Higher Education Reform Experts South Africa/HERE SA

- Empower South African technical universities to devise and revise strategic plans for the  development of innovative curricula that integrate competence-based learning, work-integrated learning and entrepreneurship education.
- Consolidate a sustainable network of leadership-endorsed higher education reform experts (HERE SA) in South African universities that will be agents for change, guiding the strategy development process.
- Develop higher education reform capacity in the network, through Europe-South Africa training and practice sharing activities.
- To implement the revised strategic plans by providing technical assistance to South African universities, guided by the HERE SA network and European experts, in the areas of university academic leadership development, innovative curricula development and entrepreneurship education.
- Provide a basis to expand the higher education reform experts network in South Africa and connect it to South African and international policy making bodies for higher education.

HereSA project establishes a network of Higher Education Reform Experts to support the governance, strategic planning and management of HEI in SA. The project shapes institutional and national HE strategies for teaching and learning, in response to changing labor market and societal needs.  

The project offers both a national approach to addressing the teaching and learning needs of SA universities (via establishing a HERE SA network) and an institutional approach, as each partner university will generate a new strategic plan for innovative teaching and learning and then receive targeted training and technical assistance to implement it, based on European good practice. The explicit focus on Work Integrated Learning, Competence Based Learning and entrepreneurship education provides a holistic approach in tackling teaching and learning and curricula development and creating mechanisms for universities to work strategically with industry. Such approaches will eventually generate young graduates with more employable skills, who are also able to become job creators rather than job seekers and respond to a fast-changing labor market. The project also incorporates leadership training as a transversal element and assures that the university leadership will be equipped to implement the teaching innovation strategies developed beyond the project’s lifetime. This is essential to the projects sustainability and ultimate impact.