South Africa’s public higher education institutions, university research outputs, and contribution to national human capital

ABSTRACT This paper uses essentialism and human capital theory to argue that South Africa’s public universities are expected to contribute towards the production of national human capital and development. It also uses research output performance, academic staffing profile, and knowledge contributions to critical scientific fields such as mathematics and engineering to demonstrate that South Africa’s public universities have made negligible progress over the past 15 years. The paper deduces that these public universities have not made noticeable inputs to the national human capital development in the specific scientific fields, which the national labour market and economy needs. Instead, South Africa’s public universities’ relatively greater contribution has continued to be in social sciences and humanities when national development required chartered accountants, medical doctors, and engineers. The paper makes a conclusion that all these failures are explicable through the politics that have infiltrated the leadership of South Africa’s public higher education sector and the visionary deficits. As a recommendation, the paper notes that remedial measures can only start with the extrication of the public higher education sector from the ruling party and government politicking, which would allow university leadership the necessary ‘academic freedom’ to ensure that these institutions focus on the essentialist approaches.