Multidimensional Analysis of Attainment of Higher Education Goals in South Africa’s Public Universities: Access, Quality, Diversity, Success and Efficiency

The National Development Plan in South Africa aims to combat inequality. The Department of Higher Education and Training has identified goals for public universities not only to improve knowledge creation, transmission, and exchange but also equity. This paper analyzes the degree to which universities are successful in meeting the goals. We use a novel approach that allows disentangling persistent and transient underachievement to investigate achievement and their determinants of the traditional, comprehensive, and technology universities in South Africa from 2009 to 2016. We find contrary to previous studies that technology universities are the top performers, followed by comprehensive universities, while traditional universities have the lowest achievement levels. Additionally, the study demonstrates that although all types of universities exhibit comparable transient underachievement, the overall underachievement of comprehensive and traditional universities is primarily driven by persistent or long-term factors. The findings carry important implications for effectively executing the objectives determined by policymakers.