ABSTRACT
Many countries now recognize the importance of education as an agent for social change and as an instrument through which policy changes may be propagated and executed. South Africa has perhaps reflected this more clearly than countries where relationships between the state and higher education have been based on a broader consensus and where a mandate for policy was achieved via democratic processes. For many years this was not the case in South Africa and the relationship between state and higher education was, at best, tenuous. The advent of a democratically elected government in 1994 represented a watershed for higher education in both its relationship with the state, and the role higher education was expected to play in shaping a new nation. In some ways, higher education institutions had anticipated this change by adopting measures to undertake activities that would be consonant with the new policies and roles. A keyword for this process was ‘transformation’. Several institutions had ‘transformation forum(s)’, which, in turn, linked into a network known as the National Transformation Forum. What was sought by these initiatives was a change in roles and relationships among stakeholder groups within the institutions, and between the institutions and other agencies. This change in relationships could not take place without a change in expectations, and a redefining of the roles and identities of the players.
