South Africa's 36 universities and technikons are entering the second phase of the government's new planning system.
The first phase uncovered problems ranging from an inability to attract black academics to slow progress on regional cooperation and poor planning strategy.
Institutions have until the end of October to submit to the education department a range of information that will be used to refine three-year "rolling" plans covering the years 2000 to 2002.
These will focus on the government's four policy priorities: the size and shape of the system; equity; efficiency; and institutional cooperation.
This heralds an era of hands-on management of a sector that has long been accused of a lack of accountability, a less-than-lean uneconomical use of scarce resources and, in some cases, sluggishness in responding to national goals.
Universities and technikons will need to provide detailed statistics and projections of their student profiles by race, gender, field and level of study as well as information on support programmes for disadvantaged students and their staff demographics.
They will also need to provide information about efficiency, outputs, strategic plans and collaboration with other institutions.
A department spokeswoman said that phase one found that while many institutions had racially transformed their student bodies, most had struggled to recruit black academics - largely because of the high premium placed on black graduates by a private sector able to pay far better salaries.
"We don't want institutions to embark on efficiency measures for the sake of it. They must also look at the impact on academic outputs and quality," she added.
But the department found that several institutions have not been channelling their funds efficiently into core activities.
Regional consortia have tended to focus on "soft" areas such as libraries and information technology and not got to grips with the need to cut academic programmes that - thanks to apartheid's creation of institutions for different race groups - are commonly over-provided.
In future, institutional plans will be tied to a funding formula being developed by the education department.
Funding levels will be determined by an institution's efficiency, accountability and progress towards national goals. In the interests of accountability, the second phase plans will be made public on request.
The department will analyse the plans and visit institutions to discuss them from February to April next year. The visits underpin a commitment to "an interactive and iterative planning process", says the department in guidelines sent to institutions.
The need for a planning framework for higher education was outlined in a white paper, A Programme for the Transformation of Higher Education, published in 1997. Institutions will be expected to add components to their plans until the framework is in place, hopefully by 2003.
The department will develop a national plan based on the information collected and policy issues identified during the institutional planning process. It hopes to have an "embryonic" national plan by the middle of next year.
Good progress in developing a new funding formula, says the department, means it might be possible to have a "dry run" towards the end of this year.
But instability in higher education might delay its implementation.