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.
