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South African, American and British educators and policy makers discussed the broad challenges and needs facing universities in South Africa during a two-day workshop held last month in Cape Town. The event, led by Kresge Foundation Program Officers Bill Moses and David Fukuzawa, was the next step in the grantmaker’s ongoing effort to support advanced education in the fledgling democracy.

Participants agreed help is needed to increase the number of knowledge workers in the country – agronomists, teachers, engineers, researchers, health-care providers and computer scientists. “South African universities are among the strongest on the continent, but they are still fragile,” explains Moses, who heads Kresge’s international efforts in South Africa and Mexico. “Higher education was neglected by the government for many years.”

The Kresge Foundation already has a five-year, $10 million Special Initiative in South Africa, which was announced in 2005. The initiative seeks to build a strong base of local private giving at three universities and a hospital, in partnership with Inyathelo, the South African Institute for Advancement. The foundation is drawing on the methods of its highly effective Capital Challenge Grant, a model that colleges and universities in the United States have used for decades to strengthen their base of donor support and become more practiced in strategic planning and development while conducting a capital campaign to build or renovate facilities.

This latest conference aimed to identify areas other than advancement that merited Kresge support. In the last year, the foundation has begun expanding its scope beyond the challenge grant to support program expansion, retaining and recruiting staff, staff development, pursuing research and development, creating new markets and acquiring new knowledge. Program officers wanted to brainstorm with those in attendance on ways Kresge could strategically widen the scope of its 2005 commitment. 

The 18 participants identified four areas:

1. Improving learning and teaching by connecting university faculty who were trained in another era with today’s modern, more diverse student body. 
2. Increasing the quality and quantity of locally produced research by nurturing the next generation of university researchers.
3. Shoring up university management by preparing and supporting vice chancellors for the challenges of running highly complex institutions.
4. Establishing an innovation fund that would encourage higher-education experimentation. This might include developing “third stream” financial support for higher education, such as public-private partnerships, commercialization of intellectual property and research discoveries, private philanthropy, real-estate development and bond financing. 

These recommendations, which the Kresge Board of Trustees will consider for support at its fall meeting, work to address the problems Moses says loom on the horizon. For example, South Africa’s research capabilities are diminishing as an aging cohort of white males in their 50s and 60s nears retirement and the next generation of researchers is not being adequately trained to take their place. The nation’s academic community also is failing in its efforts to attract replacements for its aging professors due to the pressures of relatively weak salaries, large course loads, disruptive mergers and more attractive jobs overseas. 

Young South Africans, particularly blacks, have very little family history of working in higher education and eschew academic life in favor of business or government careers. Finally, the country faces shortages of teachers and health-care workers who are being lost to HIV-AIDS and recruited by developed countries where salaries are higher. 

“South Africa is really the world in microcosm and reflects many pervasive global concerns,” Moses explains. “These recommendations reflect Kresge’s re-visioning of its grantmaking from its long-time focus on challenge grants for buildings to its new emphasis on using a broad array of grantmaking tools to address society’s needs in a more holistic way.” 

For more information, contact Bill Moses at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).