Accounting for autonomy

Abstract

Originally presented as the 41st T. B. Davie Memorial Lecture at the University of
Cape Town, this article offers a critical review of the changing meanings of and
challenges to institutional autonomy since the coming to power of the first
democratic government in 1994. The argument has less to do with enumerating the
recent threats to autonomy than with understanding the transnational currents that
underpin such changes in university-state relations everywhere. There are at least
two paradoxes of concern: that the achievement of a democratic state after
apartheid was accompanied by the decline in institutional autonomy; and that
more and more is expected from universities even as the state provides less and less
commitment in terms of centralised funding.

South African Journal of Higher Education Vol. 19 (2) 2006: pp.214-228