The occasion of giving an address to the student affairs practitioners at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), Pretoria, a few weeks ago, provided an opportunity to think through the question of how to better understand the student experience and its impact on student political culture. Particularly TUT has been affected by a great deal of student activism, and notwithstanding students' legitimate demands, one dimension is how student affairs can create the conditions and provide the kinds of services (including advocacy services, counselling services, transition into and through university like orientation programmes etc.) to better support students and improve the student experience. This then also sparked the question, what the bigger issues are: the student life cycle not only from a student affairs and services perspective, but also from an institutional policy, national policy perspective, and in relation to academic life, social life, and so on of students. A first cut of my thinking, which really started to take shape ahead of and during the TUT conference, has been reworked and published in this short and catchy
HSRC Review article.
