Quality as Relationship, Prestige as Illusion: Towards Ubuntu-Informed Transformation in Higher Education

Global higher education is increasingly governed by rankings, accreditation regimes, and performance indicators that equate quality with prestige, visibility, and comparative advantage. While these mechanisms promise accountability and excellence, they often obscure more profound questions of equity, inclusion, and social justice, particularly in historically unequal contexts such as South Africa. This chapter interrogates the contested meanings of quality in higher education by juxtaposing global prestige-driven metrics with South Africa’s policy-embedded commitments to transformation, access, and public accountability. These commitments are articulated by the Council on Higher Education and related quality assurance frameworks. Adopting a conceptual and interpretive methodology, the chapter draws on document analysis of higher education policies and cultural narratives, including The Ron Clark Story and Amateur, as descriptive lenses to expose the limits of heroic, individualised accounts of educational success and the systemic invisibilities they reproduce. Central to the analysis is Ubuntu, mobilised as a normative and analytical framework that foregrounds relationality, collective responsibility, epistemic justice, and human dignity. The chapter argues that Ubuntu offers a coherent alternative to prestige-oriented definitions of quality, reframing excellence as an ethical, relational, and justice-oriented achievement rather than a positional ranking outcome. The chapter integrates philosophy, policy analysis, and cultural critique to advance an Ubuntu-informed redefinition of quality that challenges deceptive measures of excellence. It also repositions higher education as a site of collective transformation and shared human flourishing.