5.2 Staff

In March 2000 the staff at SACOL was made up of 134 academic staff and 94 administrative staff (within administrative were classified administrative officers, clerks, cleaners, drivers, food aides security guards). I do not have statistics by race and gender.

The SACOL academic staff is categorised into the following faculties and departments (a detailed analysis is provided in Appendix Six)⁵.

⁵ I do not have data by race and gender.

Table 5: Distribution of Academic Staff

The staff is well qualified with about three-quarters of the staff having a second or higher degree (honours or masters or doctorate) as their highest qualification. The staff have an average of 17.2 years of experience in the department of education (range is from 2 to 36 years). About four-fifths of the staff have more than 10 years of experience in the department of education.

Interviews with the academic staff indicate that the general profile of the lecturer at SACOL is someone who taught at high school and was promoted to one of the colleges (SCE, UCE, NCE). Many staff members would have had little experience or knowledge about distance education. Most of the learning about providing a distance education programme would have been learnt on the job, from interaction with colleagues and informal training.

Of the 94 state paid administrative staff members, 27 (29%) are based in Pietermaritzburg and 67 (71%) are based in Durban. In addition to the state paid staff, the Durban and Pietermaritzburg staff employ clerical and cleaning staff that are paid by the college.

Table 6: Distribution of Administrative Staff

* This includes administrative officers, clerks, typists, service officers, secretary, and switchboard operators.

A programme that is offered by distance requires strong administrative support. In the case of SACOL the ratio of academic to administrative staff is 134: 63 i.e. a ratio around two academic staff to one administrative staff. Many academic staff indicated that there was very limited administrative support to the programmes and they had to devise and teach the academic programmes as well as provide administrative assistance and support to the students.