Durban — The deputy vice-chancellor: people and operations at the Durban University of Technology (DUT), Dr Vuyo Mthethwa, has warned members of student representative councils against extra-curricular activities that interfere with their studies.
Mthethwa, who launched a book titled, Students’ participation in university governance in South Africa, hopes the book will guide students’ representatives at universities.
She said her aim was to remind them that leadership positions in higher institutions were not a gateway to political careers or success.
“I discovered that students get into the representatives council and once they are in they forget that their mission is to study and develop themselves academically.
“Universities are fertile ground for political parties and most of the students’ representatives get enticed and allow politics to influence their mindset with the hope that they will go into politics after completing their studies.
“I wanted to contest that behaviour by doing a study on the observations discovered.
“One of the student governance structure requirements is that they have to obtain academic records, but what seems to be missing in their mindsets is that there is nothing that says they should continue with their studies once they have taken these positions.
“The biggest challenge is that they lose track while they should be setting a good example for the rest of the students,” she said.
Giving an insight into the study which adopted Tinto’s Integration Theory and Astin’s Theory of Student Involvement, Mthethwa said 50% of the work done in the book was sourced from her PhD in student governance research completed in 2018.
In 2020, she interviewed students’ representatives and ordinary students who relied on the councils in order to reach the findings recorded in her book.
She completed the book by 2021 and in November 2022 it was approved by the African Online Scientific Information Systems (Aosis) Publishers.
Mthethwa said her research showed that not all students’ representatives were enraptured by politics and leadership positions.
But the study helped her to learn more about how students were able to balance their roles in governance and as students.
She said her purpose was to remind and encourage students that they should be focusing more on academic development than prioritising the duties of students representative councils.
“Universities are there to advance students academically. If the students’ leadership does not advance academically, it becomes a challenge to the whole country because universities have a huge impact on our lives.”
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