The effect of the research component of the South African higher education subsidy formula on knowledge production: 2001 - 2006

Abstract

Government policies on subsidising higher education institutions may have a direct impact on the behaviour of researchers and managers respectively. Therefore, this thesis looks for clues on how higher education institutions respond to the government funding policies, with special reference to the New Funding Framework (NFF) introduced in South Africa in 2001. The funding framework specified that research funding would be determined only on the basis of research output. The NFF puts emphasis on the number of publications produced by higher education institutions per annum to determine their subsidy amounts. Governments use quantitative formulas to allocate research funds to higher education institutions based on their production of output. The current South African funding framework is arguably consistent with some international suggestions of the role that government funding can play in the implementation of national higher policies. This thesis uses higher education research output as a measure of knowledge production. As such, the thesis was set out to determine the effects that the research subsidy component of the NFF might have had on South African public higher education institutions‟ knowledge production between 2001 and 2006. The thesis argues that the subsidy component of the NFF has had positive effects on the knowledge production of South African public higher education institutions (HEIs). An empirical analysis of the output trends of South African HEIs for the period under review has shown a steady increase, more especially from 2003. The thesis attributes the new trend in higher education research output to the successful implementation of the NFF. It is thus concluded that considering the output trends of the period under review, the implementation of the NFF is yielding positive effects towards achieving its intended goal of increasing research output of South African public HEIs.