ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the various challenges that the new South African Higher Education Qualifications Framework poses for academic planning within the comprehensive universities and the sector. Within the government-coordinated restructuring of the South African higher education system, the creation of comprehensive universities constitutes a key policy initiative for offering a mix of vocational, sub-degree and general-formative degree level programs within one institution. The chapter argues that the challenge of comprehensiveness, in the sense of institutions that offer a spectrum of sub-degree and degree-level qualifications extends beyond the comprehensive universities. It discusses the restructuring of the higher education system that has led to the creation of comprehensive universities as a particular institutional type. The chapter outlines the particular response of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, as one of the newly constituted comprehensive universities, to the academic planning challenges posed by system-level restructuring and the Higher Education Qualifications Framework.
