Architects and those working on the built environment can learn valuable lessons about their discipline – how it’s taught, and how it’s carried out – from the 2015 student protests.
The students’ movement has stretched South Africans in personal, professional, powerful and provocative ways. Have academics been stretched enough to reflect deeply on the status quo at universities?
It’s time to change how student representatives are elected at South Africa’s universities. The existing process gives far too much space and power to political parties.
Many universities in East and West Africa lost their autonomy during the 1980s and 1990s and became handmaidens of the state. What insights can their experiences offer for South Africa?
Universities were widely criticised for turning to the courts during a series of student protests in South Africa. So why did they do it, and did the interdict process work?
In 1988 students from the University of Zimbabwe began demonstrating against government corruption. Their protests grew into a national movement that indelibly changed the country.
University students in South Africa have shown the potential of mass mobilisation to influence policy in advancing justice for their constitutional democratic rights.
For many students, stress about money is a terrible and unwelcome distraction from their degrees – qualifications they hope can lift themselves and their families out of poverty.
It has been an exciting month for Africa, not least for the highly controversial elections in Tanzania, where the annulment of the entire vote in Zanzibar has played an important role in extending the…
When funding imperatives dominate universities’ strategies, higher education loses sight of the work it ought to be doing: developing graduates who can make a real difference in the world.
Student protests in South Africa, as well as an unrelated clash between lawyers, have offered a chance for the country to hear voices that are usually marginalised.
South Africa’s higher education sector is dramatically underfunded. Polite conversations between vice-chancellors and the government have failed. It’s time the voices of student activists was heard.
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