Abstract:

The roles of universities are changing with the growing importance of innovation to include not only human development and knowledge creation, but also knowledge transfer. For a university to contribute positively to the performance of an innovation system, it should be expected to fulfil all three functions, but if the basic function of human capital development is not well established, the probability of successful knowledge creation and dissemination functions is reduced. This paper focuses on the basic function, the development of human capital, only, due to the importance of this function for the performance of the other two functions. In the light of the important role that South Africa plays in the regional innovation system of Southern Africa, it is the aim of this paper to determine to what extent the universities in South Africa fulfil the function of developing human capital. Criteria for the evaluation of the human development roles of universities are identified from literature. The evaluation of the South African universities’ roles in human development against the identified criteria revealed that, although there are individual exceptions, the universities in South Africa as a whole do not contribute sufficiently to the development of human capital.