South African students call to decolonize science: Implications for international standards,curriculum development and Public Administration education

Abstract

The decolonialisation of the higher education curriculum and free higher education were two of the burning issues during student protests that erupted across universities in South Africa at the end of 2015. Although the president announced free higher education in December 2017, the country can scarcely afford it, with many universities already feeling financial constraints. The call for decolonialisation of the curriculum by students (which was viewed negatively by the public) refers specifically to books, theories and learning content that still predominantly reflect the thoughts of Western colonial powers. Students required a bigger focus on indigenous (African) knowledge to be incorporated into the South African curriculum. This, however, is the opposite of current international trends, where curricula are developed to meet international or even global standards that are set by international accreditation agencies in Public Administration, such as the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration and the International Commission on Accreditation of Public Administration Education and Training Programs. Therefore, this article investigates not only the direction the discipline of Public Administration is taking with regard to international standards and the curricula, but also to specifics of governance in developing countries. Are there reasonable arguments to support the demand for changes to the content of this discipline and is there a need to adjust curricula to concede to the wishes of the protesting students for the decolonising of science? This article found that international scholarly requirements, specific national conditions for governance and the demands uttered by students in the development of curricula at South African universities are at odds, particularly in the study of Public Administration.

Keywords

Decolonialisation curriculum international standards Public Administration accreditation agencies protests and education

Introduction

Widespread unrest erupted at South African universities in 2015. The unrest, which in many instances led to the cancellation of examinations and the closure of universities, involved protests by students and technical workers, who joined forces to accomplish multiple goals. The workers protested against the outsourcing of their work by the universities to private companies. This resulted in workers being fired, having to apply for their jobs again and then being employed at a reduced or minimum wage. The students’ goals were the lowering of registration fees as well as the implementation of free higher education, at a time when the university management wanted to increase fees by up to 10%. Associated with this #FeesMustFall campaign, which spread across campuses, a movement emerged, demanding the decolonising of science, the removal of symbols of the colonial era, the establishing of equal opportunities for poor black students to obtain a university degree and changing the contents of study programmes, perceived to be dominated by Western – colonial – knowledge.

The continuing protests resulted in huge demonstrations and blockades of the entrances to university campuses and administrative buildings, which were sometimes accompanied by the destruction of university property including historical statues, buildings and a library. The total cost of damage to property was estimated at 300 million Rand. The government urged university management to change its plans with regard to the wages for its technical workers and the planned increase in registration fees. In this regard, the protests were successful. Politicians and political parties capitalized on these protests to gain support from students for their own agendas, for example land reform and radical economic transformation. All these events have been well described in recent books by Ray (2016), Booysen (2016), Musawenkosi and Ndlovu (2017) and Ramphaele (2017).

Not much is known, however, about the demand of students to change the substantive content of their studies. This involves the more fundamental demand for a change in the content of tertiary education in an age of decolonialisation. According to the students, the books, theories and learning content predominantly reflect the thoughts of the previous Western colonial powers. Mutyaba (2016) states that due to education provided by colonial powers over many decades, African scholars provide nothing original, they simply recite ideas provided by Europeans. Therefore, students ask for more indigenous (African) knowledge to be incorporated in academic curricula in South Africa. This might be at odds with current trends in many a curriculum to rather adjust to international, even global, standards as these are set within the context of economically developed countries and by Western academics. In Public Administration, such standards are provided by international accreditation agencies, such as the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA), the International Commission on Accreditation of Public Administration Education and Training Programs (ICAPA) and the European Association for Public Administration Accreditation (EAPAA). In this article, we therefore aim to investigate the direction the discipline of Public Administration is taking with regard to international standards and the curricula, but also the specifics of governance in developing countries. Are there reasonable arguments to ask for a change in the content of this discipline and is there a need to adjust curricula to the wishes of the protesting students who call for the decolonising of science?

The research question this article answers is whether international scholarly requirements, specific national conditions for governance and the demands uttered by students in the development of curricula at South African universities are at odds with international trends, particularly in the study of Public Administration, in which global standards are imposed on programmes. The sub-questions, asked consecutively to arrive at an answer on this main question, are as follows.

What are the contributing factors to the South African student protests?

What does the demand to decolonize science entail?

How does this demand compare to the move for universal standards on Public Administration education?

Are there indications that these universal standards need to be adapted to the context of developing countries?

What does this imply for our understanding of the standardisation of curricula in Public Administration?

This article primarily aims to provoke a discussion about the discrepancy between the perceived need to contextualize Public Administration programmes to national circumstances while aiming to meet international standards on what a Public Administration programme should entail. It is based on a content analysis of documents from the international accreditation bodies in Public Administration and a review of literature on the student protests and the decolonialisation debate. During this investigation, we especially sought for indicators on the specifics with which the public service in developing countries has to deal, the necessity to understand the background thereof, and the needed knowledge and skills programmes in Public Administration in those countries need to incorporate. Through using a qualitative research approach, this article determines if there is a gap between local needs and international standards when it comes to the development of Public Administration curricula. This article starts with a review of scholarly literature, including books that focus on decolonisation student protests, curriculum development and international standards for curricula. Journal articles and internet resources were used to determine the significance of the concepts ‘decolonisation’, ‘international standards’ and ‘curriculum development’. This clarifies the importance of these concepts within an international higher education context. This review includes a number of concepts related to the decolonisation of science, for example, free higher education, student protests and financial support.

This article proceeds as follows. First, an account of the attributing factors that led to the student protests and their aims in initiating this protest action are given. This section will show that the way one interprets the events is willingly or unwillingly related to taking a stand in the conflict. It seems hardly possible to take a neutral stance, because the way one frames the events puts an individual on either one or the other side of the conflict. Next, we discuss the substantive demands of the students regarding the decolonisation of science and the varying responses to those demands. Although some readers might be familiar with the decolonialisation debate, we judge it necessary to elaborate on the dimensions thereof, namely its economic political and cultural aspects. This part argues that the political, economic and cultural context of countries that were once colonized does significantly differ from the context in countries where the standards for Public Administration programmes are decided upon. The argument developed is that a contextualisation of the needs for public administration skills and knowledge is indeed at odds with international standards for Public Administration programmes. If programmes are to be accredited, they need to be adjusted to such international standards. The point of discussion is again whether such international standards inhibit the attention in programmes to country-specific needs. Is there a globalisation of standards for Public Administration programmes that conflict with the special circumstances visible in developing countries like South Africa?

Contributing factors to the student protests in South Africa

Reading all the studies and commentaries about the recent student protests shows that any description of what happened in South Africa in this respect is nearly impossible without being partisan. The framing of the events already makes one take sides. This is seen, firstly, in determining the starting point of the student protests that indicates the severity of the need for curriculum reform associated with free higher education in South Africa.

Many timelines on the student protests indicate that it started in October 2015, when students and workers occupied the vice-chancellor’s office at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), in Johannesburg. As indicated in the introduction, this protest was against the dismissal of electrical workers as a consequence of the outsourcing of their work, as well as a demand to lower student fees, which the Wits university management had planned to increase with 10.5%. Student protests at the University of Cape Town, Rhodes University, Fort Hare, Cape Peninsula University of Technology and the University of Stellenbosch soon joined Wits University. To quote Susan Booysen, ‘The #FeesMustFall movement that started in late 2015 unleashed a social and political power that challenged the established political order, brought university management to heel, and changed the social fabric of universities and parts of society’ (Booysen, 2016:22). This framing depicts the student protests as motivated by financial, materialistic demands. This is indicated also in the description of the concessions gained by the students, namely a 0% increase of fees and the reorganisation of the National Student Foundation Aid Scheme, with better funding to assist a much wider range of poor students, special payment terms for students who cannot afford upfront registration fees etc. (Booysen, 2016:41). This view is also supported by the renewed student protests in September 2016, when the Minister for Higher Education and Training, Dr Bonginkosi Emmanuel ‘Blade’ Nzimande, announced that universities could raise tuition fees by up to 8%. This immediately resulted in renewed student protests at the Universities of Witwatersrand, Pretoria, KwaZulu-Natal, Free State, Stellenbosch, Port Elisabeth, Pretoria, Cape Town and North West, with renewed demands for free higher education.

Opinions, however, vary whether this is to be seen as positive or negative. Opponents point to the decrease in university funding impacting negatively on the quality it can maintain. In this regard, the Commission of Enquiry into Higher Education and Training, appointed by President Zuma on 14 January 2016, found that most universities were struggling financially due to the zero percent student increase and the call for free education. Supporters of the protests point to the need to enable all deserving students to attend university and the need to transform the university into an open, inclusive institution. (Commission of Enquiry into Higher Education and Training, 2017:21–23).

However, others set the starting point of the student protests not in Johannesburg, but in Cape Town, where in the autumn of 2015, a student movement under the label of ‘Rhodes must fall’ emerged. This movement started in March 2015, with a student, Chumani Maxwele, throwing human faeces at the statue of the former colonialist, Cecil Rhodes, at the campus of the University of Cape Town. In April 2015, the statue was removed. As Malcolm Ray (2016:12) notes, ‘A new movement had begun. Chumani Maxwele had lit the flame’. The news spread and, within no time, all over South Africa similar movements emerged with the statue of Rhodes at the University of Oxford being removed, the statue of King George V at the University of KwaZulu-Natal defaced and the statues of Louis Botha, Jan Smuts and others vandalized. In addition, the horse memorial in Port Elisabeth was damaged and, in Pretoria, green paint was thrown on the statue of Paul Kruger in April of 2015. The framing in this setting varies again. Opponents point to the vandalism involved, as lacking respect for the historical importance of the figures embodied by these statues and the severe neglect for their meaning in the development of South Africa. Supporters, on the other hand, point not only to the symbolic meaning of having to face former colonialists when entering a university and the contradiction between having such statues at the entrance of the university and saying the university is inclusive, but also to the significance of tearing down these statues to advance the decolonialisation of South Africa.

Still, others claim the student protests did not start in 2015, but the 2015 events are the continuation of student protests that find their roots in the colonial era. Malcolm Ray (2016:395) argues that

the history of transformation since the late 1990s has been characterized by movement in one direction – revolt by black students on the one hand and a defensive structure founded on the progressive consolidation of white privilege through the financialisation of higher education, on the other.

The demand for decolonized science

One of the key demands of the students was the decolonisation of science. Originally, decolonialisation referred to the political phenomenon, of ‘the creation of self-governing nation-states’ (Hargreaves, 1996:244), as happened in the 1960s all over Africa. But it has rapidly extended to incorporate everything related to colonialism, including its political, economic and cultural aspects (Delavignette, 1977:131) and, in its extreme, ‘rejection of the civilisation of the white man’ (Delavignette, 1977:131; Betts, 2012:23). The underlying idea is that with the retreat of colonial powers, the newly independent countries had not yet escaped from what is said to be the long shadow of the colonial era.

With regard to its economic dimensions, colonial powers left a legacy through continued land and industrial ownership by former settler families, thus establishing an economic structure in which the financial and economic power remained concentrated in few – white – hands. Furthermore, decolonialisation was partial, as the agricultural and industrial structure of the previous colonies was often not primarily aimed at cultivating or organising that country, the original meaning of colonisation, but was rather adapted to the necessities of the former colonising power (Chatterjee, 1985).

In political terms, decolonialisation was often also partial. This is seen in the constitutional and judicial system, which was often inherited or even completely copied from the one in use in the former colonial power (De Vries, 2016). The constitution defines the structure of the political system, which, although staffed by natives after formal decolonisation, was a Western construct not always fitting the particular, often multicultural dimensions of the new states. This state lacked, for instance, feelings of nationalism; having an awkward experience with the distinction imposed by the colonial powers, between public and private, while being stuck with an administrative system headed by officials coming from or trained by the former colonial powers (cf. Pels, 1997:178). It is, therefore, not surprising to see that in many Asian, Latin American, as well as African countries the misfit and dilemmas involved that often resulted in civil war, revolutions, corruption, power seizing and a winner-takes-all mentality as part of not-so-good governance, on the part of the ones gaining political power and independence.

In cultural terms, the colonial era brought a completely different way of life to the colonized areas, for instance, intangibles such as the language of the colonial power, education mixed with religion through missionaries and a new way of organising society, including the propagation of modernity and religion, the acceptance of domination and subordination and the rescheduling of the rhythm of free time and work time, and tangibles such as the construction of (capital) cities modelled on the cities of the colonial power with statues, churches, fortresses and harbours. Social practices were altered through the exchange of objects, the arrangement and disposition of bodies, clothes, buildings and tools in agricultural practices, medical and religious performances, regimes of domesticity and kinship, physical discipline and the construction of landscapes (cf. Pels, 1997). They even changed the essence of society from being composed of family relations (clans or tribes) to a population or even a nation.

In South Africa, all three dimensions of post-colonisation are detrimental for the development of this once colonized state, its post-colonial apartheid regime and the issues still faced in the country, as they involve the continuation of prejudice, racism, socioeconomic inequality, outdated patriarchal forms of domination and subordination, a political and administrative system unfit for the particulars of South African society, an economic and financial structure that result in further inequality, and a political system that is not trustworthy, as it has not fulfilled the promises the previously disadvantaged groups of people were hoping for. Therefore, Susan Booysen (2016:328) defined decolonisation in South Africa as ‘the removal of all unjust systems such as patriarchy, racism and capitalism in society and the restructuring of society to reflect African systems’.

In this view, decolonising science is an element of the more general aspiration of decolonisation. Decolonising science is seen as a necessary catalyser and precursor of that decolonialisation of Africa in general and the South African society in particular. Although not always explicitly stated in this way, one can reconstruct the ideas behind this movement as based on four issues within the structure of university education and research:

with regard to education, through setting international standards based on a narrow Eurocentric and North American idea of what science is and what the subjects to be taught in whatever academic programme should be, a too narrow focus of academic programmes is imposed on universities in developing countries;

the implication of 1 is the implicit downplaying of the inclusion of subjects in the content of programmes in academia that do not conform to these standards and/or fail to cover issues judged to be relevant for the development of science, as seen through the lens of Western scholars and institutions;

with regard to research, the standards and limitations major journals impose on the kind of questions to be answered, the research methods to be used, the kind of outcomes expected, as well as the structure of presenting those outcomes, legitimize existing global inequalities; and

the implication thereof is the disqualification of the contribution to knowledge of research by scholars from developing countries, as it is judged to be outdated and/or irrelevant, and a disrespect for research aimed at finding solutions for the needs and problems crucial for developing countries, but not so much for developed countries.

Because of the limitations given in the third and fourth issues mentioned, this article will only address the first two issues, that is, the need for local content and context to international standards for programmes in Public Administration. The next section will give an overview of the contents of such standards, which will be followed by an analysis thereof within the frame of the (de)colonising science debate.

International standards for Public Administration education

So, what are the international standards for Public Administration curricula? This section gives an overview of international standards on the skills and knowledge Public Administration programmes need to incorporate in their curricula to be accredited. These international standards indicate the tendency towards a one size fits all approach to be accredited and recognized. We start with a brief account on the meaning of standards.

What are standards?

Brunsson and Jacobsson (2000:4) define standards as shared ‘rules about what those who adopt them should do, even if this only involves saying something or designating something in a particular way’. Three types of standards can be distinguished: (a) standards about being something, for instance, what defines members of a profession, (b) standards about doing something, for example, what do you need to work on to be a member of the profession and (c) standards about having something, for example, what knowledge and skills should you possess to call yourself a member of the profession (Brunsson and Jacobsson, 2000:4–8).

Standards are said to be beneficial as they facilitate interaction and exchange between members, because they follow the same rules and procedures and pursue the same goals. Such knowledge gives a priori information about reducing transaction costs. Moreover, standards are said to improve the quality of coordination and cooperation. Because they result in some kind of uniformity and reduce the number of options to be considered, they make for more efficiency in production and cooperation. As Brunsson and Jacobsson (2000:169) noted, ‘a plug will fit into a socket’. Standards also give the people or organisations that adhere to them a certain status, legitimacy and identity, because the standards are highly valued by experts and/or in society (Brunsson and Jacobsson, 2000:55).

Sobis and De Vries (2017) argue that standards can have side effects, as they involve doing something that comes at a cost and are only a short step away from what is called ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions, disregarding contextual variation. On the positive side, there might be customer benefits in having quality ensured, as it provides a guarantee that products can be used and bought with confidence and reassurance regarding the health and safety of the workforce. A side effect concerns the administrative burdens of compliance, implementation and control of the standards, and the question arises whether the benefits outweigh the costs. If the costs are high, two things might occur. Firstly, a distance or even contrast between standards for being, doing and having something can be observed. For example, standards for doing something do not perforce matching standards of being or having something, and high costs of doing something can result in minimising what needs to be done. Secondly, a distinction can emerge between in-groups and out-groups, in which those who can afford burdens become members of an in-group, whereas those without sufficient resources of necessity will belong to an out-group, even though the latter might share standards of having and/or being something. Furthermore, standards can be an impediment to innovation, as they determine the manner in which things are optimally arranged, regardless of time and place. Proponents of standards argue that having standards for something enable organisations to focus on innovations where they are not yet in existence, but this focus does not weaken the counterargument. As soon as something is standardized, innovations in that area, or part of that area, and an increase of quality are likely to come to an end (Sobis and De Vries, 2017).

In education, ‘standards are norms against which educational performance can be measured and assessed’ (Winch and Gingell, 1999: 228), for example, the standard of knowledge that a student should have to perform a proper public service or the standard of knowledge that a student should have to perform a task properly. Reichard and Van der Krogt (2014) state that standards are an expected level of requirements and conditions against which quality is assessed. In terms of higher education, standards are formulated to measure whether an institution fulfils its requirements and has achieved the needed level of competence. International standards are those developed by international standards organisations.

In terms of Public Administration, global standardisation organisations refer to the International Commission on Accreditation of Public Administration Education and Training Programmes (the international accreditation committee of the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration [IASIA]) and NASPAA. Both ICAPA and NASPAA focus on the promotion of excellence in education and training for the public service. To achieve this, ICAPA created the standards of excellence for Public Administration education and training and NASPAA developed standards for educational programmes through a peer review and accreditation process.

Standards that define a Public Administration education programme

What are the international standards to be acknowledged as a Public Administration education programme, according to the two standard-setting organisations? Both are very specific about what such education should aim for to be acknowledged as a Public Administration programme. NASPAA states on its website, ‘The primary objective of the programme should be professional education excluding programmes with a primary mission other than that of educating professionals in public affairs, administration, and policy’ (NASPAA Standards, 2014). ICAPA defines Public Administration education in similar terms.

A principal goal of public administration education and training is the development of public administrators who will make strong, positive contributions to the public service generally and, in particular, to the organisations they join, or to which they return. (ICAPA, 2009)

Both emphasize the normative sides of Public Administration education, stating the need for such programmes to demonstrably emphasize public service values, pursuing the public interest, serving professionally with competence, efficiency and objectivity; acting ethically, to uphold the public trust; and demonstrating respect, equity and fairness in dealings with citizens and fellow public servants. ICAPA (2009:6) specifies that the normative aspects of Public Administration education are

to provide public administrators with the competencies and capacities to contribute to the improvement of the quality of life, especially for the most economically, socially, and politically disadvantaged members of society…at all times absolutely committed to the advancement of the public interest and the building of democratic institutions…commitment to the advancement of public service by both their advocacy for, and their efforts to create, a culture of participation, commitment, responsiveness and accountability in all of those organisations and institutions with which they come into contact.

The essence of being acknowledged as a Public Administration education programme is defined in educating competent professionals by providing them with normative principles that they should pursue in their careers. This standard setting is not self-evident, as other choices could have been made. One could also argue that in as far as such education takes place within universities, the aim could be to educate academics instead of practitioners or academic practitioners. Another issue relates to the kind of message the standard sends, as the word ‘professional’ can have very different meanings. To give an illustrative example from research in Malaysia on its meanings, it was said that,

Professionalism refers to those who conform to what has been decided. For instance, academic professionalism refers to conformance to ‘whatever things are decided by the university’. If the university says that a lecturer works from 8am to 5pm, then the lecturer has to obey this. If there is a certain Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that needs to be attained, he/she needs to achieve the KPI. If he/she is required to publish two journal article a year, then he/she has to fulfil this. (Ibrahim, Mansor and Amin, 2012:524)

The South African sociologist, Andrew Faull (2013), analysed the development of the meaning of the word ‘professional’ in relation to the South African police and argues that ‘professional’ originally only applied to law, medicine and theology, which were seen as a calling, founded on ethical codes and focused on serving others (Roddenberry, 1953:109). According to Faull (2013), it was only in the 20th century that its meaning shifted to developing mission statements and organisational objectives towards which professionals should strive. It had the effect that it allowed groups to claim ownership of an area of expertise, thus providing autonomy and protection from external interference.

Although we are sure that the two standard-setting organisations for Public Administration education focused on the original meaning of the word, rather than on the definition thereof as it evolved, for instance, in Malaysia and South Africa, the varying possible interpretations of the term ‘professional’ are indicative of the ambiguous message such a word sends to Public Administration institutes all over the world as to what the essence of Public Administration education should be. Dependent on the context, such a universal interpretation of the mission of Public Administration programmes could have awkward implications for academic professionals. In developing countries, the critical and analytical professionalism such academic teaching involves might be much needed, given the adverse socioeconomic and political context, as described in section 3 below ie Standards about what Public Administration education programmes should include, in which such academically trained professionals have to operate.

Standards about what Public Administration education programmes should include

As to what Public Administration education should include, ICAPA refers to personnel and fulfilling institutional criteria, such as finances, financial resources, adequate communication, Human Resource Management (HRM) policies, facilities for staff and students – library, support staff, classrooms and instructional equipment, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems and faculty offices, public relations and benchmarking practices.

NASPAA is similar in its conditions as indicated in the following statement.

An accredited programme should have a transparent, identifiable, and effective governance system. Governance includes, but is not limited to: programme policy and planning; establishing degree requirements; making and implementing recommendations regarding admission of students; advising students; specifying curriculum and learning outcomes; evaluating student performance and awarding degrees; appointing, promoting, and tenuring faculty; and participating in defining and assuring faculty performance, collectively and individually, both full- and part-time. The governance arrangement, including administrative leadership, should ensure the integrity of the programme. Because programme faculty members have deep knowledge of their programme and a commitment to participatory processes, they should play a significant role in the governance and execution of the programme. (NASPAA Standards, 2014)

According to NASPAA, faculty performance, in terms of faculty qualifications, diversity, research, scholarship and service, is crucial. Furthermore, there should be adequate regulations for student recruitment, admission, support and diversity.

Standards that determine ‘what to have’ are the most differentiating between those institutes and organisations that belong to the in-group and those that belong to the out-group. In Public Administration education, meeting the inclusion criteria is determined, for a significant part by the possibility of a Public Administration department obtaining private and/or public funding, by its success in attracting respected scholars, the finances to recruit ample staff to serve the students and staff to keep administration up to date. As these circumstances vary widely over countries, these standards result in exclusion and inclusion. Setting such high-level boundary conditions as standards for accreditation implies that only a few programmes are able to attain accreditation. Indeed, upon reviewing the websites of ICAPA and NASPAA, it is indicated that very few programmes in developing countries managed to receive accreditation. In the case of NASPAA, three schools (two in Beijing and one US University in Cairo) and, in the case of ICAPA, one extremely well-funded school in the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Brazil were accredited (ICAPA, 2018 and NASPAA, 2018). The standards about ‘what to have’ seem indeed to discriminate between the haves and have-nots, which is unfortunate because ICAPA started its accreditation several years ago with the aim of specifically accrediting programmes in developing countries.

Standards for what Public Administration education programmes should do

For the students in South Africa, as mentioned earlier in this article, it is crucial that the international standards indicate what a Public Administration education programme should do as well as the skills and knowledge to be acquired through following such a programme. In addition, it is also this aspect of standard setting that is most critical with regard to the protests that took place in South Africa.

It is generally accepted that completing a programme in Public Administration should provide the graduate with specific skills to be successful in their future work environment. ‘Skills’ can therefore be described as being ‘highly trained or experienced in a field of work, the ability to do something well’ (Elliott and Knight, 1988:764). ‘Skills are abilities that are minimally involved with understanding, that are essentially physical and that are perfected by practice at the activity itself’ (Winch and Gingell, 1999: 221). Smith, Cronje, Brevis and Vrba (2007:303) state that ‘ability’ refers to an individual’s capacity to do different tasks in the work environment. According to these authors, ‘ability’ consists of two aspects: intellectual and physical capacity. Intellectual capacity refers to a person’s intellectual capability as well as verbal and non-verbal communication. On the other hand, physical ability refers to an individual’s stamina, coordination, strength and the capacity to work for long hours. Associated with an individual’s skills and ability is their competency. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (Elliott and Knight, 1988: 162), the word ‘competence’ means having the ability or authority to do what is required. In general, the relation between skills, capacity and competency is that skills are a precondition for the capacity to perform and such a capacity, which in turn, is a precondition to be competent in one’s tasks. Skills refer to the capacity to perform isolated tasks, for instance, the skill to speak in and understand the English language, or the skill to write faultlessly. This results in the capability to write a text or speak the English language, but is still far from competence in communicating effectively. Skills are basic; being able to compute a mean and standard deviation from a set of numbers is still far from being competent in using statistics to analyse problems.

The International Commission on Accreditation of Public Administration Education and Training Programmes (ICAPA) departs from the skills needed as a graduate in Public Administration by moving away from the perspective of the competence of the individual, and instead demanding that every Public Administration programme has content addressing public sector skills, such as analytical and critical thinking; dealing with complexity; flexibility; dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity; operating in a political environment; building high-performing organisations; involving other groups and institutions in society to realize policy goals; life-time learning; and the ability to apply life experiences to academic and training activities. It can be ascertained from these international standards on Public Administration programmes that they differ in what is expected from such programmes. This makes it possible to conclude that setting the standards involves choices, based on prioritisation. NASPAA also departs from the focus on the competence of the individual, but focuses rather on the competence of a graduate to work in a public organisation. According to NASPAA, programmes in Public Administration should aim at competencies, which they call universally required competencies. These include the competence to lead and manage in public governance; to participate in and contribute to the policy process; to analyse, synthesise, think critically, solve problems and make decisions; to articulate and apply a public service perspective; and to communicate and interact productively with a diverse and changing workforce and citizenry.

Both accreditation organisations, NASPAA and ICAPA, see their standards as universal and, therefore, applicable to higher education in Public Administration programmes in developed and developing countries. NASPAA, for example, prominently display this maxim on its website: ‘NASPAA is the global standard in public service education’ (https://accreditation.naspaa.org/considering-accreditation/accreditation-outside-of-the-united-states/). It elaborates on this by saying,

Programmes based in the United States, as well as those based across the world, are held to the same conformance expectations and complete an identical accreditation process. (NASPAA accreditation 2018)

ICAPA is a bit more prudent in its claim of universalism, but still claims near-universalism, as it states

The members of the Task Force are of course aware that the Standards of Excellence may not be uniformly applicable or equally relevant in all situations. However, it is our belief that most of them are relevant in most situations. (Standards of Excellence, 2008:2).

Such one-size-fits-all thinking is at odds with what is known in Public Administration as the need to contextualize (Haque, 1996) and, in general, the need to have a fit between skills and the context in which they are to be applied. See, for instance, the recent work of Rissi and Gelmon (2014:349), who are of the view that

Reliance on existing models is an excellent starting point, but these will be more relevant if tailored to the programme’s unique context through the engagement of alumni, current students, field placement preceptors, and relevant stakeholders in the development, vetting, and evaluation of the programme’s competency model, competencies, and curriculum. This will help ensure that graduates leave the programme well prepared for the jobs they seek.

Accepting the need to contextualize begins with acknowledging that setting standards is a choice from a specific perspective. This can be seen in, for instance, additional sets of standards for Public Administration programmes as found in recent literature. These scholars argue for new sets of skills, because the context in which Public Administration students will work changes rapidly. Bertucci (2006), Saner (2001), Verhulst (2013), Dickinson and Sullivan (2014) and Mau (2015) see an increasingly globalized context in which new areas of public sector competency should be strengthened. By focusing on the importance of the global context, these authors contribute and support the view that standards should be universal and are applicable to every student studying Public Administration.

ICAPA focuses on skills related to the individual abilities of the public servant to manage, plan and control, but hardly relates the skills needed to the context in which public officials have to function, or points to skills to meaningfully internalize the specifics of that context in the way one manages a department or formulates policies. For instance, the standards mention the needed capability to use ICT and media technology, but not the skills to deal with the impact of the content of (social) media on their work or how to assess the effects thereof. NASPAA puts the performance of the individual in and its usefulness for the organisation centrally, but hardly mentions the increasingly complex context or societies in which those organisations function.

This is, however, not the only dimension along which skills and competences can be distinguished. A number of dimensions of skills can be detected in the way in which programmes in varying countries can, and should, take different positions.

A first dimension distinguishes between public officials as actors, who primarily send information, manage by steering and planning and develop policies on the one hand, and public officials who are recipients of information and are the targets of external pressures and interest groups, which requires rather opposite skills, on the other (Verhulst, 2013). The international standard-setting organisations seem to emphasize the first ones.

Standard-setting organisations do mention communication skills, but not skills such as listening to stakeholders, experts and think tanks, for instance, or processing these views in their management and policies. They mention knowledge management and people management, but do not talk about observational skills, for instance, the capacity to see and understand new developments, to observe and assess the applicability of best practices or to view the side-effects of policies next to the intended effects and processes involved in one’s work. The standards do not mention skills to incorporate the outcomes of public participation in public policies or to effectuate coproduction or approachable management.

A second dimension distinguishes between skills to adequately perform isolated tasks and those that enable students and graduates to focus on the big picture, which would allow them to apply their knowledge and skills to novel situations and, thus, develop an integrated, multidimensional response to administrative and policy issues (Van Gelder and Dougherty, 2012; Rissi and Gelmon, 2014:348). With regard to this dimension, the NASPAA competences and ICAPA skills seem more oriented to the former than the latter.

A third dimension distinguishes skills that are of use for any type of manager, working in the public or private sector, and skills specific for public management. The standards do not mention skills to establish and promote what is the essence of public sector motivation theories or work engagement theories, namely that it is necessary for public sector officials to be caring, compassionate and take care of collective problems through providing public goods and addressing problems that particularly disadvantaged groups cannot solve by themselves. These skills involve administration, management and policy making, but hardly distinguish the specific skills needed for the openness of public administration. Being able to deal with uncertainty is undeniably important for every manager, but being able to deal with dilemmas, as are commonly seen in the public sector, as well as conflicting interests, power disparities, diversity and inequity is something entirely different.

A fourth dimension distinguishes the skills needed for policymaking, such as policy analysis, policy planning and decision making, and those needed for taking care of the very end of the policy process, that is, skills to get things done within an adverse environment; to deal with unethical superiors and incapable politicians; to manage without means and access to resources; to overcome implementation hurdles; and to deal with failing public service delivery and limitations in boundary conditions.

Again, a focus on specific competence and skills are a choice that cannot and should not be based on so-called universal principles, but that could and should be adapted to the specifics of the context in which the graduates have to function. If these specifics are different in developing countries in comparison with developed countries, this will have detrimental consequences for students of Public Administration programmes in developing countries.

Discussion and conclusions

This article started with a conspectus of the recent student protests in South Africa, in which tangible and intangible goals were set. Until now, one of those intangible goals was decolonising science. The public image of that demand was very negative. This was partly because of a video in which students from Cape Town in 2016 discussed replacing regular science with black magic and African medicine through traditional healers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9SiRNibD14). Comments on the video, as posted on the internet, depicted such demands as ‘ludicrous’ suggestions, the result of an ‘illiterate mob’ and proponents of decolonisation as ‘much weirder than a simple simpleton’.

All such denigrating comments might perhaps be justified, given the content of the video and applying it to natural sciences. However, as this article argued, for Public Administration education the students might have a point, if not a strong one. To argue that, we first examined the meaning of decolonisation and found it involves more than becoming an independent country, after being conferred independence by some Western power. Socioeconomic, political and cultural structures often remained intact after formal decolonisation and the socioeconomic inequalities, prejudices and international dependences seem to be irreversible. The governance of such partly decolonized countries has proved to be complex and their development impeded by rather different challenges than those witnessed in developed countries. This calls for a Public Administration curriculum and international standards that are at least aware of such deviant challenges and Public Administration education that brings about knowledge and the matching skills to resolve society’s worst problems. Such knowledge may not match the theories coming from Western scholars and the issues involved might require rather different skills than those taught in Western countries. To give an example, trust in government is a serious issue all over the world. Trust is defined by Western scholars as the confidence that a government acts on the citizens’ behalf and is capable of providing the services needed. Most often such trust changes into distrust, firstly among the poor people and then among all those who are dissatisfied about the way things are going. In South Africa, however, it is especially the poor who seem to trust government, as they base their trust on ‘hope for the better’. Hence, the concept of a term like ‘trust’ is understood rather differently in different parts of the world. Of course, societal problems also differ. Western countries might have issues designing proper policies. However, in many countries in Africa, the problems emerge especially on the far side of the policymaking process, that is, in the actual delivery of basic public services.

Recent research also showed that the effectiveness of policy recommendations out of specific theories may vary over different contexts. For instance, increasing transparency and accountability will reduce corruption only if this is an individual and rare phenomenon. If corruption is widespread, increasing transparency might totally miss the point and alternative policies might be more effective. The same goes for recommendations such as privatisation and outsourcing, which would make the public service more efficient. In South Africa the outsourcing of cleaning and maintenance services at the universities resulted in protests by students and these service employees collectively. In South Africa, the outsourcing of maintenance service workers may have resulted in cost efficiency, but only because the wages for the work, which remained the same, were reduced when the employer was privatized.

There are numerous other examples of Western theories that miss the point when applied in developing countries. We only have to rephrase what other scholars have already argued, namely that Public Administration is in need of contextualisation and that knowledge and skills prove their worth only if they match the specifics of the context. Framing the decolonising science debate in this way, its appeal has to be perceived as a somewhat stronger, perhaps extreme, way for contextualising the knowledge science has brought forth thus far, and the knowledge and skills to be taught in Public Administration education.

Universal standards are at odds with the demand for decolonising science, irrespective of whether standard-setting organisations in Public Administration education see their standards as universal (NASPAA) or near-universal (ICAPA). The consequence thereof is that the standards prevail, irrespective of the context. We argued that such standards are, first of all, choices made by a limited group of (Western) scholars, mainly based on prioritisation from a specific (developed country) perspective, on which either the skills of the individual graduate or the performance of the graduate in the organisation they will manage or lead is central, but not skills to understand the implications of working in a wider and often adverse context, which has severe implications for what is possible. We argued that the choices made by accreditation committees based on a weighing of more and less important skills and knowledge cannot be universal given the varying issues at stake in different regions and countries and the consequently varying way in which these should be managed and resolved.

The resulting claim is that there is a contrast between the presumed universality of standards and the specific problems countries in different regions of the world face. This results in the awkward dilemma for Public Administration programmes in developing countries to either adhere to the international standards and have the pleasure of being included in the international community of accredited Public Administration programmes, or to train their students to become full-fledged public officials able to address the specific problems in their countries, but be excluded from the international community of Public Administration programmes.

Of course, international accreditation bodies can make the rebuttal that they allow some adaptation given the specifics of the context and that their standards are sufficiently abstract to be concretized in varying ways. Some variation is certainly allowed. However, pushing standards in the direction of being just abstract, in the end, also makes them meaningless.

There might be other objections to our argument. All the better, because a discussion about the universality of standards in education, especially Public Administration education, is welcomed. We believe the demands of the students who participated in the #FeesMustFall protests in South Africa have made a serious point about the education students in developing countries receive in general. A reflection thereon could not only improve their education but, in the long run, also the public service in South Africa as well as in other countries. It would imply they get something more important out of their protests than the free higher education they were promised by their president in December 2017. A rethinking of the dilemmas involved in the contents of education would have no financial consequences but could produce important substantial profits.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Lisa C van Jaarsveldt

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