Enhancing university community engagement at Sol Plaatje University
Abstract
Enhancing university community engagement at Sol Plaatje University: Matching institutional outlook with regional absorptive capacity
The importance for higher education institutions to be relevant and contribute to addressing the social and economic needs of local communities and regions is globally recognized. In the South African National Development Plan and in higher education policy, community engagement is considered important as part of the broader social and economic contribution of higher education to its immediate and extended community. While older universities have struggled to re-imagine their local and regional roles, partly due to historical mandates, new universities have the unique opportunity to chart a new path of becoming engaged institutions. For effective and sustainable engagement to be achieved, the potential of their knowledge 'supply' must be matched to, and enhance, local and regional knowledge absorption capacity.
This study will interrogate how the first new university established in democratic South Africa, Sol
Plaatje University, can position itself to becoming a locally relevant, 'engaged university' in Kimberly
and the extended Northern Cape region. The study will interrogate the institutional dynamics at SPU as it develops and expands its academic core functions in keeping with a path of social relevance. The study further proposes to assess the absorptive capacity of the city and region and how both, university and community stakeholders can align to enhance social, economic and human development in the
city and region. In the process, the study contributes to activating the SPU's research function, support its emerging postgraduate training function, develops structures for engaged scholarship at the university-community interface, and thus contributes to a framework for sustained and transformative engagement going forward.
