As by Fire. Jonathan Jansen
of those two functions interferes with the mandate of the other, there is always trouble. What this means is that in the course of a major crisis, a vice-chancellor would inform the council through its chairperson, and even consult when necessary, but is expected to make the critical management decisions as head of the university. On the other hand, if the financial demands of student protestors means going outside the budget parameters set by council, a vice-chancellor can only proceed with the approval of the governing body.
Thus, the running of a university is left to the vice-chancellor and the executive team. In American-speak, the buck stops with the university principal. And as I know from hard experience, when everyone else has left, you are alone, in your office or your home, contemplating the meaning of a difficult day or week of crisis, and planning how to respond to the multiple stakeholders who call the university head to find out what exactly is going on, and going wrong. There is merit, therefore, in a closer, detailed examination of what exactly happens in the lives of university leaders who, in critical moments, are solitary figures alone with their ambitions and emotions inside the turbulence of a never-ending crisis.
Yet what exactly is the positional advantage of the university leader in relation to student protests? In the words of one of the principals interviewed, student leaders speak for students, unions for workers, academic staff associations for lecturers, but who speaks for the university? This is a crucial point. The university leader in a crisis has that job of defending the university – to his bosses, the council, about accountability for operations; to alumni fretting about what is happening to their cherished institution; to major and minor donors concerned about their investments; to government worried about the effective management of the university; to parents concerned about the safety of their children and the costly disruption of their education; to the senate for the integrity of the disrupted academic programme; and to employers of degreed students who constantly complain about the lack of ‘oven-ready’ graduates coming out of universities.
This is complex terrain. For example, not all alumni are the same, and this is more markedly so in the former white universities. There are those more conservative alumni who remember a pristine, white, settled (sic) institution which carried their values, and demand that it stays that way even if some black students are accommodated. But there are others who support the protests and demand a deeper ‘transformation’ that they were denied as students. Then there are the politicians, constantly seeking advantage from a crisis. When a crisis hits, they descend like vultures on the principal’s office. The more radical parties align with the students and put pressure on the university leader. The more liberal parties seek to counter the dominant or more radical parties, and will attack or defend the principal depending on the position taken relative to the ruling party. The more conservative politicians want immediate action taken against revolting staff or students and a restoration of ‘law and order’ at any costs.
In the midst of this noise, the university principal has to remain composed and reasonable, adjusting the main message for varying emphasis from one constituency to the next. The leader should, above all else, be visible.13 His or her face should convey calm and restraint, and yet also empathy and resolve, for ‘in a crisis, everybody watches what you do’.14 This brings enormous pressure to bear on the leader and, whatever happens, he or she has to come across in the media as stable and informed. The leadership task is almost impossible – keeping all the constituencies more or less on board throughout the crisis, even as the media take a position for or against the leader depending on which media house is concerned with the crisis. In other words, the principal speaks for the university as a whole.
What makes the task of the university principal most unenviable is that he or she sits between the impending crisis of diminishing state funding and uncertain revenues from student income. Put bluntly, the government says it has no money and the students insist they will not pay any increases in tuition. Here’s the problem: South Africa is not a well-endowed nation with large numbers of private funders, wealthy families, established trusts, and flourishing foundations which together can pour billions of dollars into higher education (as in the US, for example). If the money does not come from government, it has to come from either tuition or what the locals call third-stream (non-state and non-student sources) income.
Third-stream income is extremely limited in South Africa, except in the case of those few universities that can leverage professional schools such as engineering or nursing to deliver short courses or consultancies to bring in millions of rands in additional income. But even those sources of funding are dependent on the state of the economy, fluctuate wildly from one financial cycle to the next, and hardly provide for the historically black universities at all. The only other viable source is tuition fees, which, for most universities, come not directly from students but through loans and grants made by the government’s massively funded if poorly administered National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). So if the tap of tuition fees is shut off, that crisis lands on the vice-chancellor’s desk, with very damaging consequences.
What, then, does the university principal do? His responsibility, in cold terms, is to keep the lights on. To maintain ageing buildings and facilities, knowing that the failure to do so on schedule will multiply the costs, and risk, in future years. To upgrade and secure computers and software in all the student laboratories. To increase staff remuneration every year or lose talented academics. To pay rates and taxes to the same government that reports, regularly, that there is no money. To fund, out of institutional budgets, the additional costs of more and more students who need funding but cannot find those resources within NSFAS because of the problem of adequacy. That is, while NSFAS funding has increased dramatically, it is still not enough for the growing numbers of students in general, and especially for students without any resources to access and succeed within higher education.
And the responsibilities of the vice-chancellor continue. To fund crises such as when the municipal water taps run dry, as in the small, dilapidated city of Grahamstown, which houses one of the nation’s prestige institutions, Rhodes University. To finance new student demands, such as the additional accommodation, after-hours transport, study locks on campus, extended library hours, and many others. To fund development programmes that increase student graduation rates and staff research performance, since these two sources of revenue, from the subsidy, can make or break an already fragile budget. To keep some funds in reserve to be able to prevent poaching of top scholars, especially black and women academics, by other universities, and to attract new talent into the academy. To create opportunities for international partnerships and exchange for staff and students. To secure the holdings of the library, and update journals and books purchased mainly from overseas and against a declining currency. To improve the security of the campuses and residences against the infiltration of crime and criminal networks onto the relatively resource-rich and self-contained environment called the university.
Every year the seasoned university principal sees the money declining and the demands accumulating and getting more serious, even violent – and the campus crisis is compounded. One year of no fee increases, according to the misinformed decree from the president in 2015, placed almost every university on the edge of collapse. And still the demands increase. The students do not want to pay a fee increase; in fact, they want no fees at all. Outsourced workers want to be made part of the staff establishment immediately – an arrangement that will sink any university if done recklessly. And in the meantime, the cost of everything escalates, from library books to computer software to electricity accounts. Something has to give. As usual in such a stalemate, retrenchments might be the only option. Yet, when institutions resort to offering early retirement to academics, the best ones leave, secure in the knowledge that they can be hired elsewhere. At this point, the university principal starts to panic as the academic future and financial sustainability of the institution begin to look very, very bleak.
The problem is, nobody wants to listen to the university principal. He or she is at once the recalcitrant bureaucrat that stands in the way of the revolution, according to the protesting students, and the only remaining bulwark against institutional collapse, according to those who know from close quarters what is at risk. The pressure is unrelenting and begins to take a toll on the university leader. A populist would succumb to every demand, with the result that the university has to apply to the government for overdraft facilities from the banks or, in utter desperation, pay salaries out of NSFAS funding