terms of their demand for democracy, their perception of the supply of democracy, and their awareness of and participation in politics. Existing literature does not provide any conclusive explanation as to how and to what extent higher education contributes to democracy. Mattes and Mughogho (2010) argue that the contribution of higher education to support for democracy in Africa is limited while other scholars such as Bloom et al. (2006), Hillygus (2005), and Evans and Rose (2007a, 2007b) maintain that higher education impacts positively on support for democracy. The study follows the conceptualisation and methodology of previous studies based on the Afrobarometer public opinion surveys into the political attitudes of African mass publics (Bratton, Mattes and Gyimah-Boadi, 2005; Mattes and Bratton, 2003; 2007), and of students in African universities (Luescher-Mamashela et al., 2011; Mwollo-Ntalimma, 2011). The survey uses a stratified random sample of third-year undergraduate students at the University of Botswana. Furthermore, it isolates the subgroup of student leaders to investigate whether active participation in student politics influences support for democracy
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    "Political changes and access policies in Malagasy Higher Education since independence (1960-2008)"
    (University of the Western Cape, 2011) Hanitra, Rasoanampoizina; Cloete, Nico; Faculty of Education
    The objective of this research was to investigate the relationships between the political change and the access policy changes in Madagascar since independence. In this study qualitative and quantitative data were used. The qualitative research consisted of eleven in-depth interviews and the collection of policy documents from 1960 to 2008. Open-ended questionnaires were utilized to collect data and to achieve the objectives of the research. Policy documents were analyzed to identify government policy changes. The main findings from the research showed that access policy changed with each major change in political leadership. Four major political periods and four respective main access policy changes were identified from 1960 to 2008. Higher education policy in general changed when there was a major change in presidential leadership. The main conclusions of this study were that access policy changes were the result of major changes in presidential leadership and that in spite of rhetoric to the contrary, universities did not have the autonomy to resist changes in access policy because of the top-down state system and the institutional financial dependence on the national government.
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    Responsiveness and its institutionalisation in higher education
    (University of the Western Cape, 2010) Van Schalkwyk, François; Cloete, Nico; Faculty of Education
    This thesis proposes a typology of responsiveness in order to reduce interpretive ambiguity and to provide a framework which makes possible an assessment of the extent to which responsiveness is likely to be institutionalised in higher education. The typology is tested at two universities. The findings indicate that the typology developed can be deployed to reveal insight into how responsiveness is manifesting at universities. The findings around institutionalisation of responsiveness are less conclusive but indicate that while there is evidence of the institutionalisation of a particular type of university responsiveness, the process is at best partial as the academic heartland of higher education systems remain slow to accept the demands made by the state, university leadership and other stakeholders for more responsive universities.
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    Understanding the linkages between community engagement and teaching and research: the case of Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania
    (University of the Western Cape, 2014) Mtawa, Ntimi Nikusuma; Wangenge-Ouma, Gerald; Cloete, Nico
    This thesis sought to understand the various ways in which Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) in Tanzania, as a teaching and research institution, engages with its communities. This was prompted by the increasing calls upon the universities, both locally and globally, to become relevant to the communities through community engagement. Although the idea of community engagement has emerged and continues to gain momentum in higher education, there have been different understandings and shifts in the ways in which universities are practising community engagement. The study is located within the broader debates in the literature, which sees community engagement as a contested concept in terms of its exact practices and outcomes, particularly in relation to the university’s core activities of teaching, learning and research. With the contextual nature of community engagement, a case study design was deemed to be suitable for this type of study. Data collection instruments comprised of document reviews, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. From the data collected and analysed, there are three key findings in this study. Firstly, community engagement in the Tanzanian higher education system in general has moved from predominantly supporting communities to incorporating some aspects of teaching, learning and research, as well as economic pursuit. This is illustrated in practices such as national service programmes, continuing education, volunteering, field practical attachment, community-based research, commissioned research and consultancy, participatory action research, experiments and technology transfer. Secondly, whereas some of the practices are fading away in some Tanzanian higher education institutions, those that are active at SUA fall within both the Land-Grant (one-way) and Boyer’s (two-way) models of community engagement. Thirdly, there are no deliberate efforts by SUA to institutionalise community engagement as a legitimate activity that enriches teaching, learning and research. As such, there are loose and discontinuous linkages between community engagement and SUA’s teaching, learning and research, attributed to a weak institutional approach to community engagement.