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He Loves the ‘Avalanche of Hope’

He Loves the ‘Avalanche of Hope’

This vice-chancellor has more in mind for the students than straight education, wanting to produce well-rounded citizens rather than cogs in a machine, writes Leanne Jansen.

AS A FIRST-generation university student himself, Durban University of Technology vice-chancellor Professor Ahmed Bawa has spent many a graduation ceremony marvelling at student academic achievement in the face of near-insurmountable odds.

He attends every one of the 18 graduation ceremonies a year, witnessing what he has heard described as “an avalanche of hope” making its way across the stage. That three quarters of DUT’s enrolment are the first in their family to take up a place in a lecture theatre is one of the reasons why Prof Bawa has accepted a second term in office as vice-chancellor, at a time when to lead a university in South Africa is no walk in the park. “This might sound like heresy and my fellow vice-chancellors will probably be very irritated with me, but I think that with the vast inequalities in our society and the fact that there are so many students who are unfunded, it is the right of students to demonstrate. “When things get violent and students are pulled out of their classrooms, then of course we have to take action. But on the other hand, I have absolutely no anxiety about students calling mass meetings or marching.”

While DUT is primarily a teaching and learning institution, under Prof Bawa it has bettered its research output, producing new knowledge. “The last five years have been fascinating. In some senses it has really been about creating a university One of my challenges has been how to get DUT to start thinking of itself as a university, and in particular to begin to develop a research culture and ensure that the curriculum is a lot more formative than just training for the job.”

From 2016, 30% of the curriculum at DUT – across faculties – will include “general education”. In 2011, while in conversation with students, Prof Bawa discovered that many of them had never read Zakes Mda. “It gave me a bit of a shock because I thought these young people have just come out of school and they would have studied literature. Not through any fault of theirs, somehow the school system doesn’t get them to read one of South Africa’s most celebrated novelists. That, coupled with the fact that employers of our graduates never complained about our students’ technical training but were concerned about their inability to write well, their poor communications skills and work ethic made me realise that the big challenge was to try to ensure that our students get a much more rounded education. “Our task is to ensure that they develop as rounded citizens – not simply as cogs for a machine in the job market.”

All DUT students will be expected take courses in maths, ethics and philosophy Prof Bawa believes that the general education will ensure that incidents such as the recent call by the SRC for Jewish students to be expelled will not be repeated. The incident (for which the SRC later apologised) left Prof Bawa feeling as if the education system and the university had somehow failed the offending students, who clearly did not seem to know about the place of Joe Slovo or Ruth First in South African history “We’re fully aware that much of the learning which takes place at universities does not take place inside the classrooms, but outside. That is what we call the second curriculum. One of our main aims now is to try to understand how to grow our young people emotionally socially and intellectually”. Prof Bawa wants students to be able to do things such as watch films on campus, and participate in seminars in their free time. Encouraged by the 100% pass rate among first-year students living in university residences, DUT is building an 800-bed residence on campus to replicate a home environment that enables academic excellence. “It’s become more and more clear to us that we have to focus on how these different elements in the education process come to bear on our students.”

As part of DUT’s emphasis on e-learning, this year 50% of DUT courses will have a technology component, and students who are dependent on the National Student Financial Aid Scheme will be given tablet computers. Turning to transformation, a burning issue in higher education, Prof Bawa emphasises that the task is not merely about transforming the student and staff profile of universities, but also about creating an inclusive university culture, and reflecting South African and African knowledge. Asked what his biggest concern is, predictably Prof Bawa names inadequate funding. Last year, DUT sat with R100 million in student debt, and has had to write off R40m in bad debt. While the government’s overall budget allocation to universities was increasing, so was the number of students. As a result, the subsidy amount per student was declining, Prof Bawa said. “Other universities can depend on high fees, we can’t.”

Over the next five years, Prof Bawa will be keeping an eye on key indicators of success, such as staff research output, the number of undergraduate students who make it to graduation, and the number of students going on to succeed at postgraduate studies. When Prof Bawa joined DUT in 2010, only 10% of its staff had PhDs. This has now risen to 17% and he expects it to reach 20 % by year-end. Last year, he was delighted to cap 6 000 graduates.

FACTS

– One of his main challenges has been to get DUT to start thinking of itself as a university, says Vice-Chancellor Professor Ahmed Bawa. It was announced recently that he would remain at the helm of the institution until 2020.

– Prof Bawa has called serving the staff and students of DUT “one of my privileges of my life”.

– Prof Bawa is a father of two and grandfather of two who enjoys rock music and is reading Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young.

* This edited article was published in The Mercury newspaper.

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