Doctoral Degrees (Sociology and Social Anthropology)
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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Sociology and Social Anthropology) by Author "Baumert, Stefanie Christine"
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- ItemUniversity politics under the impact of societal transformation and global processes : South Africa and the case of Stellenbosch University, 1990-2010(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014-12) Baumert, Stefanie Christine; Botha, Jan; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Worldwide, national higher education systems and universities are repeatedly confronted with global higher education trends and the challenge to handle them in specific national and institutional contexts. This observation relates to the broader question how processes of globalization affect university politics. The work at hand provides insights into how South Africa and the South African Stellenbosch University (SU) were facing recent processes of globalization in a situation of deep societal transformation after the end of apartheid. The dissertation examines how university politics in South Africa were negotiated after 1990. It investigates which local and global actors were involved and with what kind of interests they influenced the process. For SU, it is analysed how the different levels making up the University understood current international trends in higher education and how this understanding brought about institutional change leading to inter- and transnationalization. The thesis applies a qualitative multi-method approach drawing on document analysis and interviews. The research is grounded on major research reports and national policy documents on higher education, institutional documents of SU (e.g. the Senate and Council documentation, brochures and speeches) as well as on a total of 52 semi-structured interviews that were conducted with current and former representatives of SU as well as of the national South African higher education system between 2010 and 2012. Theoretically, the study draws on debates from higher education research and transnational history concerning the internationalization and transnationalization of higher education. It follows an analytical perspective for exploring and understanding higher education developments that goes beyond the conventional state-centric nation-state model used to analysing social processes and interactions. Therefore, the dissertation traces the impact of the different spatial references of the local and the national level for university politics and looks at how the local relates to the national and both of them to the regional and the global. By approaching the topic historically, the study challenges the often referred to hypotheses of academic isolationism and SU’s increasing insularity due to the international academic boycott against South Africa during the apartheid era. It accentuates that prior to 1990 there were many international activities going on at SU. Furthermore, the findings show that SU has embarked comparatively early on a purposeful and strategic process of internationalization, which occurred prior to its national opening in the form of transformation and redress. Only by the turn of the century, processes of internationalization were paralleled by an open transformation attempt. This was quite in contrast to the post-1990 dealing with higher education on the national South African level and by many other South African universities. The study demonstrates that in approaching the challenges of societal transformation and global processes, SU’s management initially favoured the “efficiency” discourse over the “redress” discourse in order to pave the way for becoming an internationally esteemed research university.