Overcoming a legacy of racial discrimination: Competing policy goals in South African academia
Robin Cowan, Mortiz Müller, Alan Kirman & Helena Barnard
#2021-040
Because discrimination is systemic, efforts to counter it, and thus
policy interventions, must also be systemic. The South African case is
particularly instructive because it is so extreme: Apartheid
deliberately excluded the vast majority of the population, black South
Africans, from fully participating in society, but post-Apartheid
efforts to achieve transformation have had limited success. This paper
hones in on a key enabler of transformation, the university system. A
successful transformation will be characterized by a larger academic
system to accommodate the many previously disadvantaged students, by
growing scientific quality and by more black academics so that the
proportion of black to white academics resembles that of South Africans
generally. This will require more black South Africans to do PhDs, to
select academic careers, and to be selected into the top South African
universities. Policy interventions can be developed for each of these
many constituent elements, but it is not known whether policies will be
complementary or contradictory. To determine the outcomes of different
options, this paper uses computer simulations, calibrated with evidence
from South Africa since the end of Apartheid. The simulations reveal
very few direct trade-offs, although different combinations result in
different benefits. By highlighting the (larger and smaller) gains and
costs of different combinations of policies, the paper can therefore
support informed policy-making about a highly complex issue.
JEL Classification: I2, J15, J18, J7
Keywords: discrimination; transformation; universities, South Africa