Foreign academics are not the problem South African universities need to solve

26 JUN 2026, 14:05

6 min read

The debate around foreign academics employed in South Africa's universities has resurfaced with predictable intensity after Higher Education and Training Minister Buti Manamela's briefing to Parliament on the composition of the post-school education and training workforce.

At a time when graduate unemployment is rising and young South Africans are increasingly questioning whether higher education guarantees economic mobility, public concern about who occupies positions in publicly funded institutions is understandable. Universities are financed largely through taxpayer money and citizens are entitled to expect that the institutions contribute meaningfully to local skills development and employment creation. Yet the growing tendency to frame foreign academics as the principal obstacle to the goals risks oversimplifying a far more complicated problem facing South African higher education.

The data presented by the department of higher education and training suggests that the popular perception of foreign nationals dominating university employment bears little resemblance to reality. International academics constitute a relatively small proportion of the higher education workforce and are concentrated primarily in specialised fields and senior academic positions that require extensive research experience and doctoral qualifications.

Many are employed in disciplines such as engineering, health sciences, information technology and the natural sciences, where universities across the world compete for a limited pool of expertise. Others occupy senior research and supervisory roles that are critical to maintaining postgraduate education and research productivity. This is an important distinction because universities differ from most employers in the broader economy. Their purpose is not only to consume skills but to produce them through teaching, research and the training of future academics.

The question therefore cannot simply be whether a particular academic post could theoretically be occupied by a South African citizen. The more important question is whether South Africa produces enough suitably qualified academics to sustain its higher education system without relying on international recruitment. Evidence accumulated over the past decade suggests that it does not. Universities and policymakers have repeatedly warned of an ageing professoriate and a weakening academic pipeline, particularly in science, engineering, mathematics and health-related disciplines.

Many senior academics who entered the profession during the expansion of higher education in the late 20th century are approaching retirement age, while the number of doctoral graduates entering academic careers has not increased at a pace sufficient to replace them. This has created a structural imbalance between the number of experienced academics leaving universities and the number of suitably qualified individuals available to take their place.

Producing an academic workforce is also different from producing graduates for other sectors of the economy. Academic careers require years of postgraduate study, research training, publication and professional development before individuals are able to supervise postgraduate students, lead research projects or occupy senior positions in universities.

A doctoral qualification often represents only the beginning of an academic career rather than its culmination. Building the expertise required to become a senior researcher or professor may take another decade of scholarly work and mentorship. Universities cannot therefore respond to shortages in academic expertise with the speed that other sectors might recruit or train employees and this reality helps explain why international recruitment has become a feature of higher education systems across the world.

South Africa's universities operate within a global knowledge economy in which the movement of scholars across borders has become normal and, in many cases, necessary. Institutions in Europe, North America, Asia and Africa routinely recruit internationally to strengthen research capacity and expand academic collaboration. South Africa itself has benefited considerably from the networks.

Foreign academics working in local institutions frequently supervise postgraduate students, attract international research funding and facilitate partnerships that enhance the global standing of South African universities. This has been particularly important in fields such as public health, mining engineering, renewable energy and infectious disease research, where international collaboration has contributed significantly to scientific progress and policy innovation. In many cases, foreign academics are directly involved in training the South African scholars who will eventually replace them, making their contribution to localisation far more substantial than public debate often acknowledges.

Recognising these realities does not mean dismissing concerns about transformation or local employment opportunities. South Africa's universities continue to grapple with the legacy of apartheid exclusion and there remains an urgent need to diversify academic staff profiles and create opportunities for emerging scholars from historically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Similarly, institutions must comply fully with immigration legislation and ensure that all appointments involving foreign nationals meet legal and ethical requirements. Public accountability in these areas is both necessary and appropriate. However, there is a significant difference between improving oversight and constructing a narrative that attributes systemic weaknesses in higher education to the presence of foreign academics.

The deeper problem confronting South African universities is not excessive internationalisation but insufficient investment in the domestic academic pipeline. For years, concerns have been raised about inadequate postgraduate funding, limited support for early-career researchers and the precarious employment conditions facing many young academics.

While programmes such as the New Generation of Academics Programme and initiatives supported by the National Research Foundation have made important contributions to developing local talent, they remain too limited in scale to address the magnitude of the problem. Building a robust academic workforce requires sustained investment over decades rather than electoral cycles and the returns on these investments are often realised long after the policymakers who initiated them have left office.

The temptation to frame higher education employment as a zero-sum competition between South Africans and foreign nationals risks distracting attention from these structural issues. Countries rarely strengthen their institutions by reducing access to expertise; they strengthen them by expanding their capacity to produce expertise of their own. If South Africa wishes to rely less on foreign academics in the future, the solution lies not in exclusion but in creating the conditions under which larger numbers of South Africans are able and willing to pursue academic careers. That means improving doctoral funding, expanding mentorship opportunities, creating stable employment pathways and ensuring that universities remain attractive environments for research and teaching.

The problem facing South African higher education is therefore not whether universities employ foreign academics. It is whether the country is investing sufficiently in producing the next generation of South African academics who will sustain its universities, drive innovation and contribute to economic development in the decades ahead. Until that question is answered convincingly, foreign academics will remain not the cause of the problem but one of the mechanisms through which the system continues to function despite it.

Nancy Dusani is a graduate in public relations and communications from the University of Johannesburg and is pursuing an advanced diploma in strategic communication. She is interning at Decode Communications, a pan-African communications agency in Johannesburg.