Page 3 - Professorial Lecture - Professor P van Rooyen

1. Abstract:

There are three divergent perceptions regarding the role of a university in a
developing country. These are seeing a university: as a community of
scholars, as a political instrument, or as a service-directed enterprise. All of
these perceptions have their own inherent strengths and weaknesses, but
eventually the university has to position itself in a competitive international
arena, aimed at mobilizing and deploying the capacity for action and agency,
via the creation of self-esteem or instruments of voice and representation,
which shape and engage people as active and free citizens, as informed and
responsible consumers and as members of self-managing communities and
organizations.

The recommended approach is to move away from detailed government
regulation to control at a distance, based on a high degree of confidence in
the university's ability to utilize the institutional autonomy in the expected
manner. This necessitates a mentality of self-governance. Govern-mentality
is exactly based on the notion that free agents are the foundation of
government, i.e. the governed needs to be free to act in order for
government to function (Foucault, 1991). The govern-mentality perspective
thus entails that one must look at the freedom in a relation, and how this
freedom is formed and affected, and not simply look at elements of restraint
or power.

Of course, universities should ‘earn’ that trust. They must show that they
are able to act as strategic actors. For this reason, pro-active incumbents
are of prime importance in the UNAM leadership cadre.

The idea of free development of individuality is essential to personal well-
being, and per implication then, for social well-being. This should be the
prime political target of a university and its management.

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