Abstract
The paper reflects on the prospects for higher education reform in a country - South Africa - lodged within a sub-continent not noted for successful reform. The argument is that much of the policy debate is conducted in a way that dichotomises the issues: control versus autonomy; freedom versus regulation; state versus civil society. This dichotomous construal is unable to deal adequately with recent work on the changing forms of the state and changing state-higher education relations. The paper develops a distinction between administrative and political forms of control; and broadens the state control-state supervision distinction from one based solely on models to one based on the specific quality of inter-organisational coordination, connectivity and regulation. The paper concludes by spelling out what such a connective conception of organisation and regulation could mean for South African higher education.
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Moja, T., Cloete, N. & Muller, J. Towards new forms of regulation in higher education: the case of South Africa. High Educ 32, 129–155 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00138393
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00138393