True transformation of HE requires deep discussion and time

Great care must be taken in transforming South Africa's universities if they are not to be overtaken by ruin or subject to persistent, unresolved contestation, according to leading South African higher education policy specialist Saleem Badat. The task of establishing a new social pact under which there is broad agreement over the role of universities in the country must, of necessity, be a generational project, he says, and should not be subject to the "political opportunism and short-termism" or dominated by particular civil-society or private-sector agendas.