What is a university supposed to be? This question is back on the agenda after an opinion piece argued that Afrikaans-language private universities could pose a threat to South Africa’s democracy. The argument is made that institutions like Akademia hinder integration – and therefore nation-building – by limiting students’ exposure to diversity, critical thinking and diverse perspectives.

According to the author of the set opinon piece, Prof. Jonathan Jansen, institutions such as Akademia limit students’ exposure to diversity, critical thinking and diverse perspectives. He argues that such universities therefore not only harm young people, but ultimately also South Africa’s democratic project.

One could easily spend a lot of time refuting the many hasty generalisations, unsubstantiated assumptions, and historical associations in his argument step by step. However, that’s probably not where the crux of the debate lies. The real difference between Professor Jansen and Akademia is not primarily about Afrikaans. It is about two fundamentally different conceptions of what the university is.

Each university performs at least two tasks. Firstly, it develops academic knowledge and professional expertise. Secondly, it shapes people – their thinking, character, judgment, and ultimately their worldview. No university is neutral in this regard. Each institution functions from particular normative points of departure, whether explicitly formulated or silently accepted. The real question is therefore not whether universities form students, but what they are forming them for.

Therein lies an important difference. Akademia openly announces its points of departure. We declare without further ado that we work from a Christian and classical philosophy of education. Students and parents know in advance what the ethos of the institution is. At many other universities, there are similarly strong normative points of departure, but they are often presented as simply neutral or self-evident. Yet ideas such as secularism, nationalism, transformism, or social justice are not worldview-free either; these are normative ideas that shape the character of an institution and its students.

This is probably where Akademia and Professor Jansen differ the most. From his article, it appears that he sees the university primarily as a tool for nation-building. The latter represents a place where students are shaped by demographic diversity and shared experiences into citizens of a post-apartheid democracy. This is an honourable ideal, but it is not the only possible understanding of the university.

Academia understands the scope of a university differently. For us, a university is first and foremost an academic community that seeks the truth, shapes students intellectually, and equips them to be responsible professionals and citizens. Diversity is valuable, but it is not the highest goal of a university. Academic excellence, intellectual integrity, and character formation remain at the core.

Along with this comes a second important point. Professor Jansen assumes that demographic diversity automatically leads to intellectual diversity, and that a more homogeneous student body is necessarily intellectually narrow-minded. However, this is not a self-evident conclusion.

Intellectual diversity is determined not primarily by the race, language, or culture of the people in a lecture hall, but by the quality of the questions asked, the diverse theories that students grapple with, the arguments they must evaluate, and the academic standards by which they are measured. A university can be demographically very diverse and yet ideologically remarkably similar. Conversely, a relatively homogeneous student body can be constantly challenged by divergent ideas, worldviews, and intellectual traditions.

With regards to language: Underlying the professor’s conception of the university is the conviction that a diverse and multicultural student body is a defining characteristic of a legitimate university. English becomes the common language through which this vision is realised, since English is regarded as the only language capable of accommodating such diversity. The educational cost of this approach, however, is considerable. South Africa’s greatest educational crisis is not that some university students receive instruction in their mother tongue, but that millions of children are denied sustained mother-tongue education during their formative school years. Decades of international research have demonstrated that mother-tongue instruction significantly improves learning, comprehension, cognitive development and educational achievement.

The critique of Akademia’s Christian identity likewise deserves nuance. The fact that some Christians tried to justify apartheid theologically in the past does not mean that every Christian university today continues that legacy. The question shouldn’t be whether an institution has a worldview, as every university has one. The question is whether that worldview is openly stated, promotes academic integrity, and leaves room for honest inquiry and debate.

Perhaps the most important question ultimately is this: Does a constitutional democracy have room for more than one type of university?

A pluralistic democracy should make way for both public and private universities; secular and faith-based institutions; multilingual and language-focused universities. Expecting all universities to pursue the same mission, the same worldview, and the same understanding of citizenship is not pluralism. That’s centralism.

Akademia does not ask that all universities should be like Akademia. We defend the very principle that different universities can operate from different educational traditions, provided they maintain academic quality, respect the Constitution and equip students to be responsible citizens.

The debate is therefore ultimately not just about Afrikaans. It is about whether South Africa’s democracy leaves room for real institutional diversity. Ironically, it may be precisely this plurality – and not uniformity – that offers the strongest guarantee of a healthy democracy.