188 Ethics in Higher Education: Values-driven Leaders for the Future
The challenges confronting leadership in all sectors of society have
never appeared as complex or more intractable. In the higher education
sector, the demand for access has increased exponentially while leaders
have had to contend with increasing competition from new
organisational forms and delivery platforms made possible by advances
in technology. At the same time regulatory mechanisms, reporting and
accountability prescripts have rendered the challenges and obligations of
leadership ever more onerous. In the developed world, saturation point
has been reached with increasing numbers of graduates struggling to
find employment, leading to questions about the benefits relative to the
costs of higher education. In the developing world, participation rates
remain stubbornly low in large parts, with variable degrees of quality
and provision to meet burgeoning demands and needs, and
unprecedented competition through cross-border delivery that has
changed the landscape indelibly, as higher education has increasingly
been commodified.
Against this backdrop, higher education leaders are challenged to
ensure that their institutions not only survive but thrive in the new
international, IT-enabled, volatile and competitive environment now
faced (Scott, Coates & Anderson, 2008). And with this has come a
significant growth in the complexity and span of responsibilities
attendant to their leadership responsibilities. In the South African
context, widespread student unrest, increased stakeholder demand for
accountability, and pressure from government to deliver more with
fewer resources, has made it apparent that universities are unenviably
difficult institutions to govern, manage and lead. They have become
places where industry, civil society, community and government
interests often coalesce or coincide, but increasingly clash. Operating in
such a volatile environment impels the need to constantly embrace
change and adapt to emerging trends and dynamics (Mabelebele, 2013).