Here's the blunt truth

One of the most serious errors committed by over-zealous politicians in South Africa is to use education policy as a blunt instrument to solve complex problems that require fine-tuned strategies for change.

This is why the education sector has produced more policies than any other with the least to show for all this activism in terms of learning outcomes. The most recent "blunt instrument" being proposed is for South Africa to move its three-year degrees to four-year qualifications.

One of the most common reasons given for extending the degree by a year is the fact that the school system produces weak academic students who require an additional year of study. In other words, the additional year has a compensatory function. The instrument is blunt because not all schools produce weak students, and not all high school graduates require, by this levelling logic, an extra year. But in the mind of zealous ideologues, unless you can impose misery on all students (in this case), it cannot be fair.

Most parents and students already find it very difficult to pay for three years of study. It breaks the heart to see students dropping out of the system after all desperate measures to find money have failed. Many students leave in the final year with good academic marks, unable to raise the last funds required to complete the third year. For such students, adding a fourth year would be an unbearable financial hardship. Of course, a blunt instrument makes no such distinction.

The third reason we should be cautious about adding another year to the degree is one of content. In other words, what exactly should be the substance of that extended curriculum? Should it be make-up work in basic maths and science or reading and writing? If so, a standard academic degree should not be compromised to make up for endemic failures in the school system.

The message to government should be clear: instead of extending school failure into universities, fix the schools. To use an example from my other pet peeve on our public roads: instead of erecting expensive signs warning about potholes, use the money to fix the damn potholes.

Here is an important warning: the more our universities become expensive compensatory colleges for what the schools do wrong, the less competitive they will become in their global positioning as serious post-school institutions. Already universities divert significant resources and energy into serving - as we should - larger segments of talented students with poor school preparation. To now institutionalise this failure of schools in a four-year degree would be to spread the mediocrity into formal qualifications.

Most universities already have an additional year or two of academic preparation only for those students who lack the basic competencies to enter a formal science or humanities degree straight out of high school. This system works well in universities that take seriously curriculum commitments such as small-group instruction, disciplinary competence and basic academic skills. These pre-degree years build competence and confidence among students and ensure that those who eventually take the degree also succeed. We have solid data to show this model works especially for first-generation university students.

I would support a four-year degree on grounds of academic advancement rather than historical compensation. For example, a strong "liberal arts" degree that educates students broadly by engaging the big intellectual questions of the day would constitute a powerful additional year in a university system in which students specialise too early. At the present time they are trained long before they are educated. I have never understood why a first-year student straight out of high school must immediately do courses in engineering or anthropology or biochemistry.

When we recently sent some of our top undergraduate students to sit in classes at leading universities in the world, I asked them what the one difference is between students from that country and South African students. Their answers were consistent: they know much more about everything than we do. That is a case for a four-year degree.

Students will resist such a broader education for a simple reason - since high school they have been taught to think narrowly in preparation for examinations. The laughable boot camps of the past few months, in which students are force-fed exam questions and answers to make up for lost time during the year is an example of how we devalue the education of our children. The annual national assessments take this obsession with testing narrow knowledge down to the lower grades of primary school.

A four-year degree must require that we fundamentally rethink the education of our smartest youth in the context of a 21st-century global economy in which our best minds can compete.