Recruiting overseas talent getting harder, say South African v-cs

Regulatory barriers, low wages and continuing power outages are damaging South African institutions’ ability to attract talented international academics to the country, some university leaders fear.

The country’s government has been urged to simplify visas and work permits and offer more benefits to attract top talent, or else universities risk missing out on diverse perspectives and expertise.

This follows the publication of the recent fourth annual PwC Higher Education Leaders Survey for South Africa, which says that about a fifth (22 per cent) of universities have been affected in their ability to attract and retain sought-after candidates.

In the survey of 20 providers – conducted in June and July – vice-chancellors highlighted their struggle to match international lecturers’ salary expectations, which, combined with the regulatory hurdles of bringing international talent into the country, creates a “substantial barrier to internationalising the academic workforce”.

“While South African universities have traditionally attracted international academic talent, there is a growing consensus that it is becoming more challenging to recruit talented academics from overseas,” Themba Mosia, interim vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Pretoria, told Times Higher Education.

“The reasons behind this trend are multifaceted. Some contributing factors include tightening immigration policies, global competition for academic talent, economic considerations and the ongoing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Leaders also noted the condition of their infrastructure as a deterrent to potential candidates, with any possible improvements made more difficult by load-shedding blackouts – with almost half of institutions exploring investment in sustainable energy solutions as an alternative.

Professor Mosia said the sector risked missing out on diverse perspectives and expertise, hindering research collaborations, and bringing a decline in the overall quality of education and research in the long term.

“This, in turn, may affect their global rankings and competitiveness, which could have repercussions on their ability to attract students, secure research funding and foster international partnerships.”

To reverse this trend, the government should consider simplifying visa and work permits, while offering competitive salaries and benefits to attract top talent from overseas, he added.

However, Max Price, former vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town (UCT), said that a fundamental problem with the anonymised survey was that it reported all respondents as the same, when in fact there were “vast inequalities across the universities”.

Instead, he said, the “rather positive” survey showed a relatively small proportion of universities were struggling to recruit talent – with these likely to be the historically disadvantaged universities.

“The country is pretty depressed because of the corruption, the load-shedding, no economic growth, and I would have thought that would have been a big deterrent to immigrants and academic immigrants in particular,” he told THE.

“The fact that 78 per cent of the respondents said they are not particularly struggling is a really positive signal and reflects the fact that in many areas of research South Africa may be the best and only place to do that research.”

Dr Price, who led UCT from July 2008 to June 2018, said there were some ways in which the increasingly connected and digital world of academia had become harder for developing countries, but researchers in certain fields, such as health sciences, astronomy and human rights law, would always find South Africa attractive.

He said the most significant challenge that South African universities faced was the funding of large student numbers – which led to inevitable protests and disruptions every year, and was also a threat to holding onto academics.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com