Our vice-chancellor's review

Introduction: Looking at 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced faculties and all teaching and learning support departments to explore new ways of teaching, learning and assessment, including online and distance education for contact students, and supporting distance students without the usual added value of support at a remote tuition centre.

Business as usual quickly became business unusual as Covid-19 invaded all aspects of human life. The pandemic had a grave impact on the NWU community, affecting campus and research activities and community engagement.

Exploring new possibilities

The pandemic has impacted dramatically on our student value proposition, with all student activities coming to a halt at the time of the hard lockdown. These activities were gradually resumed from the beginning of May 2020 in an online format, and in a printed distance modality for students living in such remote areas that online access and participation in teaching, learning and assessment were impossible.

We salute the resilience and excellence displayed by staff and students in rising to the various challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. It is a tribute to them that we succeeded in completing our academic year early in January 2021.

Expanding our vision

In a major change triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, all physical graduation ceremonies were replaced by virtual ceremonies. During our first-ever virtual graduation ceremony on 29 May 2020, over 9 000 qualifications were conferred. All ceremonies after that also took place virtually, the last being the December ceremony.

The conditions under which researchers and postgraduate students had to continue with important projects were also impacted. During the year we participated in the national PhD review and are already implementing improvement plans following the self-evaluation report.

It is important to record the overall understanding of our combined efforts to successfully complete the academic year in this integrated report. The progressive steps we have taken to continue with teaching, learning, assessment and research initiatives within a challenging context should also inform future perspectives on higher education.

We maintained our financial stability during 2020 despite the impact of the global pandemic. Through scenario planning and a consultative process, we have implemented a risk-mitigation strategy and reprioritised our capital and operational projects.

How our thoughts about ethics evolved

During 2020, we conducted an ethics assessment at the NWU and invited all staff to participate in the quantitative part of the assessment.

This was preceded by focus group interviews conducted by The Ethics Institute, the independent body that facilitated the assessment process. Valuable insights have been obtained and feedback will be used for the development of an Ethics Strategy and an Ethics Management Plan, and also for future ethics training.

Strategy revision was an important focus in 2020. We augmented the overarching NWU strategy to make provision for the digital business strategy, which had to be fast-tracked due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the accompanying shift to a virtual business environment. Our new teaching and learning strategy was also approved in 2020.

Our managerial and administrative activities

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the commencement of the national lockdown at the end of March 2020, the NWU - like many other higher education institutions - has shown significant capacity to adapt very quickly to the crisis, with lots of flexibility.

Staff and students had to familiarise themselves with provisions, processes and mechanisms designed to resume teaching activities and transition to online education, with all that this entails in terms of technology and skills for digital teaching and learning.

After three years under the new structural arrangements at the NWU, our operational processes are now relatively mature. This is demonstrated in the successful way in which the relevant governance structures at faculty and university level operate.

That the NWU Council saw its way clear to embark on an external review of its effectiveness and efficiency under the defined measures of the NWU Quality Policy is an indication of the maturity of the Council, the confidence it has in the way it exercises its fiduciary duty and its willingness to learn.

Adequacy of staffing levels, particularly in critical areas

In aspiring to be an internationally recognised university, we appreciate the importance of having talented, energised staff who are innovative and highly skilled.

Such employees are in demand in the higher education sector. This was a challenge we addressed in 2020 through strategic workforce planning, talent attraction and management, recruitment, optimal remuneration management, training and development and performance management.

We continued rolling out our scarce and critical skills programme to attract and retain the talent required. Having already implemented this programme in the academic environment, we commenced roll-out in the support environment in 2020.

The total staff headcount stood at 4 844 in 2020, up from 4 837 in 2019. As the following table shows, this growth is mainly in the academic environment where our academic cohort increased from 1 515 in 2019 to 1 580 in 2020, an increase of 65, which is in line with our strategy.

Total staff headcount - 2019 vs 2020
Classification	Permanent		Temporary		Total
	2019	2020	2019	2020	2019	2020
Academic	1 515	1 580	198	181	1 713	1 761
Support	2 400	2 379	724	704	3 124	3 083
Grand total	3 915	3 959	922	885	4 837	4 844

The overall attrition rate is 5,03%, well within our projected attrition rate of under 10%.

Realising equity targets in the workplace

Various governance oversight committees regularly monitor our progress towards achieving our employment equity targets. The two committees of Council that oversee this important matter are the People and Culture and Employment Equity Committee and the Transformation Oversight Committee.

Our current employment equity plan runs from January 2016 to December 2020. The targets and outcomes for 2020, cascaded from the plan approved by Council on 28 September 2018, are shown in the following table.

Race	2020 target		% total	31 Dec 2020 actuals		31 Dec 2020 % total	Difference	Target achieved Y/N
	Male	Female		Male	Female
African	19,9%	19,2%	39,1%	19,5%	17,9%	37,42%	1,7%	N
Coloured	3,5%	4,6%	8,1%	2,9%	3,7%	6,59%	1,5%	N
Indian	1,1%	1,3%	2,4%	0,7%	0,8%	1,57%	0,8%	N
White	18,4%	31,1%	49,5%	19,8%	33,2%	52,93%	-3,4%	Y
Foreign Nationals	0,7%	0,2%	0,9%	1,2%	0,3%	1,49%	-0,6%	Y
	43,6%	56,4%	100,0%	44,1%	55,9%	100,00%	0,00%

The freezing of vacancies necessitated by the staff-cost risk mitigation plan due to the Covide-19 challenges had an adverse impact on our ability to reach the employment equity targets.

A revised employment equity plan that builds proportions of black, women, and people living with disabilities has been approved by Council. The new plan will focus on the following four main strategies:

• Barriers for attracting people from the designated groups and people living with disabilities
• Succession planning for key positions
• Retention strategies
• Establishing an enabling organisational culture

The quality of information available to management

The Unit for Integrated Planning and Strategic Intelligence seeks to provide management reports that are clear, accurate and timely, and also custom-made for the intended reader.

Like the rest of the NWU, we addressed the challenges posed by the pandemic and the corresponding shift to online learning. Our approach was to explore new possibilities and expand and evolve the way we see and do things in 2020.

For example, we developed a number of new indicators to support our implementation of online teaching and learning. Weekly reports enabled academic and support staff to monitor students' usage of eFundi, our learning management system, and proactively identify inactive students.

Learning analytics and scenario planning were enhanced through the roll-out of Power-BI across the NWU. (Power BI is Microsoft's interactive data visualisation and analytics tool for business intelligence or BI.) The integrated information it produced was invaluable during the budget planning process, especially in identifying priorities and ensuring equity of provision, and we used it to inform our risk-mitigation strategy.

High-quality, reliable information is essential for decision-making that secures the long-term financial sustainability of the NWU and manages the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on our financial position. Consequently, we are focusing strongly on financial viability modelling and scenario planning.

Student services and co-curricular activities

We offer various student support services and co-curricular activities to encourage a sense of belonging, develop well-rounded students and celebrate their inherent diversity. Our challenge in 2020 was to continue offering this support despite the disruption brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The immediate impact was a reduction of physical co-curricular activities from March 2020. Offsetting this as best we could, we migrated contact activities to the online environment, executed at residence, campus and institutional levels. Students embraced the virtual space, and although this did not replace the entire co-curricular offering, it still created a valuable platform for student engagement and assisted in creating some semblance of a vibrant student life.

Most notable was the facilitation of the student leadership electoral processes in the online environment, resulting in increased access and participation by eligible student voters and candidates. Similarly, activities relating to arts and culture and social cohesion continued through smaller virtual engagements, harnessing social media, instant messaging and word-of-mouth communication.

Counselling support services were also migrated to the virtual space, using eFundi, telecommunications and video conferencing platforms to ensure that support services and psycho-social crisis interventions were still accessible to all students.

Campus Health Care Centres (CHCCs) resumed primary healthcare services as students gradually returned to campuses throughout the various national alert levels. Working with critical partners and stakeholders such as Higher Health and others, the CHCCs played a pivotal role in educating students on the risks and measures for managing Covid-19 in the university environment.

We also used virtual platforms to continue offering students and student leaders opportunities to obtain valuable skills such as project management, fundraising, teamwork, social responsibility and cultural integration.

It is worth highlighting and celebrating the fact that our Student Life portfolio managed to retain the most critical and valuable segments of support and opportunity available to students across 2020.

More information about our academic support activities for students can be found in the section on how we create value through our performance.

Changing patterns in the provision of academic courses

Our strategy is to enrol more students in the fields of science, engineering, technology and commerce, and we are making steady progress in this regard.

In fact, we experienced over-enrolments in the faculties of Health Sciences and Natural and Agricultural Sciences (as well as Humanities, which is traditionally oversubscribed). Enrolments in the faculties of Law, Theology, Education, Economic and Management Sciences and Engineering were largely on track.

In total, 56 425 students were enrolled at our three campuses in 2020. Female enrolments decreased from 41 350 to 35 915, while male enrolments, at 20 150, decreased from 22 319 as in 2019.

In August 2020, we received ministerial approval for the NWU qualification and programme offering.

During 2020, our Senate approved the extension of qualification offerings to other campuses and the addition of new programmes under existing qualifications and additional major fields of study.

Where required, Senate approvals were followed by approvals from the Department of Higher Education and Training and the Council on Higher Education. There were programme approvals in all eight faculties, although most were in the fields of education, health sciences and natural and agricultural sciences.

The School of Languages continued consolidating the undergraduate degree programmes, which were extended to the Mahikeng Campus.

Campus alignment has been strengthened and five BSc honours programmes are now also available at the Vanderbijlpark Campus. Similarly, the BCom honours in marketing management and entrepreneurship, as well as and marketing management, are now available in Potchefstroom and Vanderbijlpark, and the BCom in business operations may now be taken in Vanderbijlpark too.

Self-assessment of our achievements

Based on the figures presented throughout this integrated report, we can confidently state that we have succeeded in maintaining our upward trajectory as a university in regard to our core activities of teaching and learning, research and innovation and community engagement. Details to substantiate this can for instance be found in the section Overview of the NWU (highlights) and in the section on our business model.

These accomplishments demonstrate the focused commitment of our executive team in working towards achieving our long-term strategic goals and the objectives in our Annual Performance Plan.

We can report substantial success in our ability to execute our strategy. (Refer to the section on our performance against our strategy and our performance assessment report.)

Looking to the future

Our future focus will be on maintaining a limited contact teaching and learning modality while finalising our digital business strategy for the long term to embrace the opportunities offered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution and to respond to the disruptors that the higher education sector is experiencing. Doing this while retaining a vibrant campus life is a key aspect of our student value proposition.

We continue to be driven by our core values, an ethic of care and a commitment to social justice. Our focus will also remain on developing more sustainable sources of income to maintain our competitiveness as an employer and ensure our financial future. The support that we receive from all of our stakeholders gives us confidence that we will succeed.