The Equity Index as applied to South African universities is ‘seriously flawed'
Recent media reports (City Press, 23 and 27 October 2013) have reported on research by two academics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Professors Kesh Govinder and Malegapuru Makgoba, that will shortly be published in the South African Journal of Science. Amongst other claims, these reports have latched onto the claim that it will take "382 years" for the leading institutions of higher education in South Africa to be transformed to represent the demography of the South African population.
Although the research which has provided the basis for the media reports has yet to be published in full, two academics at the University of Cape Town's Centre for Actuarial Research (CARe), Associate Professor Tom Moultrie and Professor Rob Dorrington, have called the methodology underpinning the calculation of the index into question, arguing that it is "seriously flawed".
On Monday, they said that while the full paper is not yet available, the research would appear to represent an extension of work published in the same journal earlier this year, which presented estimates of the Equity Index for the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
"Fundamentally," they said, "the index draws a spurious comparison between the population group and sex profile of the academic and senior administrative staff at a university and the population group and sex profile of the economically-active population of the country, and the province in which the university is situated."
The population from which universities draw their academic and senior administrative staff is not that of the economically active population in general, which would include a significant proportion of adults who have not even completed their schooling, let alone obtained a higher (that is, Masters or Doctoral) degree, which is an operational requirement for most academic positions at research-led institutions of higher education.
Recalculating the Equity Index using data from the 2011 Census which gives the numbers of adults aged 20-64 with a Masters or Doctoral degree, by province, sex and population group, would suggest that the Equity Indices for UKZN are roughly half of what the researchers have claimed. Similar errors are likely in their application of the index to other institutions, said Professors Moultrie and Dorrington.
Furthermore, they argue, the benchmark used by Professors Govinder and Makgoba can only usefully be applied as a counterfactual to what the academic staff profile of institutions of higher education in South Africa ought to be like had it not been for the historical and ongoing legacy of inferior education and access to quality higher education afforded to the majority of South Africans.
"The transformation of institutions of higher education in South Africa is a matter of pressing national importance and concern. The transformation of the demographic profile of academic staff at South African universities is an important, but not the only, aspect of that transformation. Misapplied metrics such as that proposed run the risk of diverting attention from the real need for substantial transformation of higher education in favour of point-scoring by those seeking to present themselves at the forefront of a very narrow understanding of transformation of higher education in the country," they concluded.
Professors Moultrie and Dorrington's concerns, argued in greater detail and engaging further with the soon-to-be-published research, are expected to be published in the January 2014 issue of the South African Journal of Science.
Statement issued by Tom Moultrie and Rob Dorrington, Centre for Actuarial Research, University of Cape Town, October 28 2013
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
