**4. Community engagement curriculum gap in the higher education institutions**

The curriculum provides directions on what to teach, how, when, who and how long. At the outer layer of curriculum planning, the national and the international level, community engagement or the Third Mission is part of higher education [22]. Since the birth of the Higher Education division centuries ago, the teaching component of the university has always enjoyed the top and highly recognised position by governments and universities [48]. As far as the other aspect of community engagement concerned, which is another component of community engagement, their reporting and outcome measures are very narrowly focused. This is because most studies report on the experiences of students, participation, learning and outcome achievement but nothing on its impact on recipients of such services [49]. Such an approach defeats the very primary objective of community engagement—thus redressing the skewed position of academics or researchers and that of the communities. For community engagement through the service learning wing to benefit the communities, their voices, thoughts, experiences and gains or benefits should be exemplified in the reporting. This questions the level of respect given to the communities during service learning. There is a dearth of studies reporting research outcomes from community-initiated activities where universities joined hands to solve social problems. On the contrary, academics engage communities to identify problems using approaches that illuminate their weakness, such as poverty, level of income and living conditions that are compared with unrelated areas.

The country-specific policy and higher education Acts are the antecedents of community engagement practice and processes of the universities [22, 32]. This is because such institutions provide expectations and direct the vision at the university level. While this forms the basis of the intended curriculum, and most universities

*Advancing Community Engagement in Higher Education Institutions in South Africa… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108150*

align their visions and missions with it, in some universities, there is no direction on the implemented curriculum. Ironically, community engagement does not form part of the subject delivered or a module in the teaching plans. Lack of alignment of teaching and learning, and research and community engagement create a situation of 'optional or subjective activities', which will only be done by those who are interested or are necessitated by the programme outcome. Similarly, there will not be assessment outcomes to be measured, that is, the achieved curriculum.
