Staff members of several funding agencies which support education in South Africa shared their observations about financing of academic partnerships, current priorities of their agencies, and models of partnerships and their strengths and weaknesses. Representatives spoke from the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, U.S. AID, and NUFFIC (a Dutch agency). This section of the report addresses only funding issues. Discussion from throughout the conference about models of partnerships follows in the concluding section.
Several donors cautioned foreign institutions against approaching a partnership in South Africa as a money-making venture. Patrick Fine, Education Team Leader of U.S. AID in South Africa, observed that some U.S. institutions seeking to internationalize their campuses first will approach a donor for money and then attempt to establish a linkage in South Africa. This process is unlikely to raise funds because it will be clear to the funding agency that the applicants have not done the necessary homework. It also is unlikely to lead to a successful partnership.
Both Fine and Betty Overton, Director of Higher Education of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, stressed that donors are unlikely to fund a proposal until the partnership has been defined and negotiated among the participating institutions. Overton also urged institutions to seek multiple sources of funding for a partnership so its continuation will not depend on a single source. In addition, the institutions themselves need to contribute some financial resources as an expression of the seriousness they accord to the partnership and the benefits that they expect to derive from it, Overton believed. This principle has been applied by some consortia of South African institutions; for example, the Eastern Seaboard Association of Tertiary Institutions (esATI) requires each participating institution to contribute one percent of its budget to esATI, according to its Executive Director, John Butler-Adam.
Overton and David Court of the Rockefeller Foundation (recently seconded to the World Bank) maintained that, from the beginning, partners should make a commitment and plan funding for a long-term linkage. Such a commitment can establish capacity-building programs, not just short-term projects, and can survive temporary vicissitudes. In East Africa, the Rockefeller Foundation conceived a program to support three universities to last 20 years. In fact, it lasted 30 years. Both partners to the UWC - Universi ty of Missouri linkage, which has continued for 13 years, believe that the long-term commitment by both institutions has been crucial to their success. Overton recommended commitments in the range of three to 10 years, in the belief that longer commitment s can lead to over-dependence by the institution in the South.
Richard Fehnel told the conferees that MANY donors are giving an increased priority to efficiency in their evaluation of institutions and partnerships. Higher education institutions in South Africa, the U.S., and many other countries are well aware of the need for greater efficiency because they expect student ENROLLMENTS will increase while government funding will decrease. The conventional wisdom, Fehnel said, is that institutions facing this pressure will try to diversify their funding sources, which IS LIKELY TO lead to increased competition among institutions. SOME funding agencies are attempting to RESPOND TO THIS SITUATION [reverse this trend in South Africa] by urging institutions to develop consortial partnerships engaging multiple South African universities and technikons.
"An international partnership can serve two purposes. It can establish a partnership with an institution external to South Africa, and it can also help South African institutions partner with each other. Internal partnership is as complicated as external partnership, but we need to do both. There also can be better use made of resources by partnerships between institutions outside of South Africa and consortia of institutions within South Africa. It also is possible for institut ions within South Africa to benefit from the existing partnerships. For example, perhaps we can set up an electronic notice board to keep each other informed when someone comes to South Africa with certain expertise."
- Brian Figaji, Vice -Chancellor, Peninsula Technikon Chair, The Committee of Technikon Principals
The need for using resources efficiently also has implications for the types of partnerships that are developed. As reported in the section on academic and staff development, funding agencies increasingly are questioning lengthy and expensive graduate programs.
Higher education institutions can respond innovatively to the short supply of government and foundation funding. Lou Anna Simon and David Wiley from MSU recommended that partnership agreements for foreign undergraduates studying in South Africa stipulate that the difference between U.S. and South African tuitions be designated for funding South African post-graduate students or visiting scholars coming to the U.S. In this way, excess tuition fees will benefit both partners instead of only the U.S. partner.
Partnerships between institutions involve questions of power, particularly between institutions that have unequal resources. Money, and how it is dealt with, is one of the ways that the power relationships are expressed. Patrick Fine said that bilateral donors in the North often have reinforced the unequal power relations between institutions in the North and South by issuing grants primarily to the institutions in the North. Fine said that his preference is that funds be given to the partner in the South, because this will contribute to a more balanced power relationship and thus to a healthier partnership. Partners need to negotiate and arrive at clear agreement over how the partnership will be administered - including how money will be dispensed and managed, Fine recommended.
"It is much easier for the institutions and scholars from the North to apply for and access resources to do work in the South. This is potentially dangerous as the agenda ends up being set by others, not ourselves, and we can only react. The bulk of the resources accessed on one's behalf remain at the country of origin and is used on its nationals and at the country of origin's institution. This is a serious problem if you consider it jointly with the difficulty that HDIs have in struggling with a lack of capacity."
- Sheila Tyeku, Director for Research Capacity Development, Centre for Science Development
Cecil Abrahams, David Court, and others said that there is a strong culture in South Africa of insisting on equity, accountability, democracy, and transparency in partnership arrangements. This dynamic, which has evolved during the negotiated transition to democracy, bodes well for negotiating mutually beneficial partnerships among higher education institutions as well as between South African education institutions and funding agencies.
Patrick Fine reported that this South African culture has led to an unusually collaborative management structure for the Tertiary Education Linkages Project (TELP), which provides U.S. AID funding to 15 South African HDIs. A TELP policy advisory body has been established that includes representatives of the South African Department of Education and the Vice Chancellors of the 15 institutions. U.S. AID provides all financial and other information to the advisory group, and that body makes all the substantive decisions about the project. This management structure is functioning well because the leaders of these institutions are willing to commit considerable time to it.
David Court cautioned that funding agencies should not impose extensive reporting requirements that are beyond the capacity of the institution unless the donors contribute some assistance for capacity building in that arena. Consistent with this, Joost Groot Kormelink of the Dutch agency NUFFIC said that capacity building for institutional management is the backbone of many of their programs.
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