ARE WE REIGNING IN A NEW ERA OF

ARE WE REIGNING IN A NEW ERA OF NORTHSOUTH PARTNERSHIPS IN HIGHER EDUCATION? SAMIA CHASI, FELIX MARINGE GLOBAL CONFERENCE 2016, 22 AUGUST 2016

CONTENTS Background The Study The Pilot Findings Reflections Conclusions

BACKGROUND Higher education partnerships are generally considered an important facet of internationalisation. Partnerships between the Global North and the Global South are often perceived and described as particularly challenging. These challenges are mostly due to imbalances and inequalities, particularly with regard to power and influence as well as mutual benefit but also with regard to knowledge and scholarship. While the dominance of the North is currently evident not only in partnerships themselves but also in the research on and debate about the subject, emphasis seems to begin to shift to the South. For example, there seems to be growing interest amongst practitioners and researchers to focus on the South as an area of research interest. At the same time, agency is beginning to move to the South. This paper is a response to the call for practitioners and researchers in and from the South to contribute, or contribute more strongly, to internationalisation debates and related research.

THE STUDY Title of research: North-South Partnerships in Public Higher Education: A Selected South African Case Study Research question: What is the nature of North-South partnerships at a selected South African higher education institution? Methodology (Guba and Lincoln, 1994): Qualitative research: real world; rich insight into human behaviour; multiple contexts and perspectives Paradigm: constructivism: no single truth but rather multiple social realities; subjectivist position; knowledge production in interaction between the researcher and the participants Researcher: part of the researched world; passionate participant Data collection: focus on interviews (semi-structured, in-depth, face-to-face) Data analysis: thematic

THE PILOT Part of quality assurance phase of the research project In-depth interviews with three staff members of the selected university Sampling: Non-random, purposive sampling strategy Participants: knowledgeable, through direct involvement in partnership activities as well as managerial and/or strategic oversight; representing diverse categories (one academic, one head of school, one member of the senior executive team) Rich qualitative data and insights into how South Africans experience North-South partnerships and the challenges they bring about

FINDINGS – IN RESPONSE TO RESEARCH SUB-QUESTIONS How do various stakeholders rationalise and conceptualise North-South partnerships in the institution? What I’ve learned is that institutions in the South and institutions in the North collude together in assumptions of inferiority, superiority, in assumptions about a gradient of quality that assumes that the North is further advanced and intellectually at an advantage over institutions in the South, and we in the South are complicit in these assumptions and that the North naturally enjoys those assumptions and often act on those assumptions. (R 3) Key points: North-South partnerships are characterised by imbalances. It is important to contextualise these partnerships. There is a considerable degree of complexity. It is suggested that the dynamics of North-South partnerships is beginning to change.

FINDINGS (CONT. ) What role(s) do partnerships play in the institution’s internationalisation efforts? I hoped that at a very simple [level], staff would have an opportunity to work with a different kind of constituency, students and staff in different environment. I think that it’s, it’s really important that we, again at a very general level, understand how arts education takes place in different institutions around the world. (R 1) Key points: Partnerships are an important part of internationalisation efforts. Partnerships bring about a variety of benefits including access to resources and networks. When different partners engage, they create opportunities to learn about and from each other.

FINDINGS (CONT. ) How are North-South partnerships managed at the institution? We haven’t even come to terms properly with how we can collaborate in significantly new ways with government or industry within the country let alone how we can collaborate with other universities internationally in terms of having really strong and dynamic research partnerships and post-graduate teaching partnerships. We’re actually going to have a new organisational model and we haven’t even begun to turn our minds to that yet. (R 3) Key points: There appears to be no clear institutional approach regarding how partnerships should be managed. As procedures and processes have not been institutionalised, individual champions take on the responsibility for the management and implementation of partnerships. The specific South African context is important.

FINDINGS (CONT. ) What challenges exist at various points in the life cycle of North-South partnerships at the institution? Foucault never writes about, for example, other parts of the world except France, so now you are having to translate or reinterpret that into this context. (R 2) Key points: North-South partnerships are undeniably challenging. Challenges are related to finances and decision-making power but also include difficulties arising from different attitudes and epistemologies. It is important to mitigate detrimental effects of differences.

FINDINGS (CONT. ) How does the institution respond to these challenges in North-South partnerships? One of the purposes of that thing is to try and set up an evaluative capability in the South so that the South is not dependant on evaluation continually being asserted from the North and that’s why we had that little conference in Bellagio two years ago that was talking about how do we redefine African evaluation, Africa rooted evaluation, so that we can begin to counter the evaluative gaze that is mounted from the North. (R 3) Key points: There is a realisation on behalf of the South that the dynamic of North-South partnerships needs to change. There is a growing commitment to engage much more critically with such partnerships and the challenges they pose. The South seems to be prepared to play a more active role in setting the agenda for partnerships.

REFLECTIONS – SELECTED EMERGING THEMES “There’s something here” XXX’s short paper, I think, is a really interesting call to acknowledge without any kind of apology that there is, there’s something here - whether that’ll be Johannesburg, Addis Ababa, Kinshasa – that can, as I said earlier, set the term, set an agenda. And we need to be able to take that to all these spaces that we are engaging in through the partnerships and outside the partnerships. (R 1) “Triumphant in spite of history” There is no doubt about it but it’s enormously important to acknowledge them and then to be endlessly innovative in finding transcendent means of being able to overcome the limiting conditions of history and to be forging fresh ways of being triumphant in spite of history, so it’s the triumph of agency over structure and a refusal to let structure subdue and dominate eternally. (R 3)

REFLECTIONS (CONT. ) Old order – new order partnerships …older partnerships in a way assumed that gradient of sophistication, that the South is always learning from the North. (R 3) The new order partnerships are ones that I think are based on a change in thinking of the nature of a global reality that has happened over the last decade and that really has been occasioned by the realisations around climate change, around the global economic meltdown, around the HIV/ Aids pandemic etc (R 3) University …that realisation of the true globalisation has meant that partnerships between North and South are being reconfigured and in that process I think the notion of the university is beginning to undergo a shift. (R 3) …the university of the future needs to be drawing its intellectual capital and its intellectual insight from multiple perspectives on the globe. (R 3)

CONCLUSIONS To a large extent, the data confirms what we have gleaned from the literature. Some key findings: Partnerships between institutions in the Global North and the Global South are challenging and complex, and it seems imperative that they are looked at much more critically. It is highlighted that the South, instead of being only a beneficiary, has something to contribute to partnerships and is increasingly playing a more active part in shaping their agendas. What emerges from the data is a call to overcome the past and an unwillingness on behalf of the South to let the past determine the future, which is particularly relevant in the context of a history of colonialism. In this context, the notion of the university itself seems to be undergoing a shift. Encouraging the South to be an active agent in creating its own future, we suggest that North-South partnerships are dynamic and evolving, and that we might be witnessing (the beginning of) a paradigm shift from ‘old’ partnerships, which are associated with notions of superiority and inferiority, to ‘new’ partnerships, where partners engage on a more even playing field, brought about by globalisation forces and common global challenges.

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