Business schools: new guard steers a fresh course

There’s a changing of the guard at the top of the SA business school community. Six schools have installed new deans or directors in recent months. Another is still looking, after more than a year of fruitless effort. Two more are losing long-serving leaders.

Even when appointments are made, succession is not always easy. Briton Mark Smith, who became director of Stellenbosch University Business School in November, is still in France, where he worked previously, waiting for the department of home affairs to approve his work visa.

US citizen Catherine Duggan, director of the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business since September last year, is in New York.

Smith hopes to arrive in SA in the next few weeks. Duggan, who says family issues — mainly related to Covid-restricted travel — are the main reason for her absence, has not set a date. Both say their absence has had little effect on their capacity to do their jobs. Since the schools, and the universities of which they are part, are being run remotely, it makes little difference where people are.

Duggan has had to disrupt her US life to cope with the six-hour time difference (seven hours in the northern winter), going to bed most afternoons at 4pm in order to rise at 2am for Cape Town morning meetings.

Smith doesn’t have a time-lag problem, but he does regret not getting to know his colleagues in person — even if he’s invited to take part in online team-building events like a competition to make the best hot chocolate (how does one taste virtual hot choc?).

Pretoria University’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs) has a different challenge. It has been without full-time leadership since Nicola Kleyn left in June 2020. The university says attempts to find a successor have stalled and it will restart the recruitment process.

Morris Mthombeni, who has been interim dean since Kleyn left and confirms he wants the job full-time, says the search has been complicated by the inability to meet candidates face to face.

At Wits Business School, former Sasol executive Maurice Radebe has begun to put his imprint on operations after becoming director in January.

Jan van Romburgh is doing the same at North-West University Business School in Potchefstroom, while Pumela Msweli, having initially been reluctant to take the job, is settling in as head of Unisa’s Graduate School of Business Leadership.

At the four-year-old Johannesburg Business School, founding director Lyal White was replaced in March by former SA Revenue Service and National Student Financial Aid Scheme executive Randall Carolissen. He says the university "wants me to rethink the trajectory of the school".

"It needs repurposing. The initial emphasis on entrepreneurial development was very limiting."

(The extended online version of this business schools review includes a full interview with Carolissen.)

Another founding director stepped down at the end of June. Helena van Zyl was SA’s longest-serving business school director, having headed the University of the Free State Business School since its inception in 2001. Programme manager Liezel Massyn is in charge until a full-time appointment is made.

At the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Simon Tankard is stepping down as CEO of the extended learning division, which manages executive education at the university. He is succeeded by Mxolisi Miya.

Leadership is not the only issue facing business schools. Changing market demands, financial constraints, new teaching methods and Covid lockdown pressures are all forcing schools to reassess the future.

New developments

At Rhodes Business School, director Owen Skae says plans for a new school campus have been put on ice. The shift towards distance learning means there won’t be as many students on campus as was once expected. Changes in teaching technology are also giving pause for thought.

"We’ve decided to wait and see what the future holds," says Skae. "We’ve waited a long time for a new campus and we don’t want it to be redundant before we start."

The campus is part of a planned growth phase. The school’s MBA programme has been internationally reaccredited, PhD student numbers are at record levels and the school has undertaken a number of research projects for the government. "We have a very good story to tell," says Skae.

It’s much earlier in the narrative for the Tshwane School for Business & Society, part of Tshwane University of Technology. Director Kobus Jonker says plans for a more autonomous school with its own corporate identity are progressing well.

More academic qualifications are available, executive education is growing, the school has established bonds with foreign schools and it is creating relationships with accreditation agencies. "The first phase of our growth is complete," says Jonker.

The second phase will clarify the level of autonomy granted to the school, and determine its long-term strategy.

"Unlike some schools, we can’t try to be all things to all people," says Jonker.

Unisa’s Graduate School of Business Leadership has a similar strategic challenge. It may be 56 years old, but stop-start leadership in recent years has diluted the school’s sense of direction.

Peet Venter, the new head of executive education, says lack of continuity has undermined efforts to expand activities in this market. "I’m developing a plan, but it’s clear that we need to align more closely with what is happening in the market. We haven’t kept up," he says.

Msweli, who was appointed dean at the end of 2020, admits to a historic "leadership deficit" and says the school, which has more than 1-million alumni, must get back to the basics: delivering "strong content and programmes that are needed".

Msweli is keen to incubate small business, including the informal sector. "We want to turn survivalist enterprises into small ones, small into medium and medium into large. That’s where job creation comes from."

At Wits Business School, Radebe says academics and staff were anxious for a clear strategy when he took charge in January. Administration was weak and the school was underperforming in the executive education market.

It poached Regenesys Business School CEO Leoni Grobler to fix that.

"We are organised for the challenge ahead," says Radebe. "We have reached our MBA enrolment target. After some inevitable ‘noise’, people have accepted the vision."

Coming from the business world, where things happen at a different pace, he says the experience has been "an education. I’m very proud of what’s been achieved."

Similarly, Van Romburgh is defining the long-term role of North-West University Business School. One of its priorities is to expand activities into Africa, but it is also building relationships with universities in other parts of the world, including Russia.

Locally, North-West is reframing both the style and content of its educational offerings. Already a leader in small and informal business development, the school plans to increase capacity and reach in both. It is also creating a specialist unit to study and measure the impact of corruption and commercial crime.

Henley Africa dean Jon Foster-Pedley has already transformed the reputation of his school. He is excited by the opportunities offered by new technologies and the transition to virtual classrooms. "We are moving away from rote teaching to dynamic education," he says. "We are seeing the birth of a new generation of educators."

Foster-Pedley dismisses the idea that on-screen teaching is less personal than traditional face-to-face classroom education. "You can still engage with people and get reactions. By working interactively, you can have an amazing experience."

Most importantly, it works for Africa, by reaching millions of students who, through geographic or economic circumstances, would otherwise be excluded from education.

The Management College of Southern Africa (Mancosa) is expanding its Cape Town and Tshwane campuses and launching new programmes. The next step, says academic director Zaheer Hamid, is the creation of a school for digital and technology skills.

He says: "There is an urgent need for such skills in the labour market. Their availability is inextricably linked with SA’s competitive position in the global digital economy."

Regenesys Business School has introduced two new companies in the past year. Dean Penny Law says Digital Regenesys offers introductory and advanced courses for the digital age, including artificial intelligence, robotics, data science, cybersecurity, blockchain and digital marketing.

Education for All allows students to undertake online degree programmes for a nominal monthly fee, then pay the balance once they are employed or promoted, through a 20% salary deduction.

With more than half SA’s young people unemployed, there has to be a better way of educating people for the future, says Regent Business School director Ahmed Shaikh.

Globally, he says, more than 1-billion people have to be reskilled by 2030 to meet the changing demands of the jobs market.

Shaikh says Covid has intensified the need for curricular reform. "Some people think that when this is all over, we will get back to the way we were. We won’t. There will be no more residential or block-release or close-contact courses as we have experienced them in the past. The effect of the pandemic on how people interact with each other is still largely misunderstood."

Milpark Business School dean Cobus Oosthuizen agrees. "Making long-term strategic decisions is hard with the information we have today." But he strikes a positive note: "It’s an exciting journey of discovery."

That journey includes completion of the school’s first business administration doctoral degree.

Nelson Mandela University Business School director Randall Jonas says that though corporate demand for executive education has rebounded from the Covid depths of 2020, "universal trepidation" about the future is limiting the extent of recovery.

"Existing contracts have recommenced and there are more opportunities to tender for programmes across the private and public sectors," he says. "We have not yet achieved the training volumes of the pre-Covid era."

Kumeshnee West tells a different story at UCT’s Graduate School of Business, where she is head of executive education. "We are back to pre-Covid levels, particularly for customised programmes. Organisations have realised that instead of waiting out the crisis, they must prepare for the future and achieve their goals for skills development."

Chris van der Hoven, CEO of the University of Stellenbosch Business School’s executive development arm, says: "Most clients have realised they don’t have travel and accommodation costs [any longer] and are making the most of the online format. In some ways they get better bang for their buck because the travel, accommodation and venue were a big chunk of the cost."

He says recovery in demand for Stellenbosch executive education is ahead of expectations, but cautions that it’s "inevitable that company closures and job losses will have an impact across the higher-education spectrum".

Duke Corporate Education’s Sharmla Chetty says her company avoided many of the initial online education pitfalls because it had begun the transition before Covid forced wholesale migration. That wasn’t enough for some clients, who claimed force majeure — unforeseeable circumstances that prevent someone from fulfilling the terms of a contract — to demand free education.

Gibs is being evaluated by the European Foundation for Management Development for its quality improvement (Equis) accreditation. If successful, the school will join the UCT and Stellenbosch University schools in boasting the "triple crown" of international accreditations: Equis, the Association of MBAs and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Henley Africa holds them through its UK parent.