Presentation at the 25th Annual Conference of the South African Association for Institutional Research (SAAIR), 12-15 November, 2018, Durban University of Technology (DUT), Durban, South Africa

1. Higher education research: responding to
his/her Master’s voice
Imagecredit:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice
25th Annual Conference of the South
African Association for Institutional
Research (SAAIR)
12-15 November, 2018
Durban University of Technology
(DUT), Durban, South Africa

2. Imagecredit:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice
His Master's Voice (HMV) is a
famous trademark in the recording
industry and was the unofficial name of a
major British record label. The phrase was
coined in the 1890s as the title of a
painting of a terrier mix dog
named Nipper, listening to a wind-up
disc gramophone
(Wikipedia)
Some background
information for those
younger than 40

3. Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice#/media/File:HMV_-_Oxford_Street_1.jpg
Possibly more known are the HMV (His Masters’
Voice) stores

4. Paul Prinsloo
University of South Africa (Unisa)
14prinsp
Oabona Nthebolang
Human Resource Development Council
Botswana

5. Acknowledgement
We do not own the copyright of any of the images in this
presentation. We therefore acknowledge the original
copyright and licensing regime of every image used.
This presentation (excluding the images) is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License.

6. Who sets the research agenda for researchers
and for higher education as a sector? And why
is it important to know?
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/checklist-check-list-empty-mark-2077025/

7. Higher education is facing some dramatic challenges
with regard to, not only, the role and shape of higher
education, issues of access to, quality and cost of
higher education
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/asphalt-crack-background-line-road-315756/

8. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/
What is at stake is the very definition of Knowledge,
who has the power to define the curriculum and who
has access to this curriculum, at what cost
Image credit: http://chica.co.za/career/social-media-activism-feesmustfall/

10. Source credit: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001832/183219e.pdf
2009

11. • Changing patterns of enrolment
• From access to completion
• Diversification
• Privatization and funding
• New technologies
• The concern for quality
• The struggle for the soul of higher education
• The professionalization of higher education
• Management and leadership
Future

12. Beware the crisis narrative
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/old-ship-mud-broken-abandoned-sad-164980/

13. The notion of ‘crisis’ is defined by particular ideological understandings of
the role of higher education, its funding, its role in society

14. There is a crisis and the best solution was implying that the
appropriate response was the neoliberalisation of education
policy and seeing the crisis in economistic terms
The founding assumption was that the country was at risk of
losing out in the global economic competition if it did not
reform education so as to graduate more students with the
skills demanded by the globalising economy
The creation of this crisis resulted in moving the focus away
from the crisis in elementary and secondary public education
because declining state support has made it more difficult
for lower-income students, especially minorities, to get the
education they need to even qualify to attend college

15. Image credit: xhttps://pixabay.com/en/cyclone-forward-hurricane-storm-2102397/
In times like these, who sets the research
agenda and whose interests does it serve?

16. University of
Botswana
University of
South Africa
A qualitative, multiple case study

17. University of
Botswana
University of
South Africa
• Established 1982
• Public residential
university
• Six faculties: Business,
Education, Engineering,
Humanities, Science and
Social Sciences.
• Total students: 15,484
(14,093 undergraduate)
• Established 1873
• Public comprehensive open,
distance and e-learning university
• Nine colleges: Accounting Sciences,
Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences, Education, Economic and
Management Sciences, Graduate
Studies, Human Sciences, Law,
Science, Engineering and
Technology, Graduate School of
Business Leadership (SBL)
• Total students: 381,556
(312,387 undergraduate)

18. Background of the research
• Part of a bigger multi-institutional research project:
SAAIR / SciSTIP Research Project 2017-2019 – “The
scope, synergy and uptake of research into higher
education in Southern Africa”
• 15 Southern African Higher Education Institutions
(including Namibia and Botswana) as well as the South
African Department of Higher Education and Training
• 16 researchers

19. • Both institutions are African and public higher education
institutions
• Different colonial histories /apartheid
• Different national research imperatives and funding,
institutional structural arrangements and different levels of
maturity with regard to institutional research as part of the
broader notion of higher education research

20. Higher education research: trying to make
sense of the field
Research produced by academics in their
respective disciplines e.g. chemistry,
mathematics, sociology and may include
research on the teaching of these
disciplines in the context of higher
education. Outputs: Journal articles, public
press, policies.
Research focusing on higher
education by academics and
others – general trends, access,
quality, cost, policy development,
etc. Outputs: Journal articles,
public press, policies.
Research produced by dedicated
specialist staff for external reporting
purposes. Mostly public, often used as
secondary data in other research outputs
Research produced by dedicated
specialist staff for internal
institutional sensemaking,
operational planning, responding to
specific issues. Often not public (?),
used as secondary data

21. University of Botswana University of South Africa
(Academic)
Research
Research
produced for
institutional use
Both institutions differentiate between…
… with different reporting and structures and processes
of institutional oversight
Overlap
Overlap

22. Institutional research @ the University of
Botswana
Office of Research and Development
Institutional Planning
• Institutional Research
• Physical Planning
The unit is responsible for:
1.Collecting, maintaining, and analysing data
about the university
2.Assisting Management with interpretation
of university data, for long-term planning
This unit serves as a repository for summary
information about students and staff.This
information is updated annually on a fixed
schedule, and the relevant facts form the
basis for the annual UB Factbook publication.
RESEARCH

23. Institutional research @ the University of
South Africa
Vice-Principal: Strategy, Risk and Advisory Services
Institutional Research and Business Intelligence
Directorate of Information and Analysis (DIA) is to support strategic and
operational management, evidence-based decision-making, institutional
research, planning, quality assurance, monitoring and evaluation across the
institution and to fulfil the University’s statutory reporting obligations with
regards student, staff and space information.
The Directorate for Institutional Research is a support directorate responsible for
undertaking a range of research and analyses for management to provide
effective evidence-based planning and decision support. It supports the core
functions of the university through qualitative and quantitative research, analytic
reports, profiles, benchmarking studies and some environmental scanning.

24. Brief notes on our methodology
• Ethical clearance from both the University of
Botswana and the University of South Africa
• Purposive sampling
• 6 interviews at the University of Botswana and 9
interviews at the University of South Africa
• Interviews recorded and transcribed
• Qualitative, deductive analysis of institutional
policies and frameworks as well as transcriptions of
the interviews, thematically coded and checked
between researchers

25. • Who/ what is shaping higher
education research/ research in/
on higher education?
• What type of research is done, by
whom?
• How does our research respond to
and change the direction/impact of
higher education/broader society?

26. Secondary research questions:
Research produced by academics in their
respective disciplines e.g. chemistry,
mathematics, sociology and may include
research on the teaching of these
disciplines in the context of higher
education. Outputs: Journal articles,
public press, policies
Research focusing on higher
education by academics and
others – general trends, access,
quality, cost, policy
development, etc. Outputs:
Journal articles, public press,
policies
Research produced for external
reporting purposes. Mostly public,
often used as secondary data in other
research outputs
Research produced for internal
institutional sensemaking,
operational planning, responding
to specific issues. Often not public
(?), used as secondary data
Who are the masters these types of higher education
research serve? Whose interests does the research serve?

27. de Oliveira Andreotti, V., Stein, S., Pashby, K., & Nicolson, M. (2016). Social
cartographies as performative devices in research on higher education. Higher
Education Research & Development, 35(1), 84-99.

28. de Oliveira Andreotti, V., Stein, S., Pashby, K., & Nicolson, M. (2016). Social cartographies as performative
devices in research on higher education. Higher Education Research & Development, 35(1), 84-99.
Neoliberal
Liberal Critical
Interface of
orientations
Liberal – Critical interface
Discursive orientations to research

29. Discursive orientations to research
“… can facilitate reflexive and agonistic forms of
engagement amongst scholars and practitioners by taking
account of paradoxes, and of situated investments,
attachments and desires that shape responses to the
shifting grounds of higher education” (p. 85).
There discursive orientations are juxtaposed and co-
exist but also contest for attention, time, funds,
orientation from individual faculty, departments and
institutions

30. A neoliberal understanding of
research in higher education
• De-investment by the government
• Research chairs must find own sponsorships
• Commercialisation and commercial outputs
• Intellectual Property Rights
• Patents
• Chasing of external grants and international, competitive
funding grants
• Corporate/industry sponsored research
• University/researcher rankings/incentives/rewards

31. A liberal understanding of
research in higher education
• Research linked to national development goals
• Value for taxpayers’ money
• Agency of and blame on the individual researchers
• Institutionally aligned research foci – what counts…
• Academic freedom
• Personal betterment
• Individual reward schemes/prices/rituals of verification
• Performance contracts and management
• Researcher rankings

32. A critical understanding of
research in higher education
• Socially-embedded research and critique/focus on structural
issues
• Decolonising research methodology, foci and use
• Disrupting the hegemony of the Global North in global
knowledge production, confronting unemployment, gender
violence, focus on the disadvantaged/disenfranchised
• Counter-narrative to the commercialization of research
• Not doing research on communities but with communities where
communities own the Intellectual Property Rights, Copyright, and
Patent rights

33. Neoliberal Liberal
Commercial outputs Research
deliverables
Value of taxpayers’
investment
Liberal Critical
Personal betterment ‘Intercultural
education’
Social critique
Critical Neoliberal
Disadvantaged
communities as co-
researchers
Community
engagement
Corporate social
responsibility
Empowering
entrepreneurship in
communities
See, for example, de Oliveira Andreotti, V., Stein, S., Pashby, K., & Nicolson, M. (2016). Social cartographies
as performative devices in research on higher education. Higher Education Research & Development, 35(1),
84-99.

34. Neoliberal Liberal
De-investment by
government
Commercialisation
Intellectual Property
Rights
Patents
External funding/
grants
University rankings
Research
deliverables
Quantity of
publications
Impact
Individual researcher
reputation
Value for taxpayers’
money
Academic freedom
National
development goals
Institutional
research foci
Personal
betterment/agency/
choice

35. Liberal Critical
Value for taxpayers’
money
Academic freedom
National development
goals
Institutional research
foci
Personal
betterment/agency/
choice
National development
goals
Institutional research
foci
‘Intercultural
education’/research
Stakeholder &
community engagement
Community-based
research
Specific social ills
without addressing
structural
concerns/justice
Social critique
Structural/post-
structural research
Decolonising research
Moving the centre
Disrupting the hegemony
of knowledge
production, capitalism,
commercialisation of
research
Focus on the
disenfranchised/
marginalised
Doing research with not
on communities – they
own the IP, patents

36. Critical Neoliberal
Social critique
Structural/post-
structural research
Decolonising research
Moving the centre
Disrupting the hegemony
of knowledge
production, capitalism,
commercialisation of
research
Focus on the
disenfranchised/
marginalised
Doing research with not
on communities – they
own the IP, patents
Community engagement
as research
Corporate social
responsibility
Compassionate/
responsible capitalism
‘Develop’ communities
‘Uplift’ communities
De-investment by
government
Commercialisation
Intellectual Property
Rights
Patents
External funding/ grants
University rankings

37. Preliminary findings
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/puzzle-match-missing-hole-blank-693873/

38. 1. Context matters. National and institutional economic and social
imperatives are very different but not necessarily/differently
supported by funding arrangements for research
2. The size and particular character of institutions matter re
structure of research, and importance of research (e.g. rankings)
3. The fact that Botswana was never colonised or had apartheid,
makes a critical orientation to research very different. This may,
however, hide other structural injustices and imbalances
4. In both institutions a neoliberal discursive orientation is
dominant but often linked to a liberal discursive orientation
5. In the context of Unisa, while the official rhetoric supports a
critical orientation, it does not reflect in research
practice/outputs
6. In both institutions all three discursive orientations co-exist, often
juxtaposed, and lay claim to attention/funding

39. • Changes in funding regimes
and the defunding of public
higher education research
• Academic capitalism
• Increasing reliance on
funders/ corporates to fund
research
• Individual researchers has the
responsibility to bid for
competitive grants
• Intellectual Property,
commercialisation, patents
• Consultancy research
In both institutions we found that the neoliberal
discursive orientation is present, if not also
dominant

40. “I think the appetite needs to be improved for the
researchers to go for funding. Individual
researchers need to source funding” (Interviewee 1
BMPM)
“We want to make sure that we can separate those
who belong here and those who don’t belong here
by just focusing on quality” (Interviewee 6 DS 6).

41. “That we should engage in
research that is nationally
relevant. And then we leave
the academics to decide
what they think is nationally
relevant” (Interviewee 2
APNT 1).
“The academic has got a free
licence to enquire. And,
what motivates them to
enquire into whatever areas,
is up to them” (Interviewee 2
APNT 1).
In both institutions we found that the liberal
discursive orientation is present, but there
are obvious tensions

42. The analysis also showed some examples of interfaces between
the three discursive positions, whether neoliberal-critical,
neoliberal-liberal, of liberal-critical

43. “I think the university is still sleeping. Botswana is still sleeping.
We’re still sleeping. You know how we just go into research and we
sign papers. The stupid thing that I did recently was to sign an MTA,
Material Transfer Agreement. In this research that we are doing. I
didn’t notice, because it was supposed to be the Ministry of […]
MTA, so we’re using the Ministry of […] MTA to transfer some
materials to be, what you call? To be analysed in the U.S. So, I just
closed my mind and I said, oh, this is Ministry of […], so they must
be protecting whatever is coming out of the country” (Interviewee
4 B4C).
“And then I realised that the MTA gave all the rights, the
international copyright to the recipient university and so on. I said,
what is this about us taking data to the U.S.? I think it’s a big
problem and Africa is sleeping” (Interviewee 4 B4C).

44. ‘Critical’ in context – differences between Botswana
and South Africa

45. A “sociology of absences” not only identifies what has been and
is suppressed and marginalised, but also focus “on the processes
that obstruct connections to be made between different
struggles and knowledges to demonstrate how the
‘incompleteness’ and ‘inadequacy’ of counter-hegemonic forms
is produced” (Bhambra, 2014, p. 102).
Also see Santos, B de S. (2016). Epistemologies of the South and
the future. From the European South 1, 17-29.
A clear critical discursive orientation is visible in some of the
institutional rhetoric, but will very little evidence in practice of
institutional agency and steering mechanisms in support of a
critical discursive orientation

46. Our findings confirm the research done by de
Oliveira Andreotti et al. (2016) that there is a
number of competing narratives in the social
imaginary pertaining to higher education and
institutional research. These narratives co-exist, and
depending on the context, a particular narrative may
dominate and steer institutional policy and practice,
as well as individual researcher praxis (Kogan &
Henkel, 2000).
(In)conclusions

47. Implications?
1. It is clear that individual, academic researchers will
increasingly forced to play along with the neoliberal
discursive tradition. Choosing not to play will not be
an option
2. Researchers who have already established
themselves and are recognised, may have more
leeway to do non-mainstream, non-funded, non-
accredited research
3. There is an urgent need for dedicated, focused
research on how these discursive positions play out
in Southern African higher education institutions

48. Implications?
4. Institutional research as a focused and dedicated
function within an institution will be called upon to
support and find evidence for the dominant
neoliberal discursive orientation. Individual
institutional researchers may have to adopt
subversive tactics and frame counter-narratives and
use every opportunity to give voice to the silences in
our research agendas

49. THANK YOU
Paul Prinsloo (Prof)
Research Professor in Open
Distance Learning (ODL)
University of South Africa (Unisa)
Pretoria
prinsp@unisa.ac.za
Skype: paul.prinsloo59
Personal blog:
http://opendistanceteachingandle
arning.wordpress.com
Twitter profile: @14prinsp
Oabona Nthebolang
Human Resource Development
Council (HRDC), Gaberone,
Botswana
onthebolang@hrdc.org.bw