Pretoria – With an ageing lecturing workforce at higher education institutions, President Jacob Zuma says there is a need to make academia more exciting for South Africa’s youth.
One fifth of academics – many of which are professors - will retire within a decade. This means that most experienced academics will be leaving higher education.
“The country needs to produce more researchers and more younger lecturers during this term. The focus of government, through the Department of Higher Education, is to grow the number of graduates from black communities and attract them into academic careers.
“We need to make academia exciting for our youth,” President Zuma said on Thursday.
This will also help produce more intellectuals which will to move the country forward to prosperity.
He believed that the two new universities, Sol Plaatje University in the Northern Cape and the University of Mpumalanga with a campus opened in Nelspruit, will contribute to producing more academics for the country.
The President was speaking at the 1st anniversary of the Progressive Professionals Forum in Midrand on Thursday.
President Zuma said professionals and the intelligentsia were a critical reservoir of knowledge in any society.
They were also a good barometer of the progress the country makes.
It is for this reason that government has set high targets for socio-economic advancement and also especially for education in the country.
This includes the targets to produce more than 50 000 engineers, more than 50 000 animal and human health graduates and more than 40 000 teacher graduates by 2014.
However, Zuma said these targets were still not sufficient to meet the future demand for teachers, particularly at the foundation phase.
“Without good teachers, our targets of boosting the level of education and skills development in the country will fall flat,” he said, calling on professionals to partner with government in promoting teacher development.
President Zuma emphasised that education was the most effective instrument to address poverty and inequality.
“Higher education on its own is a powerful tool of emancipating our people. It is also a powerful tool that will enable us to produce progressive intellectuals to participate in the battle of ideas and the ideological struggle that will move our country forward.”
He said graduates must emerge from universities as complete humans who have full appreciation of the history of the country, its present and its future.
“Students must emerge from universities as patriotic citizens willing to participate both in the conceptualization and implementation of our progressive programme to transform society.”
Minister of Higher education and Training Blade Nzimande acknowledged that they were still battling with transformation.
“We still have universities where residences are reserved for whites,” he said.
He said his department had recently introduced draft policy on social inclusion in the post-school education and training system, which will ensure that educational institutions recognise and promote integration, among other targets.
The policy was launched last year and comprises professionals, entrepreneurs, intelligentsia, academia aligned to "progressive movement".
The Forum’s Deputy President, Kashif Wicomb ,said the PFF was a non-racial, non-sexist , non-xenophobic and non-afrophobic platform.
“The primary object of the PFF is to encourage, foster and nurture progressive thinking in our country,” he said. – SAnews.gov.za
