Governance

The Higher Education Act of 1997 emphasises cooperative governance as a model for governing higher education. Whilst providing guidelines for the functioning of councils, institutional forums and student representative councils, the Act provides substantial scope for institutions with regard to interpretation and implementation.

The Higher Education Effective Governance Project (1999–2003) was a collaborative effort of the then Department of Education (DoE), the Centre for Higher Education Transformation (CHET) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), aimed at assisting higher education institutions in making institutional governance more effective.

Four methods of capacity-building were deployed:

• developing guidebooks and facilitator manuals;
• training facilitators for capacity development;
• conducting research on co-operative governance; and
• providing support to a limited number of institutions.