one a political scientist, sees the crisis through the competing interests of rival groups, and links what happens on campus to what happens in cabinet, student politics, and party politics. Yet no one disciplinary perspective can fully come to grips with the depth, intensity, and uncertainty of this crisis, as the interviews will reveal.
Beyond these things that matter (personality, experience, preparedness, environment, and academic discipline), all leaders carry similar identities and position themselves in particular ways. How, then, should these leaders be framed? In the business world they would be called CEOs, a tag most vice-chancellors instinctively resist because of their unease with and even criticism of reducing universities to business entities in an age of neoliberalism. If you want to sting a scholarly minded vice-chancellor, tell him or her that a university is nothing more than a corporate organisation in which students are merely clients, where research amounts to maximising subsidy-generating outputs, and in which teaching is nothing more than preparing young people to meet the demands of a market economy. It is for this reason that some universities deliberately frame the principal as ‘the academic leader of the university’, while others, leaning towards the language of the state bureaucracy, are content with ‘the administrative head of the university’. It will become clear from this book that what university leaders actually do is often far removed from the formal duties and responsibilities outlined in the institutional statute required of each higher education institution.
The position and authority of vice-chancellors
But why the focus on the singular leader, the university principal? Surely research and experience show that leadership collectives steer organisations, from schools to companies to government departments. In fact, some of the most exciting advances in leadership studies point to ‘stretched-over leadership’ and ‘distributive leadership’ to make a point that is both empirical (research informed) and normative (desirable).12 No university principal, no matter how confident his or her personality, runs a complex institution alone; that is simply impossible. And yet the focus and target of much of the student protests was against one person, the man or woman in the principal’s office. That is no accident, as I will show later, but a determined strategy to run down the head of the university. It makes sense, therefore, to understand the heart and mind of the chief executive, so to speak, as well as the role of the vice-chancellor in the university as an organisation.
Every vice-chancellor is appointed by and responsible to the council, the highest decision-making body of a South African university. While council is responsible for the governance of the university – such as setting broad policies for the institution – the vice-chancellor is charged with implementing those policies. Perhaps the most important function of a council is the oversight of the finances of the university for which the vice-chancellor is held strictly accountable. For example, council approves the annual budget of a university, and the vice-chancellor and his or her executive team are responsible for the management of that budget within the available resources and constraints of the institution.
The vice-chancellor is also the chairperson of the university senate, which has responsibility for the academic mandate of the institution – such as teaching, research, and curriculum. The chancellor of a university holds a largely ceremonial position and officiates at important functions such as the annual graduation ceremonies.
It is, however, the vice-chancellor alone who carries responsibility for the management of the institution on a day-to-day basis. In the mantra of a healthy university, council governs and management manages the institution. When either of those two functions interferes with the mandate of the other, there is always trouble. What this means is that in the course of a major crisis, a vice-chancellor would inform the council through its chairperson, and even consult when necessary, but is expected to make the critical management decisions as head of the university. On the other hand, if the financial demands of student protestors means going outside the budget parameters set by council, a vice-chancellor can only proceed with the approval of the governing body.
Thus, the running of a university is left to the vice-chancellor and the executive team. In American-speak, the buck stops with the university principal. And as I know from hard experience, when everyone else has left, you are alone, in your office or your home, contemplating the meaning of a difficult day or week of crisis, and planning how to respond to the multiple stakeholders who call the university head to find out what exactly is going on, and going wrong. There is merit, therefore, in a closer, detailed examination of what exactly happens in the lives of university leaders who, in critical moments, are solitary figures alone with their ambitions and emotions inside the turbulence of a never-ending crisis.
Yet what exactly is the positional advantage of the university leader in relation to student protests? In the words of one of the principals interviewed, student leaders speak for students, unions for workers, academic staff associations for lecturers, but who speaks for the university? This is a crucial point. The university leader in a crisis has that job of defending the university – to his bosses, the council, about accountability for operations; to alumni fretting about what is happening to their cherished institution; to major and minor donors concerned about their investments; to government worried about the effective management of the university; to parents concerned about the safety of their children and the costly disruption of their education; to the senate for the integrity of the disrupted academic programme; and to employers of degreed students who constantly complain about the lack of ‘oven-ready’ graduates coming out of universities.
This is complex terrain. For example, not all alumni are the same, and this is more markedly so in the former white universities. There are those more conservative alumni who remember a pristine, white, settled (sic) institution which carried their values, and demand that it stays that way even if some black students are accommodated. But there are others who support the protests and demand a deeper ‘transformation’ that they were denied as students. Then there are the politicians, constantly seeking advantage from a crisis. When a crisis hits, they descend like vultures on the principal’s office. The more radical parties align with the students and put pressure on the university leader. The more liberal parties seek to counter the dominant or more radical parties, and will attack or defend the principal depending on the position taken relative to the ruling party. The more conservative politicians want immediate action taken against revolting staff or students and a restoration of ‘law and order’ at any costs.
In the midst of this noise, the university principal has to remain composed and reasonable, adjusting the main message for varying emphasis from one constituency to the next. The leader should, above all else, be visible.13 His or her face should convey calm and restraint, and yet also empathy and resolve, for ‘in a crisis, everybody watches what you do’.14 This brings enormous pressure to bear on the leader and, whatever happens, he or she has to come across in the media as stable and informed. The leadership task is almost impossible – keeping all the constituencies more or less on board throughout the crisis, even as the media take a position for or against the leader depending on which media house is concerned with the crisis. In other words, the principal speaks for the university as a whole.
What makes the task of the university principal most unenviable is that he or she sits between the impending crisis of diminishing state funding and uncertain revenues from student income. Put bluntly, the government says it has no money and the students insist they will not pay any increases in tuition. Here’s the problem: South Africa is not a well-endowed nation with large numbers of private funders, wealthy families, established trusts, and flourishing foundations which together can pour billions of dollars into higher education (as in the US, for example). If the money does not come from government, it has to come from either tuition or what the locals call third-stream (non-state and non-student sources) income.
Third-stream income is extremely limited in South Africa, except in the case of those few universities that can leverage professional schools such as engineering or nursing to deliver short courses or consultancies to bring in millions of rands in additional income. But even those sources of funding are dependent on the state of the
