First Student Public Seminar Explores Commodification of HE

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The College of Humanities and the Maurice Webb Race Relations Research Unit recently hosted the first Postgraduate Student Public Seminar in its Transformation Lecture Series in a packed Howard College Theatre.

Speaking about the Transformation series being presented by students DVC and Head of the College of Humanities Professor Cheryl Potgieter stated that the series will allow for the engagement of transformation issues in society.

The lecture was delivered by Master's in Social Sciences student, Mr Lukhona Mnguni, on the subject of "Commodification of Higher Education: Challenges and Consequences for a Transformation Agenda."

Mnguni presented his paper, days before leaving for the University of Edinburgh as part of his Commonwealth Scholarship to pursue an MSc in Africa and International Development.

In light of his topic, Mnguni said: "A university has been commodified if those who enter it are there merely to obtain a certificate and get into the workplace. This means, gone are those days when universities were bastions of knowledge production to inform society's development trajectory.

"Universities that have become certification agencies or factories should be ashamed of themselves because they motivate students to go and be a commodified, dispensable good in the gyre of capitalism. All students, whether in Engineering, Accounting or the Humanities, must be infused with some consciousness that forces them to challenge the same labour market they are being produced for," he said.

Mnguni said universities should produce students who defy the notion that professionals operate in a different stratum to the general labour force in a company, describing it as "the highest divide-and-rule tactic to divide the very same ‘organic solidarity' that is necessary amongst humanity and black people in particular."

Mnguni stressed the need for higher education to find a way to dislodge itself from the dominant push and dictates of the market if it is to maintain its role as a leading force in the shaping of society's consciousness and transformation.

"Once higher education becomes intermingled with the market (an oppressive force) it too becomes oppressive. It becomes oppressive to students due to rising fees that are exorbitant each year, with no complementary rise in the quality being offered.

"It oppresses the staff through long hours of lecturing bloated classrooms beyond prescribed hours, as well as added pressure to produce research, supervise an increased number of students and attend conferences with no indicated plan on how to make all these expectations sanely possible."

He pointed out that academia becomes a narcissistic exercise whereby there is a rush to produce too much, even in small, inaccessible journals that have no impact on the circulation, development and nurturing of knowledge. 

"In all this, the need to restore quality is superseded by the push for quantity in both intake and throughput. Students suffer and leave under-prepared. The sober conclusion is that, if we allow higher education to be commodified, we intentionally continue the commodification of humanity as a whole.

"Once this happens, the space for genuine transformation - that is substantive transformation beyond the numbers and percentages games of human capital - becomes stifled because transformation is an antithesis of the dominant current establishment."

He went on to say that transformation in higher education and society at large must "infuse the black community with a newly-found pride" in their effort, value systems, cultures, religion and outlook of life. "Transformation is about changing the psyche of black people, making them feel represented in the literature and culture of higher education," he said.

In his closing remarks, Mnguni emphasised that university management joins students alongside unions in demanding more funding for higher education with the need to restore the sector as a function of public good.

"May we all continue to fight for justice in all spaces of our functioning, question the systems we work within and consistently challenge authority to remind those in power that they are servants of the people and should remain humble and committed at all times. We must all keep probing in order to develop a higher education system infused with a progressive transformation agenda."

Mnguni's family attended his lecture and stated they were exceptionally proud of him. Academics, at the lecture, were impressed with his choice of topic and his presentation stating it was akin to a good inaugural lecture.

* Lukhona Mnguni holds a Bachelor of Community and Development Studies (cum laude) and an Honours Degree in Conflict Transformation and Peace Studies (cum laude), both from UKZN. He's the recipient of the 2012 UKZN Distinguished Students Award - received by two most outstanding students for that year. He is an alumnus of the Brightest Young Minds in South Africa. He is a lifetime member of the Golden Key International Honours Society and is a newspaper columnist, a News24 Voices blogger and radio commentator on socio-political and socioeconomic issues.