A “buy now, pay later” model is well suited to financing higher education. Commercial bank loans are not viable. Government-backed loans with income-contingent repayment are the fair solution.
Many South Africans fear and mistrust the police.
Kim Ludbrook/EPA
Clashes between student protesters and armed security (whether public or private) compel South Africans to consider the role of use of force in the context of protests.
The costs of student protests are far higher than imagined.
Rogan Ward/Reuters
There is a very real risk that South Africa’s major research projects will stumble and the whole research machine will be shut down by ongoing student protests.
A student tries to stem her bleeding during clashes at the University of the Witwatersrand.
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Protest movements become radicalised by two factors: escalating policing and competitive escalation between political adversaries and other protesting groups.
People need spaces in which they can speak honestly about their pain and anger.
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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.
Ongoing student protests are unlikely to have been a direct cause of universities’ slide down global rankings tables.
Reuters/Mike Hutchings
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.
University students are fed up that their calls for free education are being ignored.
Nic Bothma/EPA
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.
Protesting students have had enough and their anger is burning hot.
EPA/Nic Bothma
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 apartheid government built universities for black students far from major cities or safe routes.
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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.
South Africa’s Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan is a hunted man.
Mujahid Safodien/EPA
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.
When online and offline learning experiences meet, magic can happen.
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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.
The decolonisation of South Africa’s university curriculum seems to have fallen off the agenda, overtaken by the push for free higher education.
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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.
A traditional rainmaker in Kenya. How can indigenous knowledge become part of university curricula?
Department For International Development/International Development Research Centre/Thomas Omondi/Flickr
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.
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