**4.3 Looking beyond the self-evaluation report: the challenge of open and complex social systems**

The first point of analysis would be the very notion of a developmental university (2015–2019) and how that regime managed some of the 30 recommendations (out of only 5 commendations) from the Institutional Audit Report of 2011.

**Table 2** provides the case about WSU and therefore the evidence of historical and structural disadvantage, which played out in the form of CSR for EU-PG. **Vision Statement: Walter Sisulu University (WSU)** will be a leading African comprehensive university, focusing on innovative educational, research, and community partnership programs that are responsive to local, regional, and national development priorities and cognizant of continental and international imperatives.


**HEQC Recommendation 19: "**The HEQC recommends that WSU develops an appropriate institution-wide strategy on teaching and learning, and assessment, to ensure the success of students, which is consistent with the University's aspirations to be a developmental university that has specific teaching and learning goals, and which is linked to academic and pastoral support systems", p.12.

**HEQC Recommendation 20**: "The HEQC recommends that Walter Sisulu University firmly implement its academic exclusions policy" p.12.

#### **Table 2.**

*WSU vision statement, selected values, and recommendations from the national institutional audits 2011.*

Recommendations 19 and 20 would somehow find expression in the form of crisis events that would punctuate both regimes (2015–2019; 2020–2024), hence the second points of analysis.

The second point of analysis would be in consideration of what have been institutional crisis events over time. These were the events whose source was the previous dispensation (2015–2019) and beyond [17]; yet they would have to be managed in the current regime (2020–2024). Two of these events, the academic crisis events of 2019/20 and of 2021/22, serve as the clear indicator of how this university is still grappling with ensuring the quality of her academic project. These were the cases of social and systemic integration as contradictory totality (the unity of purpose but the diversity of outcomes), both externally in terms of regional integration [9] and integrated community development [10] as well as of internal integration where contradictions apply within the system itself (the cases under study). Such events, as the elaboration on the SER, would help indicate the systemic challenges confronting WSU over time, the case about CSR for UE-PG whose resolution point should be the question of agency.

#### **4.4 The Three Crisis Cases, continuities from the old regimes of power and of truth**

#### *4.4.1 The Crisis event I: The G 7 Rule Cases of 2019/20*

From a document analysis about the selected case of science, engineering, and technology programs, 100 students were academically excluded during the academic year of 2019/20 and were then de-registered in February 2020. The anomaly of the case became more serious when students were registered for 2020 academic year only to be de-registered a few months later. This was not the first case, as the HEQC Recommendation 20 had resulted from a similar case in 2009. The crisis took place despite the mitigating strategies in place about the students who could be at risk of academic success [17, 18]. The academic monitoring strategy for student access and success prescribed the roles that managers, faculty, and various forms of student academic support can put in place to mediate student challenges in learning. The strange turn of events was when the university had to make a public apology after students had been excluded, long after 70% of the initial cohort of students had left the system. The public apology, in the form of a media statement of 09/02/2021 *(Daily Dispatch),* would read as follows:

*"The university assumes full responsibility and offers an unqualified apology to affected students and their families. We assure you that the matter is under investigation and that consequences management will occur where necessary".*

There is no evidence that consequences followed the managers who had failed in implementing the corrective action plans long before the students were excluded. On the other hand, evidence can be inferred, through retroductive reasoning, therefore constituting a strong assumption that the affected students and families, due to their socioeconomic backgrounds, did not have access to the media statement and were not even aware about what could be a recourse to their plight. This was the first case of corporate social irresponsibility that can constrain access to the public good that university education is supposed to offer. In consideration of Recommendations 19 and 20 by the National Council on Higher Education, the G7 Rule cases could be regarded as the case of the interventions in place, but the system keeps on backfiring.

The case about CSR for EU-PG arises from the implicit assumption that admitting students from working-class families, the equity issue, to university education means the quality of success. The case becomes more serious when there are mediation strategies in place for such high-risk students only for the university management to undermine the very processes for academic support. G 7 Rule cases apply to each course or module, over a semester (6 month) or year. Abductive reasoning requires that the social analyst understands and explains the conditions that must have led to the inaction of the management (heads of departments and deans of faculties) about strategy implementation and of the governance structures (academic boards and university council) about the poor implementation of university policy on academic exclusion (CHE IQF Focus Area 1, Standard 3). However, the results were quite instructive; 70 students, from the identified cohort, could not have access to the public good due to the inaction of those who should have acted on the quality management systems in the form of institutional strategies and policies.

#### *4.4.2 The Crisis Event II: Program Accreditation Cases of 2021/22*

The local and national media houses were in a frenzy in 2022 as reflected in the following captions:

*"WSU plays accreditation cat and mouse" (DD, 01/04/2022).*

*"WSU Council calls for accountability on accreditation debacle" (DD, 13/04/2022).*

*"WSU students vow to take Butterworth campus over accreditation fiasco" (DD, 21/04/2022).*

*"Accreditation debacle sees WSU Graduation Ceremonies Cancelled" (DD, 25/04/2022).*

Out of five programs that had been declared as unaccredited during the academic year 2021/22, the intervention took place with the help of external consultants including direct assistance by the national bodies (the National Department of Higher Education and Training and the National Council on Higher Education). The seriousness of this case included the university management being accountable to the National Portfolio of Parliament on Higher Education, which called for the application of the consequence management policy in addition to the promised

*Reimagining Corporate Social Responsibility in the Idea of University Education as the Public… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110177*

corrective action plans. One program was still declared unaccredited after submission of corrective action plan, which was an indictment on academic leadership, program management, and governance structure (CHE IQF Focus Area 1, Standard 3). Communication with one of the teaching development specialists, who had assumed the new role of a Campus Manager, indicated that the unaccredited program resulted from the internal challenges emanating from a relaxed culture, lack of cooperation, and lack of proper guidance (CHE IQF Focus Area 3, Standard 9). These program accreditation cases constituted a breach of the program review and accreditation policies and strategies that the university had as the structural requirements for quality management (CHE IQF Focus Area 3, Standard 9). The crisis revealed yet another case of contradictory totality, that the program reviews and accreditation criteria can translate to the ability to monitor and evaluate the quality of program management. The crisis event called into question the very key performance areas that informed the responsibilities of the affected heads of departments and the deans of faculties (**Table 3**). The case also had serious implications to the oversight functions that are supposed to be played by the institutional governance structures (academic board and university council), including the National Department of Higher Education, the approval and funding institution, and the National Council on Higher Education, the university education professional body. The same case about abductive reasoning that was alluded to in Crisis Event One also applied here.
