Alternative scenarios for tertiary funding in South Africa are set out in a completely separate report from the Davis Tax Committee drawing from work done by the higher education department.
A sign at a march in Soweto, South Africa, shows just how important social support is for lesbians.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
Family support, being valued in their own homes and enjoying strong support from their social structures helped instill lesbians in a conservative South African province with a strong sense of self.
Predatory publishers are vultures feeding on academics’ worries about output and incentives.
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If there’s a general sense that academic publication is about knowledge dissemination rather than meeting performance targets, academics and universities become less vulnerable to predatory journals.
South Africa boasts world class universities. It must not allow their quality to drop.
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Students experience intense feelings of discomfort, confusion and even embarrassment at being classified as “different” and an “anomaly” alongside the norm of white academic success.
Assessment should be a part of teaching and learning at universities. It’s important because it will subvert exclusion and allow all students to take responsibility for their work.
When academics are pushed to publish and to compete, teaching and research can take a back seat.
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More must be done to develop mechanisms based on intrinsic motivations of committed, quality academics. It’s important to limit the harms currently being caused by rent seeking.
Education and awareness about gender identity and sexual orientation are crucial.
EPA/Kim Ludbrook
Phrases like “knowledge production” conceal the fact that knowledge answers to something beyond itself and beyond us. To produce knowledge is to find out about something.
University lecturers must keep learning new ways to teach.
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The ministerial task team’s report presents a jaundiced view of an important organisation that’s opened the doors of higher education to many who would otherwise have been closed out.
The “de-” in decolonisation is a chance to break away from colonial ways of doing things.
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There are other ways to conduct meetings and present lectures. Could adopting, adapting or even just understanding more about these help universities to release colonialism’s grip on their practices?
Black South African students need fewer excuses and more support from universities.
Kim Ludbrook/EPA
Students from South Africa’s public school system battle to cope with the rigorous demands of any university degree without genuine, committed support.
Thabo Mbeki during his inauguration as Chancellor at UNISA.
Deaan Vivier/Netwerk24
There’s no doubt South African universities need to undergo a real shift. But are the country’s current intellectual and academic forces up to the task?
The demand for “decolonised education” may jeopardise research and learning in South Africa.
Nic Bothma/EPA
It’s important that South African teachers, lecturers and professors develop curricula that build on the best knowledge skills, values, beliefs and habits from around the world.
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