Academics ready to walk

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No official survey has been conducted, but The Times has been contacted by a group of concerned academics who say that most colleagues are afraid to speak out and are secretly looking further afield for employment.

The impending "mass exodus" looms as a stalemate between universities and protesters continues to dog institutions.

Increasing exit rates

A recent study by the International Monetary Fund found that skilled workers are exiting sub-Saharan Africa at rapidly increasing rates and that the number of migrants from the region living in developed countries could increase from about 7-million in 2013 to about 34-million by 2050.

An academic at the humanities faculty at UCT reported looking for a post abroad and said other academics were doing the same.

"The gradual effect of the protests will be the eventual impoverishment of South African tertiary education institutions.

"The very best academics will look for, and easily secure, employment at more stable international universities.

"Top researchers will choose to do their PhDs elsewhere. This will be disastrous, not only for South Africa, but for Africa as a whole, since much of the research into challenges facing the continent emanates from the top South African institutions," the academic said.

A lecturer in the science department said "a number of colleagues are looking for positions overseas. I personally am looking at job options in Europe, the US and other countries, what with freedom of speech vanishing and insufficient funds now a reality".

Another lecturer said: "This is a double-edged brain drain. Top academics will leave and the wealth of knowledge and skills they pass onto students will come to a halt."

Fight or flee?

Members of the Wits Black Academics Caucus said although these were tough times, they believed academics should stay and fight rather than flee.

They said they have "the burden of enduring the same system that our students are rejecting".

Professor David Hornsby, president of the academic staff association at Wits, said he did not foresee a brain drain.

He said the 780-member association was "deeply concerned about the higher education project and wanted to see it get going again".

Hornsby said "a lot of academics are committed to the idea that higher education and development go hand in hand".

Achille Mbembe, a professor at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, said the loss of academics will become structural.

"We will lose a lot of our higherlevel staff"¦both in management and in teaching and research," he said.

"We'll see the collapse of intellectual infrastructures without which there will be no universities," Mbembe said.

Source: The Times