Journal of Student Affairs in Africa | Volume 7(1) 2019, 1‑13 | 2307‑6267 | DOI: 10.24085/jsaa.v7i1.3689 1 www.jsaa.ac.za Research article Inserting Space into the Transformation of Higher Education Philippa Tumubweinee* & Thierry M. Luescher** Abstract In this article we argue for a socio-political conception of space in order to show how conceptualisations of space can provide conceptual tools in the reframing of policy and designing of policy interventions in pursuit of higher education transformation goals. In keeping with Lefebvre and others, we conceptualise space as a co-producer of social relations with agentic capability in the transformation of higher education. Using this understanding of space as a conceptual framework, we analyse four national cornerstone policy documents on higher education transformation in South Africa. We find that space is almost consistently conceived of only as an object in transformation – be it with respect to macro policy on mergers to reconfigure the apartheid spatial landscape of higher education, or with respect to discriminatory institutional cultures and the need to create secure and safe campus environments. Since the landmark White Paper on Higher Education of 1997, it is only the most recent policy document we analyse, the Draft National Plan for Post‑school Education and Training of 2017, which blurs the lines between the social ills affecting higher education, the student experience and student academic performance, and different functions of space. We conclude by introducing the conceptual tool of spatial types as an opening gambit for a research agenda that aims to explore the organisation of space in higher education institutions to identify the underlying rules that govern their social nature and promote conceptualisations of social space in the reframing and design of policy that respond to calls for the creation of transformed and ‘decolonised’ higher education, as heard in student movement campaigns in 2015/16. Keywords decolonisation; higher education; higher education policy; #RhodesMustFall; social space; space; student experience; student movement; students; transformation Space as Co‑producer of the Everyday How does space frame transformation in higher education? To what extent can a critical socio‑political conception of space allow a deeper understanding of the reality of the * Dr Philippa Tumubweinee is Head of the School of Architecture and Geomatics, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa. Email: philippa.tumubweinee@uct.ac.za ** Prof. Thierry M. Luescher is Research Director in the Human Sciences Research Council, Cape Town, and Associate Professor of Higher Education affiliated to the University of the Free State, Mangaung/ Bloemfontein, South Africa. Email: tluescher@hsrc.ac.za https://doi.org/10.24085/jsaa.v7i1.3689 http://www.jsaa.ac.za mailto:philippa.tumubweinee%40uct.ac.za?subject= mailto:tluescher%40hsrc.ac.za?subject= 2 Journal of Student Affairs in Africa | Volume 7(1) 2019, 1‑13 | 2307‑6267 | DOI: 10.24085/jsaa.v7i1.3689 everyday of student life in higher education, and how can such an understanding shape policy on transformation in South African higher education? With this article we seek to challenge some long‑held perspectives in policy discourse focused on the how and the why, the modalities and rationales, of transformation in higher education, arguing that this has failed to address a substantial conception of the where or locality of transformation, translated through the reality of the everyday in higher education. Our argument proceeds in a dialogue between a conceptual reading of space as a social product and a political reading of space in relevant transformation policy in South Africa. With respect to the former, we take as our starting point the well‑established view of the university as social institution in South African and international literature (Badat 2010; Simatupang 2009; O’Connell 2003; Kerr 2001; Castells, 1993), which conceives the university as an institution that “maintains, reproduces, or adapts itself to implement values that have been widely held and firmly structured by the society” (Gumport, 2000, p. 73). In this respect, the higher education system and its institutions constitute “a subsystem of a larger social system” (Maoyuan, 2016, p. 36). This social system overall “arranges people in space” and “arranges itself [in] the physical milieu of that society” (Hillier & Hanson, 1984,  p. 27) through social processes and relationships that are “bound up … with the ways in which social formations acquire and change” (Hillier & Hanson, 1984,  p. 27). Correspondingly, social relations which Lefebvre would call “the actual content of life” (2003,  p. 20), happen in space, and therefore the transformation of higher education should also consider the conception of space as social. To put it bluntly: Space is not the void between brick and mortar; neither is it an abstract thing that is independent of the substantial social relations within it. Rather, (social) space, in the original of Lefebvre and others building on him, is a (social) product, which co‑produces the social nature of institutions such as universities. This reading of space as social also involves the political, because social space is where “the struggles and contradictions of ‘living actuality’ (Kipfer, 2009, p. xxi) happen”. Against this reading of space, the reality of everyday student life on campus, which we typically study under the rubric of the student experience (Bitzer, 2009; Kerr & Luescher, 2018), is therefore a co‑construct between human actors and the space within which they act and relate. When conceiving of policy that looks at the transformation of higher education, space needs to be read as something that is both social and political. To reiterate: Space is not only the context in which the social happens; it is itself “a network of relations of co‑existing things” (Goudeli, 2014, p. 124), which co‑constructs the social relations in it. Therefore, space has agency; it is an actor of its own. Space is not an abstract object; rather, space is a subject whose agentic capability ought to be harnessed in the transformation of higher education. The policy on the transformation of higher education must therefore consider the spatial dimension of the lived reality of students (and staff) in higher education. https://doi.org/10.24085/jsaa.v7i1.3689 Philippa Tumubweinee & Thierry M. Luescher: Inserting Space into the Transformation of Higher Education 3 In this article, our interest is to analyse the place of space in national policy on higher education transformation to see if there is evidence of a socio‑political understanding of space in these policy documents. Do we find any evidence of a socio‑political conception of space in national policy on the transformation of higher education? Engaging the Goals of Transformation Higher education policy in post‑apartheid South Africa has as its overarching goal “a transformed higher education system [that] would play a critical role in an emerging, non‑racial, progressive democracy, in producing critical, independent citizens as well as skilled and socially‑committed graduates who would be capable of contributing to social and economic development” (Webbstock, 2016, p. 22). Post‑apartheid transformation in higher education is therefore not only about achieving demographic equity in the staff and student bodies of institutions (‘equity’), and a qualitative and quantitative improvement of the outputs of higher education (‘efficiency’ and ‘quality’); rather these and other transformative initiatives in higher education are intended to overall create a system that plays “a significant role in helping to build an open, democratic, post‑apartheid society and an informed, critical, and socially aware citizenry” (Webbstock, 2016, p. 22). Engaging the goals of transformation from the perspective of universities as social institutions, what is the place of space in policy statements on higher education transformation? Our foregoing conceptual discussion prompts a prominent place for space and space‑related concerns in policies that can engage the legacy of apartheid – the ultimate, legislated, spatial divider – and the aspirational goals of the 1996 Constitution within higher education institutions and the sector as whole. As a way of engaging the goals of transformation, student activists have harnessed the power of the socio‑political meanings of space in protest demands in unprecedented ways in democratic South Africa. Starting in 2015, protest campaigns such as #RhodesMustFall, #OpenStellenbosch, and #SteynMustFall, have challenged the established tradition of theorising about the process and understanding of transformation as referring to epistemological change, institutional culture, and social cohesion (DoE, 2008). While it is true that these tenets accommodate the fluidity of change that is necessary for multiple initiatives and knowledges for transformation (see Lange, 2014), they miss a substantial grounding in the where of transformation, and the reality of the everyday of students’ experiences of higher education that is deployed in space. It is here that the student movement of 2015/16 has shown new directions for transformation policy in which the where can be important. The Framing of Space in Higher Education Policy For the purposes of this article, we selected four national ‘cornerstone’ policy documents on higher education transformation: the 1997 Education White Paper 3: A Programme for the Transformation of Higher Education (WPHE), the 2001 National Plan for Higher Education (NPHE), the 2013 White Paper on Post-School Education and Training (WPPSET), and finally the 2017 Draft National Plan for Post-School Education and Training (NPPSET). A couple of 4 Journal of Student Affairs in Africa | Volume 7(1) 2019, 1‑13 | 2307‑6267 | DOI: 10.24085/jsaa.v7i1.3689 points need to be made with respect to this selection. Firstly, the draft NPPSET was never actually released as a public document; it was, however, widely consulted on (and the release of a final plan is imminent). Secondly, the distinction must be noted between the white papers and the plans, as the latter are linked to and largely based on the ideas of the former. As has been pointed out in various policy analyses, there is typically some policy agility between white paper and plan. Thirdly, the two white papers also cover a different scope. While the WPHE only deals with the universities, the WPPSET covers the entire post‑schooling system (including the universities, the colleges and the skills development system). Our selection is justified by our aim of seeking to cover a lot of policy terrain within the limitations of this article. We analysed text segments in the selected policy document which we identified by relevant codes. The codes we used included the terms and derivatives of ‘space’, ‘place’, ‘social’, ‘experience’, ‘everyday’, ‘culture’, as well as ‘geography’, and the like. We applied the codes in text searches to tag the text segments and then analysed the dominant policy conception of space in South African higher education Taking this methodology, focusing on the codes and documents noted above, and using our conception of space as co‑produced by, and co‑producer of, the everyday as conceptual lens, thus defines the scope and limitations of our enquiry. This methodology gives us the tools to show the tension between a socio‑political conception of space in the everyday and conceptions of space implied in macro policy documents. On the one hand, our analysis is prompted by the need to provide new perspectives on policy on higher education transformation or, if you will, decolonisation. On the other hand, we are also inspired by Young and Kraak’s early call to respond to “the continuing need for theoretically informed critiques of [education] policy that point to alternatives to what is often experienced as the given nature of the status quo” (2001, p. 16). The White Paper on Higher Education The White Paper on Higher Education (1997), which built on the recommendations of the National Commission for Higher Education (1996), starts out by referencing space primarily in terms of access to higher education in three distinct senses. Firstly, it considers space in terms of “spatial and geographic barriers to access” (DoE, 1997, Section 1.11 [our emphasis]). Secondly, it uses the term ‘space’ to refer to (funded) student places in various programmes and qualifications, and in terms of overall institutional and system enrolment plans.1 Thirdly, space is alluded to in the White Paper’s reference to the transformation of institutional cultures. The idea of spatial barriers to access is problematised in the White Paper in terms of a geographic understanding of space(s) in higher education, whereby a university campus is conceived in infrastructural terms as a ‘delivery site’ of higher education programmes along with a political understanding of the historical, racialised iniquities embedded in 1 Even though this is a frequent and repeated use of the term ‘space(s)’ in subsequent policy documents, it is only marginally relevant for our present concerns and therefore not analysed further. https://doi.org/10.24085/jsaa.v7i1.3689 Philippa Tumubweinee & Thierry M. Luescher: Inserting Space into the Transformation of Higher Education 5 the landscape of higher education. It is in this respect that a socio‑political reading of space is evident, which former Minister Kader Asmal famously called “the geo‑political imagination of apartheid planners” (DoE, 2001, Preface). At the macro‑level, geo‑political inequities in the post‑apartheid South African higher education landscape prompted a policy‑led reconfiguration of the institutional landscape by means of mergers and incorporations which consumes much of the high‑level policy debate from the late 1990s (Jansen, 2003; Badat, 2015). As was predicted, university mergers tend to be difficult and longwinded (Hall, Symes & Luescher, 2003); perhaps surprisingly, the process succeeded in most cases even if one merger had to be undone (i.e. Sefako Magkatho Health Sciences University was demerged from the University of Limpopo), and several complex merged institutions are still experiencing instability (as in the cases of Tshwane University of Technology and Walter Sisulu University). In contrast to the incisive national intervention with respect to the macro institutional landscape, no such equally far‑reaching transformation policy initiatives were designed to impact on spatial barriers to access (and success) within campuses, which the White Paper and other documents conceived in terms of the concept of ‘institutional culture’.2 The relevant sections in the White Paper (DoE, 1997, Sections 3.41‑3.44) are well worth quoting at length: 3.41 The Ministry is seriously concerned by evidence of institutionalised forms of racism and sexism as well as the incidence of violent behaviour on many campuses of higher education institutions. It is essential to promote the development of institutional cultures which will embody values and facilitate behaviour aimed at peaceful assembly, reconciliation, respect for difference and the promotion of the common good. 3.42 The Ministry proposes that all institutions of higher education should develop mechanisms which will: • create a secure and safe campus environment that discourages harassment or any other hostile behaviour directed towards persons or groups on any grounds whatsoever, but particularly on grounds of age, colour, creed, disability, gender, marital status, national origin, race, language, or sexual orientation. • set standards of expected behaviour for the entire campus community, including but not limited to administrators, faculty, staff, students, security personnel and contractors. 2 As John Higgins (2007) has shown, in much of the policy discourse following the White Paper, the notion of ‘institutional culture’ comes to act as a code word for whiteness, especially with respect to the experiences of black staff and students in historically white institutions. There are, however, instances where ‘institutional culture’ is used quite differently in policy discourse. For instance, in the highly acclaimed volume Transformation in Higher Education: Global Pressures and Local Realities in South Africa, edited by Nico Cloete and others (2002), the term ‘institutional culture’ is used as organisational culture (as it would be in American business management literature). Moreover, Rebecca Schendel (2018) shows how the conceptualisation of the relationship between institutional culture and pedagogy in South African higher education scholarship changes over the last ten years (2007‑2017) along with changing conceptions of institutional culture. 6 Journal of Student Affairs in Africa | Volume 7(1) 2019, 1‑13 | 2307‑6267 | DOI: 10.24085/jsaa.v7i1.3689 • promote a campus environment that is sensitive to racial and cultural diversity, through extracurricular activities that expose students to cultures and traditions other than their own, and scholarly activities that work towards this goal. • assign competent personnel to monitor progress in the abovementioned areas. 3.43 The Ministry is committed to an institutional culture in which there is gender equity. Institutions have a responsibility for creating an equitable and supportive climate for women students and staff. […]. 3.44 The Ministry deplores the many incidents of rape and sexual harassment on higher education campuses. Institutions are enjoined to develop and disseminate institutional policies prohibiting sexual harassment of students and employees, together with the establishment of reporting and grievance procedures incorporating victim support and counselling, confidentiality, protection of complainants from retaliation, as well as mechanisms for ensuring due process and protection for respondents. The White Paper clearly commits to a transformation of the everyday – the lived experience of students (and staff) – from one characterised by “institutionalised forms of racism and sexism as well as the incidence of violent behaviour”, “harassment or any other hostile behaviour”, including “many incidents of rape and sexual harassment” to institutional cultures which “embody values and facilitate behaviour aimed at peaceful assembly, reconciliation, respect for difference and the promotion of the common good” along with “gender equity”. The White Paper also starts to propose how and where to transform institutional cultures: in the creation of “a secure and safe campus environment” and by setting new “standards of expected behaviour” (DoE, 1997, Sections  3.41‑3.44). Although the White Paper therefore considers the campus environment in socio‑political terms, it does not really understand it to be a social space where people learn, live, fall in and out of love, grow, find and lose and refine themselves, as social beings. Unlike the transformation of the socio‑political macro‑level landscape, when it comes to the transformation of the campus environment and along with it institutional cultures, there is no large‑scale funded national policy intervention, even though problems continue to flare up (see, for example, the 2008 report of the so‑called Soudien Commission). It may be assumed that the White Paper expects institutional‑level plans to carry the load of policy initiatives, e.g. with reference to the institution’s mission, programmes, enrolment, race and gender‑equity goals, infrastructural development and so forth (DoE, 1997, Section 2.15). And, perhaps, institutional cultures are meant to spontaneously transform in the course of addressing demographic representation in the staff and student bodies. Whatever the case may be, the lack of effectiveness of this policy strategy is clearly evident from the findings of the Soudien Commission (DoE, 2008), in the demands of the various ‘decolonisation campaigns’ on the campuses of historically white universities in 2015/16 (such as #RhodesMustFall, #OpenStellenbosch, #SteynMustFall, #RUReferencelist, etc.), and in scholarly research on the student experience (as synthesised in Kerr & Luescher,  2018). Campuses and institutions – as if they were not spaces where people learn – live, fall in and out of love, grow, find and lose and refine themselves, as social beings. https://doi.org/10.24085/jsaa.v7i1.3689 Philippa Tumubweinee & Thierry M. Luescher: Inserting Space into the Transformation of Higher Education 7 The National Plan for Higher Education The National Plan for Higher Education (2001) presented itself as the implementation framework for realising the goals of the 1997 White Paper. As may be expected, the dominant policy conception of space and space‑related concerns did not change between the White Paper and the National Plan, even if there is clearer focus and emphasis evident in the latter. For instance, the National Plan of 2001 continues to emphasise a commitment to develop a higher education system that contributes to social justice, democracy, and citizenship; one that will […]  support a democratic ethos and a culture of human rights through educational programmes and practices conducive to critical discourse and creative thinking, cultural tolerance, and a common commitment to a humane, non‑racist and non‑sexist social order. (DoE, 2001, Section 1.2) However, as with the White Paper, the problem is that this is not ‘located’ in any substantial terms. This argument can be illustrated with reference to some of the NPHE’s defined outcomes. For example, Outcome  5 in Section  2.6 looks at curriculum change (and changing the enrolments by fields). Part of the argument is that there needs to be a ‘cultural’ transformation in higher education. In today’s terms, the relevant passage in the NPHE could perhaps be headed as ‘decolonisation’. It notes that: […] important fields of study which impact on the development of a common sense of nationhood and that could play an important role in contributing to the development of the African Renaissance continue to be marginalised in higher education institutions. These include, in particular, fields of study such as African languages and culture, African literature (and not only in its English form), indigenous knowledge systems and more generally, the transformation of curricula to reflect the location of knowledge and curricula in the context of the African continent. The Ministry would like to encourage institutions to develop and enhance these fields and will monitor developments closely. (DoE, 2001, Section 2.6) The NPHE thus urges an epistemological ‘rootedness’ in Africa – likely inspired by the contemporaneous African Renaissance discourse. This, however, is not taken further. At the same time, we may want to make reference to the point made already in Section  1.1 of the NPHE under challenges, namely, that higher education especially in historically white universities continues to be marred by “institutional cultures that have not transcended the racial divides of the past” (Section 1.1). Outcome 8 argues that staff equity and the institutional cultures of historically white institutions remains problematic whereby the latter is responsible for alienating black staff, which also impacts on black students’ academic performance and success (DoE, 2001, Section  3.3). While the NPHE thus continues to conceive of (untransformed) institutional cultures as ‘barriers to access, performance and success’, they have curiously moved from being a problem affecting 8 Journal of Student Affairs in Africa | Volume 7(1) 2019, 1‑13 | 2307‑6267 | DOI: 10.24085/jsaa.v7i1.3689 all higher education institutions to one specific to historically white institutions only.3 Moreover, while the where appears clearly in the macro‑level policy perspective and takes the mergers and incorporations as intervention to redress the legacy of the geo‑politics of apartheid (DoE, 2001, Section 6), such policy intervention is neither spelled out for an epistemological Africanisation nor a transformation of the campus environment to reflect the values and aspirations of the Constitution. The White Paper on Post‑School Education and Training Over a decade and a half after the 1997 WPHE and as the policy programme for a new dedicated Ministry of Higher Education and Training, the White Paper on Post-School Education and Training (WPPSET), is published in 2013 (DHET, 2013). In the meantime, the higher education system had changed quite substantially. Student enrolments had nearly doubled from a half million in 1994 to almost a million. Alongside this expansion, student demographics (and less dramatically so staff demographics) had changed to increasingly reflect national demographics (CHE, 2009). The post‑merger institutional landscape of the mid‑2000s was in the process of settling down, and in few cases, being revised, and the first entirely new institutions were being established. In the assessment of the CHE (2009, p. 8), “challenges faced by merging institutions included establishing identities for the new institutions, accommodating different institutional cultures and traditions and aligning policies and procedures”. Nonetheless, the overall picture was that […]  the institutional mergers have succeeded in creating a new landscape in which the [former apartheid‑based] identities of institutions based on race and language are blurred. (Mabokela, 2007, in CHE, 2009, p. 9) The same could not be said for the transformation of institutional cultures sought in 1997. In the WPPSET the argument was still being made that higher education continued to be characterised by discrimination, including racism and sexism (DHET, 2013, Section 4.1). This assessment was based primarily on the findings of the Ministerial Committee on Progress Towards Transformation and Social Cohesion and the Elimination of Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions, or Soudien Committee, which had been established in 2008 in the wake of the notorious ‘Reitz incident’ at the University of the Free State (DoE, 2008). Unlike any previous policy document in higher education, the WPPSET puts emphasis on experience(s). Such experience(s) are functionally differentiated: learning experience, educational experience, workplace experience, practical experience, industry experience, 3 While there is less research available from historically black universities, all indications are that they are equally marred by various forms of discrimination, harassment and other hostile behaviour, and so forth (for a synthesis of the literature, see Kerr Luescher, 2018; also see ‘Kwenza Madlala’ in Luescher, Webbstock & Bhengu [forthcoming]). Moreover, the Soudien report notes that “transformation is clearly a challenge facing all South African higher education institutions” (DoE, 2008, in CHE, 2009, p. 85). https://doi.org/10.24085/jsaa.v7i1.3689 Philippa Tumubweinee & Thierry M. Luescher: Inserting Space into the Transformation of Higher Education 9 and so forth. This conception of positive, functional, place‑based experiences, while helpful in an instrumental sense, is also limited in two ways: Firstly, nowhere in the document is the function of ‘citizenship development’ practically considered as to where and how this should happen. What types of experiences should facilitate such development? In what spaces? And through which initiatives and interventions? Secondly, there remains no indication where the negative, dysfunctional experiences of discrimination happen (in the classroom? in residences? in workplaces? at the taxi rank?), in what social interactions, and how one could counter them. Considering the 1997 White Paper’s treatment of the socio‑political dimension of space, it appears that national policy had regressed.4 The Draft National Plan for Post‑School Education and Training To conclude our brief analysis, we consulted the Draft National Plan for Post-School Education and Training (2017). Our search finds that although the Draft NPPSET talks of space in more detail than the NPHE and the WPPSET, its conceptualisations of space are grounded in and primarily refer to infrastructure. The White Paper’s conception of functional experiences is reinforced in the National Plan’s emphasis on functional places for experiences. In the descriptions of these functional places, space is conceived as a physical thing. It is worth noting though, that the Draft NPPSET includes for the first time a consideration of the social use of campus space, for example, as recreational facilities or accommodation. Thus, Section 2.5 of the draft plan argues that “appropriate infrastructure is essential to the achievement of the White Paper policy goals”. In particular, it notes: Larger multi‑purpose lecture theatres, more student learning spaces, office and work spaces for additional academic and support staff, more libraries, e‑learning centres, workshops, work simulation rooms, laboratories, research facilities and equipment, IT workstations and networks, student accommodation and recreational facilities will be required. (DHET, 2017, Section 2.5) Specific reference is also made to (the inadequacy of) student accommodation in the system and the need to build new campuses (DHET, 2017, Section 2.5). However, the Draft NPPSET still fails to make the link between physical space and social space, that is, to understand and problematise the question of space in socio‑political terms. Despite being the most ‘space‑conscious’ document, there is still little acknowledgement of social space (other than in terms of specific ‘official’ functions of a place). Yet, perhaps the closest to any conception of social space in any of the four cornerstone policy documents analysed here is the following passage in the Draft NPPSET of 2017: The multiple and complex academic and non‑academic factors contributing to poor student success in South African universities have been well documented over a long period of time. At undergraduate level, poor success can be attributed among many factors 4 An expectation was that the establishment of a permanent Transformation Oversight Committee in 2013 would address transformation failure in the area of institutional culture (see Lange & Luescher‑ Mamashela, 2016, p. 124). 10 Journal of Student Affairs in Africa | Volume 7(1) 2019, 1‑13 | 2307‑6267 | DOI: 10.24085/jsaa.v7i1.3689 collectively grouped into life and logistic factors, teaching and learning factors and psycho‑ social factors. […] Large classes, poor early warning systems, limited access to student support services (both academic and psycho‑social), curriculum design and pedagogical challenges, language issues, inadequate or inappropriate teaching and learning facilities, alienating institutional cultures, the use of ICT infrastructure, and many other factors impact overall on the ability of institutions to facilitate improvements in student success. (DHET, 2017, Section 5.3, p. 85) Thus, it is here where the distinction between physical space(s) that have functionality for student living and learning, for teaching and as work spaces, starts to get blurry in light of the dysfunctionalities of higher education and failure to transform. However, it only does so with reference to students’ academic performance and success; it does not yet consider the wider transformation goals and how they ought to be experienced in the realities of the everyday.5 In Conclusion: Towards a Research Agenda on Space and Higher Education At the most general level, our analysis of transformation policy in South African higher education has found that space is almost consistently conceived only as an object in transformation; it is ‘a thing’ devoid of agency. This kind of understanding of space in higher education policy – whether as physical space or as abstract ‘place’ to be filled – is problematic against an understanding of the role of social space in social relations, and thus of space as socio‑political actor in transformation. Transformation happens in space, in the subjective environment of the everyday, which for students (and staff alike), is more than a ‘passive’ infrastructure or an abstract void; space is defined by and defines everyday lived experiences. We interact in this space and our interactions are limited or encouraged by this space. The way space is perceived, conceived and eventually experienced has a profound impact on students’ experience of higher education and by extension, of the experience of everybody interacting in and with the sector. It follows that space and space‑related concerns should have a prominent place in policy on higher education transformation. Inserting space into a theorising of the relationship between the national agenda for transformation in higher education and differentiated campuses can be used to translate national policy imperatives, at different institutions, into the realities of the everyday. As we have shown, space in higher education transformation policy to date has been conceived in terms of abstract macro‑level systems, institutions, programmes, and enrolment places on the one hand; on the other hand, it has also come to be conceived as brick‑and‑mortar infrastructure more recently. Problematisations of the social, in turn, have been analysed and addressed in policy mainly in terms of gender, class, and race (and other social categories), 5 For an important recent contribution to the literature on students’ experiences of getting into, through and out of higher education beyond the confines of current policy discourse, see Case et al’s (2017) book Going to University, based on narrative interviews with 73 young people who entered university studies in the early 2010s. https://doi.org/10.24085/jsaa.v7i1.3689 Philippa Tumubweinee & Thierry M. Luescher: Inserting Space into the Transformation of Higher Education 11 often with reference to institutional culture. Neither of these two approaches adequately take into account a conceptual reading of space as a social product and co‑producer of the social that plays an active, dynamic, political role. In other words, the two policy approaches fail to deliver a socio‑political understanding of the role of space in the realities of the everyday in higher education. Hence also student campaigns like #RhodesMustFall, which centred on the reality of the student experience in the everyday, were able to highlight the dysfunction of higher education policy for transformation from a cultural, socio‑political and economic perspective. Our argument is that conceptualisations of space in higher education, particularly those that look at space as a social product and co‑producer of the social, allow for understandings of the lived reality of the everyday, which are grounded in the empirical.6 Empirical understandings of the lived reality of the everyday in higher education can shift policy to allow for a shared and collective project of transformation involving multi‑voiced narratives that are socially, economically and politically relevant. Policy that engages with space as social and political can, in its construction, consider “the ‘right things’ through the ‘right lenses’, and [do so] ethically” (Hentschel & Press, 2009, p. 6; in Tumubweinee, 2019, p. 230). Our concluding proposition is that socio‑spatial types can provide such lenses. Socio‑ spatial types allow us to analyse the organisation of space at a higher education institution and the factors that influence this. In this respect, they allow us to look simultaneously at what happens, why it happens, how it happens and where it happens. Thus, they provide a conceptual and methodological point of entry into the operationalisation of social space in higher education policy writing. Such spatial types can include: living, learning, working, recreation, movement, architecture, and consumption, to name a few. As has recently been shown, […]  spatial types, in revealing space use and the everyday practices at a higher education institution, can be utilised to explain the linkages between spatial organisation and differentiated understandings and experiences of transformation in higher education. (Tumubweinee, 2019, p. 76) In this way, they allow us to look at the underlying rules that govern the social nature of higher education institutions and provide insights into the way the social nature of these institutions extends into wider society. 6 The ways that #RhodesMustFall and other #MustFall campaigns have shifted the understandings of transformation linked to different conceptions of ‘space’ will need to be shown empirically in a different paper. 12 Journal of Student Affairs in Africa | Volume 7(1) 2019, 1‑13 | 2307‑6267 | DOI: 10.24085/jsaa.v7i1.3689 Acknowledgements We would like to thank Thandi Lewin as well as the anonymous peer reviewers of JSAA for their insightful comments on an earlier version of the article. Dr Tumubweinee would like to acknowledge funding received from the University of Cape Town (URC Block Grant) and Prof. Luescher would like to acknowledge funding received from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (Grant no. G‑1802‑05403) to produce this article. 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How to cite: Tumubweinee, P. & Luescher, T.M. (2019). Inserting Space into the Transformation of Higher Education. Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, 7(1), 1‑13. DOI: 10.24085/jsaa.v7i1.3689 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511597237 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511597237 https://doi.org/10.1080/0258934032000073897 https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2016.1238644 https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2016.1238644 https://doi.org/10.24085/jsaa.v7i1.3689