Pretoria - Despite negative coverage, Unisa has made strides over the past few months, Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Puleng LenkaBula said.
She remained adamant that the institution was moving ahead with its academic project and its core mandate.
LenkaBula spoke at a briefing held at the CSIR to detail the developments within the university as well as the overall performance of the institution.
She said over the past 18 months the university had improved its national and international rankings, including being ranked ninth among the top 900 universities in the world for the second consecutive year as published by the 2022 Best Global Universities rankings.
The university had moved to 851 globally, up from 921 the previous year, she said, adding that it had also achieved 22nd position out of 54 African universities and second among the Open Distance e-Learning universities.
LenkaBula said the university had also improved its overall ranking in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings to a joint position of 948, despite the ranking increasing the number of institutions to 2021, coming in at 1 662 for the ranking this year.
In addition, she said that among African universities the institution had achieved 30th position for teaching, eighth position for research and joint 31st position for industry income.
“These accomplishments mean that the academic project remains safe and shows significant signs of improvement. It means, in various national rankings and certain fields of academic endeavour, Unisa has entered the top 10 rankings.
“These achievements are due to conscious and consistent efforts by management and the entire Unisa value chain to improve our performance on the core mandate.”
And although LenkaBula said the university management welcomed the appointment of an independent assessor by Higher Education, Science and Technology Minister Dr Blade Nzimande and acknowledged the ministerial task team report, she steered clear of making any detailed comments on the recommendations and issues raised.
“We appeal to all stakeholders to afford the Independent Assessor the time and space to do his or her work without any undue pressure and interference. In so far as the findings are concerned, we are not waiting for the independent assessment."
“The work has already begun on several areas where corrections and improvements are needed. The university will submit its progress report to the independent assessor in this regard.”
Commenting on issues surrounding renovations to the official residence, irregular funding and student issues, LenkaBula rubbished allegations regarding the exorbitant amounts surrounding the renovations by imploring the media not to work on “conjecture and gossip-mongering”.
“It is worrying that gossip-mongering and conjecture have been used to paint a leader of a university to steer off from the substantive issues that should be addressed around the university. These questions were not asked of previous vice-chancellors so the gender violation of women who come to leadership and the assumption that they behave in an abusive and unjust manner needs to be addressed.
“I'm not responsible for allocating the residence and or any other matters that the university vice-chancellor has to use for the university. It is the domain of the university council and part of the agreement of the chancellor and the institution,” she said.
She explained that she did not have the power to enrich herself within the university and only the duty to hold the chief financial officer accountable for the fiduciary responsibilities of the university.
With regards to challenges with the university ICT systems, LenkaBula said their systems required recalibrating in order to address the needs of the 378 000 students under its guise and were the reason the university was investing in.
“We’ve had problems responding to students and we’ve created operations to ensure students’ responses, concerns and academic support are prioritised but we can’t say it was not a point of concern.”
Pretoria News