What does a sense of public good mean to universities? It is a question that has haunted academic corridors for decades.
Dan Maritz, director of Community Engagement at the Central University of Technology (CUT), Free State, writes the International Conference on Community Engagement in Higher Education, held from 5 to 7 May at the Rhodes University in Makhanda, offers a far-reaching answer – thanks to forward-thinking minds in global higher education.
Luminaries including Unesco Chair Dr Rajesh Tandon; Nelson Mandela University Deputy Vice-Chancellor Prof. André Keet; Rutgers University’s Prof. Tim Eatman; and former Rhodes University Vice-Chancellor Prof. Saleem Badat anchored the event with conviction.
The central argument is as urgent as it is overdue: Universities must move beyond citations and global rankings as proof of their worth. These metrics, delegates argued, are morally insufficient proxies for institutional value. A university that publishes thousands of papers while its surrounding community collapses under poverty, inequality and exclusion will be judged harshly by future generations for failing in its most fundamental mission.
The uncomfortable truth, voiced throughout the three-day programme, is that many universities remain structurally complicit in the very inequalities they claim to study. The ivory tower has not yet fully crumbled.
Reparative futures demand something far more courageous than incremental reform: a deliberate, forward-looking commitment to healing societal fractures caused by colonialism, racism and systemic exclusion. This is not retrospective guilt, it is strategy. Universities must embed humanising values – dignity, trust, accountability, and restorative justice – into their curricula, institutional cultures, research agendas, and community partnerships.
Crucially, institutions must engage communities as co-creators of knowledge and change, not merely as research subjects.
The newly established Community Engagement South Africa body signals institutional momentum. But momentum must be matched with measurable action.
Delegates urged a bold recalibration of evaluation frameworks to incorporate community well-being indices, civic graduate capabilities, and indicators aligned with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to reveal a fuller, more honest picture of what universities contribute to society.
For institutions like the CUT, these conversations resonate deeply. The CUT’s portfolio demonstrates what reparative engagement looks like in practice: community-based service learning; the Mothusi Primary School Project; municipal councillor development training in partnership with the Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality; digital literacy initiatives; and the Food and Nutrition Programme.
The TEHIP Agriculture Hub at the Welkom Campus and the SMART Village initiative in Thaba Nchu further illustrate the CUT’s capacity to foster innovative, community-centred partnerships with tangible benefits. Strategic alliances with the Siyaphumelela Initiative, the Saville Foundation, and the Kresge Foundation reflect an institution that understands partnership as something far deeper than public relations.
