THOUGHTS ON THE SCU CRISIS

Sir,

As an academic staff member at Swaziland Christian University it has been interesting to observe the responses and feedback that has been made regarding the operations of the university. Unfortunately this highlights and reinforces the fact that we have a government that is reactive rather than proactive.

I recall in November 2015 when my colleagues and I downed tools as we could not continue to lecture students until we were given adequate support from the institution to provide the best for the students because it was becoming costly for us to subsidise the institution with our resources. We even informed them that the source of all the problems at SCU was ownership and governance, and if this was addressed everything else would fall into place in terms of finances and administration.

I recall clearly that government promised to deal with this, but felt strongly that we should continue teaching while they addressed these issues.
In January 2016, government released E5 million for the institution to purchase learning material and laboratory equipment for courses that required it.

Indeed we felt positive that government was taking a more active role and that we would see stability at the institution but there was still unrest for some of us as we realised that ownership and governance issues were not being addressed with the immediacy they needed.
We welcomed the first audit by the Swaziland Higher Education Council in February 2016. Feedback was received on that and each department was tasked with ensuring that students were adequately trained and any missing practicum hours or laboratory work was made up for.

SHEC subsequently returned and provided feedback on our mitigation progress.
 And a second report was recently released before the institution was informed to suspend operations; of which the university responded to some of the discrepancies seen by what was contained in the report.

Unfortunately when people’s education and professional lives are at stake, it becomes important that government stakeholders are informed and are accurate in the information that they give the public.

One of the speeches by one of the ministers in Parliament on Wednesday was that SCU was not accredited by any other university.
This confused some of us in academia, being that we have forged partnerships and affiliations with various institutions, but affiliation is different from accreditation. Accreditation comes from a higher regulatory body.

This is the Swaziland Higher Education Council, which is meant to accredit the institution in this country. Swaziland did not have a higher education council and it was formed after higher education institutions had been established.
On Wednesday in Parliament it was surprising to hear that we have a vice-chancellor who is not resident in the country and lives in Cape Town. But since June 2016 we have had a resident and full-time vice-chancellor and government is aware of this because it has representatives in the council of the university.

One of the difficulties we had as academic staff was the manner in which the higher education council chose to audit our departments.
SHEC is still new and lacking in resources and they don’t have all the skills to evaluate the curriculum of each academic discipline at SCU, we thought they would make use of equivalent bodies in other countries.

Of course there has been talk about our qualifications as academic staff. The majority of us hold a minimum of a Master’s Degree qualification or higher and those with Degrees are about seven and their role is being laboratory and teaching assistants. All our courses are externally moderated and we have proof to that effect. If government wants to shut down the institution it should be clear and transparent about it and their reasons, but not cite inaccurate information.

Frustrated academic staff member
 
 

 

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