Higher Education South Africa

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Higher Education South Africa
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The Science and Technology Ministerial Review
Report

• South African Higher Education Institutions and
  the National System of Innovation

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Remit (1)

• In July 2010, Minister of Science and
  Technology constituted a Review Committee. The
  purpose of the committee was to
• review the Science, Technology and Innovation
  landscape and its readiness to meet the needs of
  the country
• appraise the degree to which the country is
  making optimal use of its existing strengths

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Remit (II)

• assess the degree to which the country is well
  positioned to respond rapidly to a changing
  global context and meet the needs of the country
  in the coming ten to thirty years.
• The study was to provide the nation with
• an understanding of what is being
• achieved in and by the National System
• of Innovation (NSI).

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Phase One

• Phase one comprised scrutiny of the relevant
  policy framework established since the adoption
  of the White Paper on Science and Technology in
  1996, and evaluation of the systemic response to
  the external review of the South African National
  System of Innovation (NSI) conducted by the
  Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
  Development (OECD) in 2006/2007.

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Phase Two

• Phase Two focused on the development of
  recommendations for a greatly enhanced NSI.
• In particular Phase Two was expected to make
  recommendations regarding
• Framework conditions to achieve coordination and
  coherence
• Appropriate institutional arrangements and
  structures that would direct the NSI
• Location and levels of investment responsibility
  for the NSI, including government, business,
  foreign support and other sources of funding

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WHAT IS AN NSI

• The idea of a National System of Innovation rests
  on the importance of linkages and interactions
  among organisations and institutions in the
  creation of knowledge, its transfer and the
  development of innovations.
• The main actors are business, government research
  laboratories and universities.
• Government plays many roles setting framework
  conditions, providing infrastructure, human
  resource development
• Framework conditions policies regulations, tax
  incentives.

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Governance of the NSI (I)

• Assessment
• Department of Science and Technology achievements
  reviewed much that is positive.
• Lack of shared understanding across Government
  departments of conception of National System of
  Innovation
• Poor inter-governmental coordination and
  cooperation
• Many sectoral ST services under-performing.
• Failure of New Strategic Management Model for
  SETIs.

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Governance of the NSI (II)

• The trust placed in voluntary inter-departmental
  cooperation has not been realised
• Virtually no prospective NSI planning as
  envisaged in the White Paper has been possible
• There is still too little systemic coherence and
  sense of common purpose between the private
  sector, Government, Higher Education and civil
  society
• There is an absolute requirement for coherent
  information-gathering and analysis for effective
  agenda-setting and prioritisation in the NSI, and
  for the achievement of clearer and better-aligned
  institutional missions and functioning of the
  agencies.

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Governance of the NSI (III)

• Recommendation 1 Establish a statutory National
  Council on Research and Innovation (NCRI) chaired
  by Deputy President representatives from
  Government, private sector, HEIs, Research
  Councils, Labour, Civil Society. Responsible for
  oversight of NSI.
• Recommendation 2 Establish a Unitary
• Research and Innovation Vote.

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Governance of the NSI (IV)

• Recommendation 3 The primary function iof
  Ministry and Department of Science and Technology
  would be a systemic formulator and co-ordinator
  of NSI-related policy and strategy, consistent
  with decisions of NCRI, allocating
  macro-resources andpromoting the system.
• Recommendation 4 Transform the present National
  Council on Innovation (NACI) into a new
  statutory Office for Research and Innovation
  Policy (ORIP).

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Governance of the NSI (V)

• Recommendation 5 Establish three core
• NSI nexuses by written agreements.
• Post-school education and training involving the
  Department of Higher Education and Training
  (DHET) and the DST
• Business and enterprise development, involving at
  least the departments of Trade and Industry (the
  dti), the Economic Development (EDD), Public
  Enterprises (DPE) and the DST
• Social development and social innovation,
  involving the DST and departments concerned with
  social and rural development, and the social
  security, health and education complex.

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Governance of the NSI (V)

• Recommendation 6 Broaden modes of public
  grant-making participatory sectoral funds.
• Recommendation 7 Review, re-think and integrate
  the Science Councils and the Government ST
  services system.

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The enabling environment for NSI (I)

• Assessment
• Deep-seated gap between business and government
  (too little joint participation, decision-making,
  benefit-sharing, etc).
• Tax incentive schemes under-subscribed.
• Innovation survey hides low patenting and
  international impact of business innovation.

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The enabling environment for NSI (II)

• Falling contribution of business to Higher
  Education and Science Council RD .
• Technology balance-of-payments poor.
• Technology and Human Resources for Industry
  Programme and Support Programme for Industrial
  Innovation positive, but slow multi-helix
  formation.
• NSI not yet open and permeable enough.
• Despite some good examples, public service
  innovation weak.

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The enabling environment for NSI (III)

• Recommendation 8 Systematic efforts should be
  made to bring industry and government closer
  together, and to strengthen the response of the
  system to demand signals from business and
• industry, on the one hand, and social spheres, on
  the other. The effective participation of the
  private sector should be structured into all
  levels of the system, including participation in
  the NCRI.

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The enabling environment for NSI (IV)

• Recommendation 9 A concerted effort must be
  made to bridge the knowledge transfer gap between
  local companies (big and small) and public sector
  researchers and administrators, in order to
  ensure that the nations considerable
  intellectual resources are utilised to a much
  greater extent.
• Recommendation 10 The research investment
  climate must be improved through a review of
  present and further incentive schemes for
  accessibility, simplicity and effectiveness, with
  broadening as required.

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The enabling environment for NSI (V)

• Recommendation 12 An explicit
• Strategy should be developed for the
• advancement of social innovation
• within NSI.

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The Human Capital and Infrastructure (I)

• Assessment
• Multiple systemic pipeline jams hindering
  action (or implementation)
• Massive unresolved schooling issues
• Deficits in FET, vocational training (Green
  Paper)
• The achievement of an innovative and
  technology-rich economy and society depends on
  the depth, width and overall quality of the
  reservoir of human capital

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The Human Capital and Infrastructure (II)

• Assessment cont.
• Despite sustained efforts to increase admission
  to HE for academically deserving but financially
  disadvantaged students, overall particpation rate
  remains low at approximately 17 18.
• Low graduation rates and drop-out rates at all
  levels
• Innovation-driven economies tend to have strongly
  differentiated HE system
• Difficult to increase postgraduate enrollements
• Disciplinary ageing due to failure to reproduce
  the existing researcher cadre next generation
  of scholars.

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The Human Capital and Infrastructure (III)

• Recommendation 13 In order to meet the human
  resource development requirements of a knowledge
  economy, a planned, concerted, well-resourced and
  sustained programme of action in all areas of
  human capital development should be undertaken by
  all the relevant policy-makers and performers.

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The Human Capital and Infrastructure (IV)

• Teaching at all levels should be declared an
  essential public service within labour and other
  legislation and relevant regulations.
• Public resourcing (both from outside and inside
  institutions) should be focused on departments or
  research enterprises that are demonstratively
  capable of attracting and hosting large numbers
  of successful postgradautes.
• Opportunities in the academic job market should
  be widened to increase the population of
  productive academics.

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The Human Capital and Infrastructure (IV)

• Recommendation 14 The existing infrastructure
  needs not only to be expanded but restructured in
  terms of its elements to ensure a higher degree
  of effectiveness and efficiency in its
  deployment
• Recommendation 15 There is a strong case for the
  establishment and step-wise rollout of an
  Infrastructure Roadmap for South Africa.
• Recommendation 16 Establish a National Advisory
  Panel on Cyber-infrastructure to deal with
  cyber-infrastructure at strategic and policy
  level.

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Monitoring and Evaluation (I)

• Assessment
• Progress in improving the functioning of the NSI
  is currently still hampered by absence of an
  assigned responsibility for ensuring the
  availability, collation, maintenance (and even
  analysis) of the STI indicators (quantitative and
  qualitative) ME and planning of NSI.

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Monitoring and Evaluation (II)

• Assessment cont.
• No entity currently has the capability to do
  system mapping, analysis, building, steerage,
  evaluation, learning and foresight for the NSI.

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Monitoring and Evaluation (III)

• Recommendation 17 ORIP should be a centralised
  facility to serve as a repository of evaluation
  information on the NSI, and an expert site for
  its distillation and distribution to inform
  strategy and steerage at the highest levels and
  more broadly.
• Attention to foresight studies, as well as
  carefully designed social fabric studies.

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Financing the NSI (I)

• Assessment
• Comparison of the 20082009 RD expenditure
• data with those for 20072008 shows an
• increase in total real spend of only 1.3,
  while
• the total number of researchers and RD
• personnel has generally been static, and
• actually fell when expressed as a percentage of
• the total employment in the country, to only 1.4
• researchers per 1000 persons employed.

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Financing the NSI (II)

• Assessment cont.
• The current incentive schemes are laudably
  investing about R600 million of government money
  in innovation projects of business/industry, most
  of it actually spent in HEIs and science
  councils.
• The tax benefit for business RD activity that
  meets set criteria is being taken up too slowly.

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Financing the NSI (III)

• Recommendations 17, 18 and 19
• Increase public resourcing of HE RD (using
  performance as key criterion).
• Encourage and incentivise business/industry to
  increase its RD expenditure
• The incentive schemes offered by the DTI and
  TIA/DST should be expanded.

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Financing the NSI (IV)

• Recommendation 20 Encourage government
  departments to improve service delivery through
  RDI, including the effective use of the annual
  survey of government expenditure on science and
  technology activities, to draw up prospective
  expenditure plans annually for such activities.
• Recommendation 21 Everything possible must be
  done for South Africa to become the preferred
  destination on the African continent for
  RD-related foreign direct investment.