Review published in South African Journal of Science on "Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education"

The book Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education launched at the 2015 Higher Education Summit in Dakar last week continues to cause waves throughout the HE system.

Now a review of the book has just been published in one of South Africa's most prestigious academic journals, the South African Journal of Science, Vol. 111 No. 9/10 (September/October 2015). The reviewer, Dr Fred Hayward of the University of Massachusetts, argues that "the effort to assess the relationship between higher education and development, economics and democracy in Africa is timely and well-conceived, and provides a wealth of very useful information on higher education in Africa." Hayward provides a chapter by chapter assessment of the book to arrive at the conclusion that "Overall this is an excellent publication, one that most people will want  to read. It shows why the knowledge production functions were not developed historically in sub-Saharan Africa, and lays out what needs  to be done to get them moving, with data based on evidence. It presents especially rich and very relevant material which I have found extremely useful, as will others. [...]  The study breaks new ground, is a major contribution to our understanding of higher education in sub-Saharan Africa and will significantly reward the reader’s attention."

Of course, given that this is my blog, I can brag here as much as I like (lol). But it is amazing - he is particularly complimentary about my chapter, which also credits the work of my research assistants and colleagues. In particular he argues: "The two student surveys carried out at Makerere University and the University of Cape Town are very interesting and useful. For reasons that are clearly described, the surveys at the two institutions turned out to be less comparative than hoped. Nonetheless, the results are fascinating. The research and write-up here are excellent, upholding high standards of research and resisting the temptation to treat the data as more than it is. They conclude that: ‘Key aspects of student experience have profound impacts on raising levels of citizen competence’ (p.256). They then explore how universities develop citizen competencies though student experiences. This work is very suggestive of the potential of universities in nation-building and a demonstration of what can be done. But to do  this, the universities need adequate funding, equipment, and well-trained and committed faculty to take full advantage of what can be done. This chapter alone makes the book worth reading; it reflects excellent work. The work of HERANA on how key aspects of student experience have an impact on citizenship competence, civic education and democratisation is among the best parts of this study."

Wow. Thanks Dr Hayward!

Do your Masters / PhD degree for free at University of the Free State in 2016

Funding available for Research Master’s and Doctoral studies in 2016 

The University of the Free State (UFS) in Bloemfontein, South Africa, has announced the availability of tuition bursaries for full-time and part-time studies in 2016. All research master’s and PhD students who register in 2016, will receive funding to cover their tuition fees. South African and International students are eligible to apply.

The Postgraduate School in the Johannes Brill Building can provide more information about all the scholarships and bursaries available. Contact the postgraduate school. 

The University of the Free State is one of the oldest institutions of higher education in South Africa. As a traditional university, it teaches, conducts research and community engagement across a comprehensive range of disciplines. The UFS has three campuses, of which its founding campus is in the judicial capital of South Africa, Bloemfontein, which is also the capital of the Free State Province and located in the centre of the country. Bloemfontein is about four hours from Johannesburg and Pretoria, six hours from Durban and Port Elizabeth, and ten hours from Cape Town by highway. Its international airport links to all major cities in South Africa and several in Southern Africa. It opened its doors in 1904 on the Bloemfontein Campus. Since then, the institution has grown to more than 31 000 students, spread across seven faculties over three campuses.

In addition to the founding campus, the university has a South Campus in Bloemfontein. This smaller campus provides alternative access to higher education for promising students who have not obtained the required marks in their final school examinations. The Bloemfontein Campus is home to a number of nationally and internationally leading research units, including the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice, the Institute for Groundwater Research; it is home to a number of NRF Research Chairs, NRF rated leading researchers and research teams, across all faculties. 

Our vibrant Qwaqwa Campus in the Eastern Free State (at the border between Free State Province, KwaZulu-Natal Province and the Kingdom of Lesotho) serves a rapidly-growing number of rural students from the immediate area and surrounding provinces. The Qwaqwa Campus is becoming a centre for rural alpine research.

The changes taking place at the university continue to capture the imagination of people everywhere, including the international media, and our growing base of international universities.

Inspiring excellence. Transforming lives. These objectives are the driving forces at the heart of the UFS. Through our Human and Academic Projects, we are a university internationally recognised for human reconciliation and compassion as well as for excellence in academic achievement.

Academic Project

One of the reasons for the broader interest in the UFS is our very public commitment to the highest academic standards. This is at the core of our Academic Project. The UFS is a strong academic institution, marked by distinctiveness in teaching, research, and public scholarship. The Academic Project includes rigorous academic entrance qualifications for first-time students, elevated standards for the professoriate, the transformation of undergraduate curricula, the recruitment of world-class professors, and the identification and promotion of next-generation professors.

Human Project

The UFS remains conscious, however, of its responsibility to turn ideas into action, to make research count in the lives of ordinary people, and to develop a spirit of service through scholarship among our students. Through our Human Project, the UFS seeks to connect the teaching and research of the university to the improvement of human lives. Our scholarship of service, through a myriad projects and initiatives, makes the vital connections between campus and communities through the production and dissemination of knowledge. In these pursuits, the university makes human reconciliation one of the foundations of its mission.

UFS at a glance

•    111 years old

•    over 31 000 students

•    over 4 000 faculty and support staff

•    3 campuses

•    50 satellite campuses

•    7 faculties

•    over 100 departments

Read a detailed list of facts and figures.

So fare student organisations at SA universities

Rapport (South African Sunday newspaper in Afrikaans) of 13 September 2015 shows the way South African student organisations have done in recent Student Representative Council elections.

The argument: Student organisations aligned to opposition parties are wrestling control of SRCs from the ANC-aligned alliance of ANC Youth League, Young Communist League and South African Students Congress. In my days of SRC Vice-President at the University of Cape Town, I was actually a representative of SASCO on the SRC.

It has been my pleasure to act as 'political analyst' for the Rapport and it is a new experience to see my words quoted in Afrikaans. They did not print my comments that the ANC-aligned organisations are clearly still dominating and that one should not make too much of the EFF victory at Vaal University of Technology and the University of Limpopo (which is the home ground of the infamous EFF leader, Julius Malema), and DASO's victories at Fort Hare University, at UCT and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University; what they rather printed were my comments that it is a significant development that SASCO et al lost these campuses, especially Fort Hare, and the more general comment, which goes back to research into student politics of the 1960s/70s, that student politics is a "micro-cosmos" of "big politics".

The Rapport article can be accessed here.

And this is what was printed of my comments:

"Volgens Thierry Luescher, assistent-direkteur vir institusio­nele navorsing by die Universiteit van die Vrystaat, is studente – veral dié uit die middelklas – toenemend op soek na alternatiewe tot die ANC. “Swart kiesers se aanvaarding van Daso is ’n belangrike wending. Vyf jaar gelede sou dit nie gebeur het nie. Dit is waarskynlik deel van die Lindiwe- en Maimane-effek.”

Gebeure op universiteitskampusse is ’n mikrokosmos van nasionale politiek, sê Luescher. “Studentepolitiek sê vir jou ’n paar maande voor die tyd wat in ‘groot politiek’ gaan gebeur. Die jeugstem is ’n groot stem, dit móét ernstig opgeneem word.”

Sowat 5,8 miljoen kiesers op die kiesersrol is 29 jaar en jonger, en sowat 310 000 is 18 of 19 jaar oud. "

Dr Lis Lange writes the epilogue for the new book "Student Politics in Africa: Representation and Activism"

Dr Lis Lange, Vice-Rector: Academic at the University of the Free State in South Africa is writing the epilogue for the forthcoming book Student Politics in Africa: Representation and Activism edited by  Thierry M. Luescher, Manja Klemenčič and James Otieno Jowi. 

Lange has decided to provide a reading of the manuscript from an intriguing "double perspective": that of a university manager and a progressive researcher on higher education. Her career in both respects promises a thought-provoking reading: Before joining the UFS, Lange was the Executive Director of the Higher Education Quality Committee of South Africa. As researcher, she has undertaken research on the philosophy and politics of education, on change in higher education and the meanings and possibilities of the notion of transformation, especially at curricular level. Her current work explores the vitality of Hannah Arendt’s thinking to understand higher education.

Here is a snippet from her epilogue, commenting on the relationship between the massification of higher education and changes in university governance:

"For all the democratisation heralded by mass higher education, it is not clear that a non-elite student population was followed by a more democratic or inclusive governance practice at the university. Actually, as observed in some of the chapters of this book, mass higher education seems to have introduced more a notion of consumer demands than a sense of political participation in the life of the university. From the point of view of a higher education manager keeping this trend at bay among managers, pragmatic academics, and the very same students is very difficult especially in places where the potential earning capacity of the prospective student constitutes the repayment for a family social investment." 

She concludes by recommending: "This book goes a good distance in bringing together the voices and experiences of students across very different universities on the African continent. [...] [It] provides important experiences, voices and suggestive theoretical ideas [...]."

The book is planned to be published in the course of October 2015. Its sister publication, the special issue on "Student Power in Africa" of the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, will be published in September 2015.

Luescher, T.M., Klemenčič, M, and Jowi, O.J. (Eds.) (forthcoming 2015). Student Politics in Africa: Representation and Activism. Cape Town and Maputo: African Minds.

Former white universities in a race against time - University World News

Former white universities in a race against time - University World News

Rethinking students: ideas and new research approaches

I am delighted to say that I will be attending the 6th International Conference on “Rethinking students: ideas and new research approaches" to be held in October at the National Research University - Higher School of Economics in Moscow.



I will present the paper "Methodological reflections on challenges of conducting student surveys in universities in developing countries". The paper deals with the manifold challenges that I encountered as principal investigator / research leader for the HERANA student surveys I conducted with colleagues from Botswana, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda, between 2010-2014, at the premier universities in these countries.



I am the more looking forward to the conference as my dear colleague Manja Klemencic is one of the keynote speakers and the conference is hosted by the Centre for Institutional Studies of NRU-HSE which is the 'home base' of Igor Chirikov, who is now at UC Berkeley working on SERU-International at the CSHE there.

South African universities and community based research partnerships

Fresh off the press: Community University Research Partnerships in South Africa; a new book published by the UNESCO Chair in Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education.

My chapter with Judy Favish and Sonwabo Ngcelwane from UCT is out. It was a wonderful study conducted at UCT and Rhodes University from September - November 2014.

Loads of fun - and a most informative chapter for this great publication is the result.

And guess what: it is Open Access here.

Get rankings right for Africa, university leaders urge - University World News

Get rankings right for Africa, university leaders urge - University World News

“Like everybody else I agree that rankings are here to stay. But it’s very important to our African community of universities that we don’t simply respond to what exists – that we use this opportunity to persuade the world about the bigger picture that faces us as a global community.”

Finally published: Complete Research Report on "The Impact of Student Engagement on Citizenship Competences"

This report is based on original research conducted in 2013/2014 at Makerere University, Uganda, and the University of Cape Town, South Africa, as part of the HERANA studies.

The report provides a first and path-breaking analysis of the extent to which various forms of student engagement (e.g. academic engagement incl. active and collaborative learning, time on task etc., discursive engagement, political engagement e.g. in co-curricular programmes and the institutional culture of a university) contribute / or not / to the development of high-level citizenship competences such as critical thinking skills, civic skills, leadership skills, diversity and social skills etc.

Dr Igor Chirikov of UC Berkeley had this to say about the report:

"The study of student engagement has become mainstream in higher education research. In the last two decades there has been a sharp increase in the number of student surveys inspired by the idea that the more students are engaged in learning activities and participate in ‘effective’ or ‘high-impact’ educational practices, the greater their learning gains. But despite growing empirical evidence that there is a positive correlation between the level of student engagement and learning outcomes, we still know very little about wider implications of having more engaged students on campus. Are these students more successful in their careers? Do they make better citizens?

This report explores the latter question in a thorough and convincing manner. Drawing on the data on student experience collected in two African universities, University of Cape Town (South Africa) and Makerere University (Uganda), the project seeks to investigate a complex set of relations between student engagement and democratic citizenship. It is one of the fi rst empirically-driven attempts to approach such complicated question and to identify what universities realistically could do to develop values of democracy and citizenship among their students.

The relevancy goes far beyond African continent to many developing countries that struggle with civic engagement and establishing truly democratic governance system." (Dr Igor Chirikov, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Education, HSE-Moscow and SERU-I Managing Director, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley). 

Of course, it is OPEN ACCESS. Get the research report "The Impact of Student Engagement on Citizenship Competences" here.

Get the chapter "Student Engagement and Citizenship Competences in African Universities" in the 2015 book Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education (by Nico Cloete, Peter Maassen and Tracy Bailey). here.

Follow me on Academia.edu

Proudly Kovsies / UFS made it into the top 20 of the new THES African University rankings

1. University of Cape Town (South Africa) 

2. University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

3. Makerere University (Uganda)

4. University of Stellenbosch (South Africa)  

5. University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa)

6. University of Port Harcourt (Nigeria)

7. University of the Western Cape (South  Africa)

8. University of Nairobi (Kenya)

9. University of Johannesburg (South  Africa)

10. Universite Cadi Ayyad (Morocco)

11. University of Pretoria (South Africa)

12. University of Ghana (Ghana)

13. University of South Africa (South Africa)

14. Suez Canal University (Egypt)

15. Universite Hassan II (Morocco)

16. Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia)

17. Rhodes University (South Africa)

18. University of The Free State (South Africa)

19. North West University (South Africa)

20. University of Tunis (Tunisia)

21. Ecole Nationale d'Ingenieurs de Sfax  (Tunisia)

22. Universite Mohammed V - Agdal (Morocco)

23. American University in Cairo (Egypt)

24. Nelson Mandela Metropolitan  University (South Africa)

25. South Valley University (Egypt)

26. Alexandria University (Egypt)

27. Assiut University (Egypt)

28. University of Sfax (Tunisia)

29. University of Yaounde (Cameroon)

30. Minia University 

Source: Times Higher Education

List of Bursaries in SA higher education

Now this is a useful site.

http://bursaries-southafrica.co.za/list-of-all-bursaries-in-south-africa/

Emeritus Professor Martin West of UCT has passed on

Emeritus Professor Martin West passed away this morning, 8 July 2015, (according to UCT News). May he rest in peace and may his beloved ones be consoled.

I got to know Martin as a respectable "opponent" DVC Student Affairs - always trying to 'outwit', 'outplay', 'outlast' SRC members - that was while I was as a SASCO member in the SRC of the University of Cape Town. Slogans like "West, look East!" and so on in student politics at UCT in the 1990s were common, indicating his liberal leanings which were typically seen by us comrades as too conservative and not supportive enough of a radical transformation agenda. He was seen as a staunch defender of the institution - UCT First! -  and thus highly critical of anything that came from "pretoria"; and he was always sure of being able to employ and invoke institutional processes to get his way; call on established values; insist on treasured traditions and rituals. He was, what in political science we would call an 'institutionaliser'; and that is perhaps why he never gained much of a national profile (nor seems to have been interested in that).

When in 2005 I started a PhD I learnt to respect Martin as an academic manager and Vice-Principal with all the complexities that this job entailed. He had the VC's back as far as the institution was concerned; perhaps a bit too much. For my thesis work, he was certainly supportive of my strange 'ethnography of UCT politics'; he was ready to share his wealth of knowledge (even if much of it was put into different light and perspective by documents in the adminstrative archives and interviews with others). He was certainly interested in the study I was doing: doctoral research into governance and student representation at UCT; he was after all a main player. Of course, we did not agree on a number of matters, but his critique was always fair even if he was captive to his institutional and personal location as a powerful 'UCT institutional apparatchik'.

His legacy is perhaps tainted by the rumor of his role in the second and third Mafeje affairs - those of the 1990s and 2000s. It would be Martin's most controversial doing  - and perhaps a conflation of his role as one of the most powerful UCT manager-academics of the 1990s and 2000s and his investment in Anthropology and the Centre for African Studies, if it is true. Martin had become a professor of Anthropology at UCT at the tender age of 30; the youngest ever at the time. He had studied Anthropology in the Department of Monica Wilson in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and may have known Archie Mafeje personally; he certainly knew of him... Perhaps there was some rivalry between Monica's two star students - even if Martin was several years Archie's junior?

It can be assumed that there was certainly no love lost by the 1990s when, according to research conducted for the Mafeje 1969 commemoration by a UCT academic, West is rumored to have been instrumental in denying Mafeje a dignified return to UCT in the mid-1990s, Remember: Mafeje is the black SA academic who, in 1969, was offered a post at UCT in Athropology (he had done is UG at UCT and his PG at Cambridge), and then under pressure from the apartheid government, this offer was withdrawn. This had led to the 9 day sit-in at UCT (in Bremner) which was the longest such protest at UCT until the recent 'Rhodes Must Fall' protests and sit-in (again at Bremner, including in the now renamed: Mafeje Room / i.e. Senate meeting room). When in the early 1990s the celebrated Prof Archibald Mafeje was supposed to return to SA from his exile and take up the Professorship and Chair in African Studies, Martin West, supposedly as chair of the Selection Committee, intervened in the last minute and Mafeje - the favorite and most qualified candidate  - was denied the opportunity (and never returned to an academic career in SA)ö the chair was not filled only until later when Prof Mamdani briefly joined UCT, and crossing swords with West. This is one  of the rumors that haunt Martin's legacy. If it is true, the question remains whether 1) the allegations that were leveled against Mafeje in the early 1990s were true and if so, 2) whether not offering him the professorship on this grounds was simply one of the various miscalculated, short-sighted "UCT First" policies or whether there was a personal element to it.

Anyway, truth be told, I assume it will all soon be clearer, hopefully. Until then, let rumor be rumor;  and in any case, let us be thankful for having known Martin - even if it was only in a very partial way - and for all the good he has done.

When I took this picture with him at my UCT PhD graduation in 2009, Martin was extremely happy. I will forever be grateful for his support during my studies.
  

Student engagement in Europe: society, higher education and student governance

Book summary: Democratic institutions and laws are essential, but they cannot bring about democracy on their own. They will only function if they build on a culture of democracy, and our societies will not be able to develop and sustain such a culture unless education plays an essential role. Student engagement is crucial: democracy cannot be taught unless it is practised within institutions, among students and in relations between higher education and society in general.

This 20th volume of the Council of Europe Higher Education Series demonstrates the importance of student engagement for the development and maintenance of the democratic culture that enables democratic institutions and laws to function in practice. This volume covers three aspects of student engagement that are seldom explored: its role in society through political participation and civic involvement; its place in higher education policy processes and policy-making structures; and how student unions represent the most institutionalised form of student engagement. The authors are accomplished scholars, policy makers, students and student leaders.

Manja Klemenčič, Sjur Bergan and Rok Primožič (editors)

ISBN 978-92-871-7971-5
Type of document : Book
Format : Paper
Size : 16 x 24 cm
Language : English
Number of pages : 396

See book publisher for alters and copies: Council of Europe.

Contents

PREFACE

A WORD FROM THE EDITORS
Manja Klemenčič, Sjur Bergan and Rok Primožič

INTRODUCTION – WHAT IS STUDENT AGENCY? AN ONTOLOGICAL EXPLORATION IN THE CONTEXT OF RESEARCH ON STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
Manja Klemenčič

PART I – STUDENTS’ ROLE IN SOCIETY
          Chapter 1 – Theorising student activism in and beyond the 20th century: the contribution of Philip G. Altbach
          Thierry M. Luescher‑Mamashela
          Chapter 2 – “I am tired of reading history. Now I want to make it!” The rise and fall of the university campus as a space for social rebellion
          Rómulo Pinheiro and Dominik Antonowicz
          Chapter 3 – Student activism in times of individualisation: the case of Slovenia
          Mirjana Ule
          Chapter 4 – “A truly transformative experience”: the biographical legacy of student protest participation
          Bojana Ćulum and Karin Doolan
          Chapter 5 – Parliaments or streets?
          Milica Popović
          Chapter 6 – Student union resistance to tuition fees in Finland
          Leasa Weimer
          Chapter 7 – The role and capacity of youth organisations and student engagement: a comparative study of Serbia, Croatia and “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”
          Martin Galevski
          Chapter 8 – A challenge for student engagement: the decline of the “normal” student
          Dominic Orr, Froukje Wartenbergh‑Cras and Christine Scholz
          Chapter 9 – Student engagement: the social dimension and role of quality assurance
          David Crosier

PART II – STUDENT INFLUENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION
          Chapter 10 – Changing the shape and outcomes of student engagement
          Paul Trowler
          Chapter 11 – Towards student engagement as an organisational task? Some recent examples from Germany
          Marion Gut
          Chapter 12 – Student engagement: providing services or forging partnerships?
          Vicki Trowler
          Chapter 13 – Politics as process: Salford’s charter of student rights
          Martin Hall and Andrew Snowden
          Chapter 14 – Innovative forms of student engagement: how virtual co‑operative communities counterbalance the exclusion of students from active learning and governance
          Petr Pabian
          Chapter 15 – The evolution of public discourse on higher education financing in Europe: students’ unions and European processes
          George‑Konstantinos Charonis and Robert Santa
          Chapter 16 – ESU Student Experts’ Pool on Quality Assurance: a mechanism for involving students in quality assurance in Europe
          Asnate Kažoka

PART III – STUDENT GOVERNANCE
          Chapter 17 – We are one, but we’re not the same: explaining the emergence of hybrid national student unions
          Jens Jungblut and Regina Weber
          Chapter 18 – Student engagement in higher education policy making: a view from the Polish representative in the Bologna Follow‑Up Group
          Bartłomiej Banaszak
          Chapter 19 – Students’ rights: shaping the student movement at national and European level
          Gabriela Bergan
          Chapter 20 – The policy influence strategy of student representatives: a comparative, case‑based survey in Flemish University Colleges (Belgium)
          Michiel Horsten
          Chapter 21 – Belonging, social capital and representation: first‑generation students’ voices in Portuguese higher education
          Ana Sofia Ribeiro
          Chapter 22 – The quality of representation of international students in higher education governance: a case study of the German Federal State of Schleswig‑Holstein and its higher education institutions
          Laura Asarite and Sophie Wulk
          Chapter 23 – Student unions and British popular music culture
          Paul Long

CONCLUSION – DEMOCRATIC CULTURE, EDUCATION AND STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
Sjur Bergan

INDEX
NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS
PUBLICATIONS IN THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE HIGHER EDUCATION SERIES