The academic profession in South Africa - Charl Wolhuter and Leonie Higgs

Universities as institutions worldwide, and in South Africa in particular, are currently undergoing fundamental changes. The aim of this research was to investigate how South African academics experience their environment.
The first major international investigation into the academic profession was conducted by the Carnegie Foundation between 1989 and 1992 and covered 14 countries: Australia, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, the United States of America, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Russia and Israel. This survey gave rise to numerous publications including The International Academic Profession: Portraits of fourteen countries (Altbach 1996). The survey covered countries on all the continents, with the exception of Africa, which has always been conspicuously absent in the scientific debate on the academic profession that followed the Carnegie investigation. The authors administered the Carnegie questionnaire to the South African academic profession during 2002 and 2003. The survey covered biographic details, teaching activities, research activities, community service, international dimensions, relationships with institutional management and relations in the higher education society. This article reports on and interprets the results of the survey in the context of the current changing nature of the universities of South Africa. In conclusion, areas for follow-up research are suggested.
From: SARE with EWP, Vol. 12 no. 1 (2006), pp. 63-76