Eight university deans were expected to brief the committee on the curriculum and criteria used by their institutions to admit new students ‘€“ a briefing that never happened.

The deans of the universities of Pretoria,   Free State and Witwatersrand did not attend the meeting. Deans from the universities of Cape Town, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Walter Sisulu (WSU) and Limpopo arrived at Parliament this morning and were about to present when the meeting was stopped.

Democratic Alliance Member of Parliament, Mike Waters called the non-attendance of the three deans and the lack of documentation by some of those attending ‘€œunacceptable as they were given enough time to prepare for the presentation.’€

Of the deans attending only the UCT dean of health sciences, Professor Marian Jacobs prepared a powerpoint presentation and had documentation she intended distributing to committee members.

Jacobs said she did not prepare the presentation because there had been a request to do so, but rather because it had been the method she preferred.

Professor Khaya Mfenyana, current chairperson of the National Committee of Deans and executive dean of health sciences at WSU, said the Committee of Deans had recently undergone a transformation. He said he only started leading the committee a month ago and had also been distracted by student strikes. He said this made it difficult to co-ordinate a presentation and to obtain some of the documentation required by the health committee.

Mfenyana told journalists that the deans had not been briefed properly by the portfolio committee as to what they required.  He said they were only informed two days ago that they had to present on the curriculum as well.

‘€œWe are disappointed because the brief we were given was not clear. But now that we know we will go back and prepare better. We were also not aware that if one or two of us did not make it to the meeting we would be told not to present,’€ he said.

 Dean of the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine at UKZN, Professor Willem Sturm said it was ironic that they were expected to account for how the institutions use the tax payer’€™s money when it was being ‘€œwasted by making us come all the way to parliament only to be told to return again when the committee had suggested a new date’€.

Chairperson of the health portfolio committee, Monwabisi   Goqwana said: ‘€œI’€™m not sure if people understand the importance of parliament. As we are sitting here we are representing parliament. We are supposed to take all that has being said here to parliament for it to be discussed and addressed further.’€

Goqwana said it was imperative for all the deans to be present.

‘€œWe all know that universities are autonomous and do not function the same way. The selection criteria is not the same among universities hence we need each and every university present,’€ he said.

Some of the issues Goqwana said the committee hoped to discuss included ‘€œtransformation in institutions and the criteria used to select students who were trained in Cuba’€.