The Council on Higher Education conducted an institutional audit at Walter Sisulu University this week during which, among the issues scrutinised, were challenges on staffing capacity, infrastructure and postgraduate studies.
The council (CHE), a higher education regulatory body, announced in April it was to conduct a full institutional audit after it emerged that some of the university’s programmes were being taught without proper accreditation.
The audit took place on-site and online, from Monday to Friday.
Among those interviewed were vice-chancellor Prof Rushiella Songca, campus rectors and executive management, and members of the student representative council and university council.
The Dispatch understands the audit panel also questioned the executive management on the issue of the “low” percentage of staff with doctoral qualifications.
The panel queried the strategies put in place by the university to upgrade its staff’s qualifications to “have a more senior cohort of academics”.
In its self-evaluation report (SER), the university stated that its postgraduate programmes were suffering from a shortage of accredited programmes, a lack of suitably qualified supervisors and a poor policy environment.
The university also noted in its SER that its governance and management systems needed significant improvement.
Issues of safety and security and universal access to university premises and buildings which received the “highest dissatisfaction” scores from the student representative council, across the four campuses, were also deliberated.
CHE’s CEO and spokesperson, Dr Whitfield Green, told the Dispatch the purpose of the audit was “to evaluate the coherence and effectiveness of an institution’s internal quality assurance system in enabling student success, and improving its core academic functions, namely, learning and teaching, research, and community engagement”.
Green said the process for an institutional site visit consisted of an institution’s self-evaluation as given in its SER, and the validation of the SER by peers from the sector, “based on careful document analysis, a physical site visit and interviews with stakeholders”.
“The lines of inquiry that are used by the institutional audit panel for the site visit interviews are based on their analysis of the institution’s submitted response to the standards in the framework for institutional audits.
“The specific questions that each audit panel asks an institution’s staff and students are based on the standards in the framework and are used as an initial starting point to engage the institution,” Green said.
“The work of the WSU audit panel has not been concluded.
“It would therefore be inappropriate for the CHE to respond to any questions related to the audit or to processes at the university before the audit has been concluded and the audit outcomes have been reviewed.”
WSU will wait for the formal report on the audit outcomes, analyse its contents and implement its recommendations
WSU spokesperson Yonela Tukwayo said: “Walter Sisulu University is hosting CHE this week. This is an oversight role they play across all universities.
“WSU will wait for the formal report on the audit outcomes, analyse its contents and implement its recommendations.
“At the moment, no feedback or concerns have been raised with management by the audit team that is at WSU,” said Tukwayo.
Some of the university’s programmes were flagged earlier in 2022 after it emerged they were being offered without proper accreditation.
The programmes in question were the advanced diploma in internal auditing, advanced diploma in journalism, BSc honours in zoology and master of medicine in obstetrics and gynaecology.
They fall under the so-called “legacy qualifications” and were supposed to be in teach-out phase until the end of 2019.
The institution was given the go-ahead by CHE to continue offering the qualifications, albeit with some conditions.
For the advanced diploma in internal auditing and master of medicine in obstetrics and gynaecology, CHE said in May that WSU needed to “attend to the issues identified for each and show evidence that they have been addressed before the end of 2022, failing which no new students can be enrolled in the programmes”.
Regarding the advanced diploma in internal auditing, the CHE said: “Nothing in the module content or outcomes mentions their expectations of an internal auditor, such as evaluating, risks, ethical procedures for auditors or detecting fraud.”
For the BSc honours in zoology, CHE said the module outcomes of the programme were “too generic”, while the advanced diploma in journalism was reclassified with no conditions.
In May, higher education minister Dr Blade Nzimande, in response to parliamentary questions, said the university continued to accept students into the programmes in question even after the cut-off period in December 2019.
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