The work-from-home genie is out of the bottle, and technology to automate processes has been adopted far faster than under normal circumstances. Students should think carefully about what this means for their studies
higher education
Posted inGeneral
Venda University’s first woman chancellor is a beacon of hope
Students are confident Advocate Mojakunyane Gumbi has what it takes to reform the institution
Posted inBusiness, Environment, Equality, Gender violence, General, Health, Lifestyle, Media, News/Politics, Sport, Tech
NewBridge
Recently, at the start of 2019, I chose to come out of retirement, deconcentrate and redelegate, for the time being, my BLU ERA activities; and enroll for a higher education. Now what this might have meant, 10 years ago, was returning to the politics department at UKZN and trying to finish my BA in political […]
Posted inEquality, General
The Tide Has Come. Is UCT Ready?
In the midst of protests and suspension of lectures recently, the University of Cape Town’s leadership went on a search for a Deputy Vice Chancellor of Teaching and Learning. This was no ordinary search. Over the years, we have heard various iterations on how rare it is to find black South African womxn academics who […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
#ScienceMustFall in retrospect: Three lessons to help us move on
I remarked once that, “If the curricula shall be Africanised then, one may presume, we’ll have to find an Africanised version of Newtonian mechanics for the engineers, decolonised theorem proofs for mathematicians and the non-racist equivalent of Maxwell’s equations for physicists, among other things”. I said that this would be to take the call for […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Open letter to Jeff Radebe, #FeesMustFall students and vice-chancellors
Minister Jeff Radebe you are heading up the ministerial task team to resolve the crisis on our university campuses. Good, thank you. This is a step in the right direction. Students and champions of #FeesMustFall, you have taken up the challenge of agitating for a fundamental change in the future prospects of your generation of […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, General, News/Politics
We can fund higher education without it being free
For some time now, I have been concerned with how tertiary education is funded in South Africa and called for the matter to be reviewed with urgency on numerous occasions as we were sitting on a ticking time bomb. It seems that bomb may have exploded. Having said that, this isn’t a simple challenge […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Protests herald the emergence of new democratic subjectivities
We are in Valletta, Malta, at a conference at present, and I have just done a presentation on the reasons for the widespread nihilism in the world today. What struck me was the fact that a number of the other delegates who came to me afterwards to talk to me about my presentation expressed their […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, Health, Lifestyle
How to help students succeed at university
By Rakhee Naik and Safiyyah Pahad After 21 years of democracy, people still question whether apartheid is a prominent reason impacting on the current state of education. Whether acknowledged or not, we must consider its impact on predominantly black students in accessing resources and educational opportunities. This is exacerbated by their limited social and cultural […]
Posted inEquality
#BladeMustAid: An open letter to the minister of higher education
By Liezille Jacobs Dear Dr Bonginkosi Emmanuel “Blade” Nzimande, What an interesting time to live in South Africa! I am writing this letter slowly because it is very hard for me to fathom that we might have another 1976 on our hands. Do you need a reminder, lest you forgot? On June 16 1976 student […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
Transforming higher education: UCT students’ visions for the future
By Josie Cornell Vicky* had not thought much about her blackness, or what it meant. This changed rapidly upon her arrival at the University of Cape Town (UCT) as a first-year student where, for the first time, Vicky felt black. This “feeling of blackness” for Vicky and for other black students like her, particularly those […]
Posted inEquality, General
Universities need vibrant student affairs officers to drive transformation
Did South African higher education have a hand in our resurgent student voice? Absolutely, student activists would argue, but for its lack of transformation serving as an obstacle rather than an ally in the project of change. Campus debates on change relate not only to transformation but also to how prominent and capable student voices […]