University Towns & Cities

During my visit to Ann Arbor, home of the prestigious University of Michigan and Michigan State University. I remember someone saying Ann Arbor was a college town, what I understood they meant was that the population of the city is dominated by the university' population.

Thinking about Tshwane / Pretoria this morning, I asked "is the capital city becoming a college town?" You only have to be in the CBD during any weekday to see how the student population dominates the streets of the capital city. It is a no brainier really, the city host three major universities. One of those is the largest Open Learning / Distance Education Institution in Africa. Add to that most if not all the  national research institutions make their home in the city too -  Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Human Science Research Council (HSRC), The Agriculture Research Council (ARC), The Medical Research Council (MRC) and Council for Geoscience, just to mention the first five that came to mind.

However the dominance of the CBD by the student population stems from the new and abrupt private colleges which have become a salient feature of the capital city. Although not unique to Pretoria, the private post-matric education business seems to be blossoming here. My theory which is speculative at this point is that, most of the students who find their way into these colleges are the residues of the three main players, who must (need) find an alternative place to learn. They end up in these new establishments. It makes sense, the main three can only take so much, but then what happens to the rest, and that is the question that we need to seriously ponder on.

In India they have strict regulations of these private providers, that ensures that the quality of training at these private institution is continuously assessed. In South Africa that vacuum remains due to lack of political will, inept bureaucracy or both. Pseudo accreditation from an over burden and over whelmed CHE/SAQA/Umalusi consortia is not sufficient.

Quality control measures need to be enforced for every single private college operating in South Africa, much less the capital city, which is slowly turning into a college town.

The strength and potency of a college town is the creation and consumption of new knowledge, which leads to innovation, but for that innovation to flourish, the knowledge output needs to be managed not only regulated but managed.

For a town which has so much research capacity it is sad that we have not found solutions and methods to maximize the output from these private colleges.

No wonder we always complain about lack of skills and yet the city is full of young knowledge seekers, in pursuit of skills. Something is amiss!