Universities are so busy trying to make ends meet that there’s no time to listen to their communities’ stories. It’s crucial to develop safe spaces where tough conversations can happen.
It’s unlikely that student protests are directly affecting South African universities’ rankings. Instead, decades of government underfunding in higher education may be at least partly to blame.
South Africa’s higher education minister has dealt with fee increments for 2017 but sidestepped students’ fundamental issue: an ongoing call to make higher education free for all.
South Africa’s universities have been told to set their own fee increases for 2017. That’s good news for institutions, but it hasn’t been well-received by many students.
The system of apartheid is long gone. But its legacy of poor funding for historically black universities - and of planning that banished black universities to cities’ margins - remains.
A row between South Africa’s finance minister and the country’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations has prompted academics to pen an open letter asking President Jacob Zuma to intervene.
Decolonising the curriculum is far more nuanced than replacing theorists and authors. Universities first need to define how they approach the development and dissemination of curricula.
MOOCs are an opportunity for African universities to bring the continent’s thinkers and theories to the world. They also have great benefits for full-time students to experience a flipped classroom.
South African universities are under enormous financial pressure. They also face a fresh round of student protests ahead of a decision on next year’s fees. Hard choices need to be made.
It is arrogant and hypocritical for ranking institutions to declare that they’re building Africa’s legacy or its global partnerships on the continent’s behalf.
In South Africa there’s a value judgment attached to students who take part in universities’ English for Academic Purposes programmes. This shouldn’t be the case.
Decolonisation of the curriculum doesn’t have to mean the destruction of Western knowledge, but it’s decentring. Such knowledge should become one way of knowing rather than the only way.
Sections of South Africa’s student movements regard transformation as a complete failure. Responding to this perceived failure, some have adopted an anti-democratic stance.
The huge problem of youth unemployment in South Africa appears to be getting worse. New research will hopefully amplify their voices and inform more realistic interventions to combat the monster.
Forty years after the students uprisings of 1976, South Africa is again in the midst of a political movement led by students.They have changed the tenor and shape of political discussion around education.
Director of Centre for Postgraduate Studies, Rhodes University & Visiting Research Professor in Center for International Higher Education, Boston College, Rhodes University
Previous Vice President of the Academy of Science of South Africa and DSI-NRF SARChI chair in Fungal Genomics, Professor in Genetics, University of Pretoria, University of Pretoria
Chief Director: Tshwane University of Technology – Institute for Economic Research on Innovation; Node Head: DST/NRF SciSTIP CoE; and Professor Extraordinary: Stellenbosch University – Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology., Tshwane University of Technology
Associate Professor of Higher Education Studies. Head of Department of the Centre for Higher Education, Research, Teaching and Learning, Rhodes University