A social realist account of the emergence of the first higher education structures in South Africa

Abstract

The scholarship on higher education has increasingly needed to deal with issues of change. Recent changes in the social and economic landscapes in which higher education operates, combined with changes within higher education institutions themselves, have resulted in a burgeoning of literature on this topic. Much of this scholarship, especially in postcolonial contexts such as South Africa, has called for the purposes and practices of higher education to be re-examined and for change to be steered towards greater social justice. Despite the widespread interest in higher education change, however, change remains poorly theorised within the field of higher education studies. This dissertation puts forward Margaret Archer's social realism as a framework for analysing the emergent characteristics of higher education, and her morphogenetic framework as a methodology for explaining change in this field. It argues that the morphogenetic framework allows for more robust explanations of how the characteristics of higher education at any given time came about, by tracing the mechanisms that shaped them. Understanding how the current characteristics of higher education – such as the extent of access, the legitimisation of knowledge, the selection of pedagogies, and the roles for which students are being prepared – emerged over time, is essential for understanding what it would take to change them. To illustrate how Archer’s framework can be used in higher education studies, and to demonstrate the value of her approach for analysing the emergent characteristics of higher education and explaining change, this dissertation applies Archer’s morphogenetic framework to an empirical study investigating the social origins of higher education in the Cape Colony between 1652 and 1874. By historically accounting for the emergence of the very first state higher education system in South Africa, the study serves additionally to deepen our understanding of the nature of South African higher education.