Hans de Wit, new Director of the CIHE at Boston College looks back at 2015 and forward to 2016 in this article by University World News. He argues: "2015 was an intense year for higher education. What were some of the key issues that dominated the higher education agenda? How much are they related to other global developments? And will they continue to drive the agenda in 2016? The following developments, in my view, have been rather dominant over the past twelve months:
- A broad call for lower tuition fees or for tuition-free higher education;
- The increasing number of all kinds of rankings;
- The role given to higher education in the new Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, or rather the lack of one;
- The increase of study abroad credits and degrees;
- And as a supplement to this, the call for other forms of internationalisation, in particular internationalisation of the curriculum, employability and global citizenship;
- And the impact of global instability, terrorism and the refugee crisis on higher education."
We certainly had our share of most of the above in African higher education:
- from the contestation around fees in South Africa, Kenya and elsewhere (#FeesMustFall);
- the development of new 'alliances' and 'groupings' of African 'research' universities announced this year (over and above existing ones like the HERANA Network);
- a (final?) engagement on the continent with MDGs and the debates and BIG policies including the role of HE in African development (e.g. with the AU 2063 Plan; the HE Summit Declaration in Dakar; and related books like Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions, by Cloete et al);
- stalled (?) discussions around internationalising and harmonising the African HE space, including a continent-wide application of the B-M-D model, and the work of the ANIE network on internationalisation;
- related issues around curriculum renewal (and unrelated, the call to a de-colonisation of the curriculum at UCT with the #RhodesMustFall movement);
- and finally, the tragic terrorist attack on the Garissa University College in Kenya in April 2015 which left 148 persons dead and injured many more.
What has 2016 in store? Looking forward to 2016 - University World News
