Saturday 29 July 2017

Re-Thinking Student Politics through the Lens of Student Life Cycle Models?

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

Monday 24 July 2017

Student Affairs Voices from Around the Globe

The Journal of Student Affairs in Africa (JSAA) has become an amazing success. Vol 5 Issue 1 has just been published and includes contributions from as far off as the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand, PR China, Canada, the USA, as well as from the African continent itself: Ethiopia, Botswana and South Africa.

This is a special issue. JSAA has been seeking to provide an opportunity for Student Affairs professionals and higher education scholars from around the globe to share their research and experiences of student services and student affairs programmes from their respective regional and institutional contexts. This has been given a specific platform with the guest-edited issue “Voices from Around the Globe” which is the result of a collaboration with the International Association of Student Affairs and Services (IASAS), and particularly with the guest editors, Kathleen Callahan and Chinedu Mba.

Available free online at Stellenbosch University.



Saturday 8 July 2017

I like the bookshelf rule! 10 rules of writing and some more

Here then are the 10 rules of Prof Amitava Kumar (full details at the bottom)

1. Write every day. This is a cliché, of course, but you will write more when you tell yourself that no day must pass without writing. At the back of a notebook I use in my writing class, I write down the date and then make a mark next to it after the day’s work is done. I show the page to my students often, partly to motivate them, and  partly to remind myself that I can’t let my students down.

2. Have a modest goal. Aim to write 150 words each day. It is very difficult for me to find time on some days, and it is only this low demand that really makes it even possible to sit down and write. On better days, this goal is just a start; often, I end up writing more.

3. Try to write at the same time each day. I recently read a Toni Morrison interview in which she said: “I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are at their best, creatively.” It works best for me if I write at the same time each day—in my case, that hour or two that I get between the time I drop off my kids at school and go in to teach. I have my breakfast and walk up to my study with my coffee. In a wonderful little piece published on The New Yorker blog “Page-Turner”, writer Roxana Robinson writes how she drinks coffee quickly and sits down to write—no fooling around reading the paper, or checking the news, or making calls to friends, or trying to find out if the plumber is coming. “One call and I’m done for. Entering into the daily world, where everything is complicated and requires decisions and conversation, means the end of everything. It means not getting to write.” I read Robinson’s piece in January 2013, and alas, I have thought of it nearly every day since.

4. Turn off the Internet. The Web is a great resource and entirely unavoidable, but it will help you focus when you buy the Freedom app. Using a device like this not only rescues me from easy distraction, it also works as a timer. When you click on the icon, it asks you to choose the duration for which you want the computer to not have access to the Net. I choose 60 minutes and this also helps me keep count of how long I have sat at my computer.

5. Walk for ten minutes. Or better yet, go running. If you do not exercise regularly, you will not write regularly—or not for long. I haven’t been good at doing this and have paid a price with trouble in my back. I have encouraged my students to go walking too, and have sometimes thought that when I have to hold lengthy consultations with my writing class, I should go for walks with them on our beautiful campus.

6. A bookshelf of your own. Choose one book, or five, but no more than ten, to guide you, not with research necessarily, but with the critical matter of method or style. Another way to think about this is to ask yourself who are the writers, or scholars, or artists, that you are in conversation with. I use this question to help arrive at my own subject matter, but it also helps with voice.

7. Get rid of it if it sounds like grant talk. I don’t know about you, but I routinely produce dead prose when I’m applying for a grant. The language used in applications must be abhorred: stilted language, jargon, etc. I’m sure there is a psychological or sociological paper to be written about the syntax and tone common in such things—the appeal to power, lack of freedom—but in my case it might just be because, with the arrival of an application deadline, millions of my brain cells get busy committing mass suicide.

8. Learn to say no. This applies equally to the friendly editor who asks for a review or an essay, even to the friend who is editing an anthology. Say no if it takes you away from the writing you want to do. My children are small and don’t take no for an answer, but everyone who is older is pretty understanding. And if they’re understanding, they’ll know that for you occasional drinks or dinner together are more acceptable distractions.

9. Finish one thing before taking up another. Keep a notebook handy to jot down ideas for any future book, but complete the one you are working on first. This rule has been useful to me. I followed it after seeing it on top of the list of Henry Miller’s “Commandments”. It has been more difficult to follow another of Miller’s rules: “Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.”

10. The above rule needs to be repeated. I have done shocking little work when I have tried to write two books at once. Half-finished projects seek company of their own and are bad for morale. Shut-off the inner editor and complete the task at hand.

http://indianquarterly.com/10-rules-of-writing/

Friday 7 July 2017

African Research Universities need tech-savvy, ICT-enhanced African University Presses: The Report



Scholarly presses in general, and university presses (UPs) in particular, are in trouble. The old 'commercialised' model of scholarly book publishing is not really working anymore: open access has eaten into the revenue from scholarly book sales, and more and more UPs have had to adjust their production processes, gone digital, buy into the latest technologies to be able to produce e-books, enhance their visibility and marketing strategies by including social media, and drastically reduce print-runs. The cost of producing a top-notch scholarly book is high; while returns are low. New technologies such as print-on-demand (POD) as close as possible to the point of sale to minimise printing, warehousing and distribution costs are a must. Some large UPs have been able to make the transition; others have ceased to produce or become but an imprint of a larger publishing house.

Two contrary developments can be observed internationally: On the one hand, there are perceptions in academia of ‘robber capitalism’ on the part of the large commercial publishers as they protect their oligopoly in the face of dissolving spatial barriers and diminishing value add. On the other hand, we are witnessing a contrary trend: the emergence of the knowledge commons. However, this emergence takes place in an institutional context long dominated by an editorial logic and, in more recent times, by the logic of the market.

In the midst of these are African university presses (AUPs) - some over half a century old, others started in the last decade - who have an important mission and unique contribution to make to the African knowledge base. How are AUPs faring under the changed 'market' conditions and contradictory developments of 'robber capitalism' and hyper-marketisation on the one hand, and the emergence of 'social capitalism' and open access knowledge sharing on the other hand? What do they make of the challenges and opportunities presented in the scholarly publishing realm within their contexts? Are they deploying the technological changes in production, distribution and marketing made possible by digitisation and network effects of the internet? Are they surviving, dying or thriving?

A holistic way of approaching the question of how African university presses can reposition themselves in support of the broader shift of some African universities towards a greater focus on research, is to consider shifts in the dominant institutional logic in the academic publishing industry. Based on a baseline survey of university presses in Africa, in-depth case studies of selected university presses, and an analysis of the publishing choices made by African academics, this research project examined the opportunities and constraints faced by university presses in Africa. It provides an overview of the African university press landscape and shows that there is a small, active group of university presses. University presses in Africa are not yet making use of technological advances to reconfigure their production, distribution and marketing processes, nor are they experimenting with new publishing models such as open access. While case studies of selected university presses surfaced unsurprising challenges (such as scarce resources and limited capacity), they also show that university presses in Africa are constrained by institutional logics that are holding them back from experimenting with new ways of doing things. The research also reveals that an alarmingly high number of academic authors at one flagship research university in Africa are choosing to publish monographs with predatory publishers. The report concludes with a set of pragmatic recommendations; recommendations that are simultaneously attuned to the opportunities and to the realities of African university presses as revealed by the research conducted.

The African University Press Report is available for free download here.

Monday 19 June 2017

Fresh off the Press: "Student Leaders and Political Parties at Makerere University in Uganda"



A fascinating story: the relationship between student leaders and political parties at Makerere University in Uganda.

From a South African perspective, it is perhaps an indication what may come, if competition between ANC, DA and EFF etc. or their respective student organisations on campus, such as the Progressive Youth Alliance (ANC YL, SASCO, YCL), the EFF-SB and DASO are starting to take this competition over SRCs a step further and monetise the electoral processes at universities the way it has happened at Makerere University.

The new article published in SAJHE 31(3), 2017, "Student Representation and the Relationship between Student Leaders and Political Parties: The Case of Makerere University" shows that the relationship is not all bad; indeed it is important for the renewal of political parties. The article concludes by recommending electoral rules for student elections that ensure that some of the excesses that Mugume and I observed at MAK can be contained. Enjoy open access :)

Wednesday 7 June 2017

Conference call: The Contentious Politics of Higher Education. Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism


I feel very honoured to be giving a keynote at the 2017 conference of the Centre on Social Movement Studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy, later this year. Another keynote will be given by my dear friend, Manja Klemenčič, with whom I had the pleasure of working together on the project "Student Politics in Africa" from which we published the book Student Politics in Africa: Representation and Activism in 2016. Please, make sure you are there - the conference does not charge fees but you'll have to get there! Abstracts are due on 15 July 2017 (see call for papers below).

Call for Papers

COSMOS CONFERENCE
The Contentious Politics of Higher Education: 
Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism

15-16 November Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS), Florence

Conveners:
Prof. Donatella della Porta (SNS); Dr. Lorenzo Cini (SNS); Dr. Cesar Guzman-Concha (SNS)

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Thierry M. Luescher (Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa)
Manja Klemenčič (Harvard University, United States)

Abstract:
University students have traditionally engaged in contentious collective action. New generations of political leaders have emerged out of the student movement, often associated to broader hopes of renewal and regeneration. The events of 1968 show students as a key actor committed to a varied program of progressive change which included issues such as the fight against bureaucratism, oppression, and imperialism. The most common depiction of students doing radical politics stems from the images of rallies and clashes with the police in the streets of Paris or Los Angeles. To be sure, education has been traditionally a contentious issue. The right to attend educational programs was one of the core demands of worker movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries all over the world. The origins of the welfare state are closely related to the granting of primary education and the idea of minimum levels of compulsory instruction. Education systems have been one of the components of the welfare state, although scholars have paid far more attention to other aspects such as health and pension systems. In historical perspective, the granting of access to higher education to the lower classes was the culmination of the extension of demands that consolidate the access to education (and state provision of it) as social right.

Student activism has been sometimes related to the emergence of new middle classes and the expansion of the public sector but also as expressions of demands of emerging sectors so far excluded from the political system. Over the course of the twentieth century, and in successive waves which combine contentious and non-contentious mechanisms and their participation in broader struggles along with other actors such as labour unions, women and peace movements, and left parties, student political activism has resulted in democratization (either restoration or further consolidation), the expansion of the welfare state, and overall in the creation of more opened and inclusive societies. Several recent episodes of massive student protests in countries in Europe, Latin America and Africa, have triggered questions over the main characteristics of a new wave of campus activism taking place across the world. For sure, these protests address the neoliberal transformations of the system of higher education, enacted by governments of all political leanings, promoting the outsourcing of personnel, the managerialization of governing bodies, the introduction of tuition fees as well as cuts to public funding. The outburst of the economic crisis in 2008 has represented a decisive watershed in this process of marketization: as many governments across the world have adopted the neoliberal and pro-austerity agenda as a way out of the crisis. These measures accelerated the implementation of neoliberal reforms in countries where they previously did not exist. Although differences between countries continue to be pronounced, national higher education systems are becoming more alike in the sense of being more market-oriented, even in countries with a strong state intervention tradition. Such transformations were not only aimed at meeting effective and well-structured policy designs, but they were also triggered by the logic of vested interests, power relations, and social conflicts. This is where our research interest comes in with our focus on the contentious politics of higher education. Over the past ten years, students of all around the world have indeed contested these policies and their implementation with different degrees of success.

Submission Details:
The Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS: http://cosmos.sns.it/), directed by Professor della Porta, calls for papers addressing the recent global wave of student protests for a two-days conference at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS) of Florence to be held on 15-16 November 2017. We look for research contributions, both from junior and senior academics (especially sociologists and political scientists), who have worked on this topic over the last years. We are especially interested in contributions that link protests to policy transformations within the broad arena of higher education. Abstracts should be 300-400 words and suitable for a 15-20 minute presentation. Please send your abstract and contact details to Lorenzo Cini (Lorenzo.Cini@sns.it) or Cesar Guzman-Concha (cesarguz@gmail.com) by the deadline of July 15th. Decisions on abstracts will be made by July 30th. The conference is organised under the auspices of the Centre On Social Movement Studies (COSMOS) at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, SNS. Unfortunately, we are not able to cover travelling costs, but we will offer coffee breaks and light lunches. No conference fees are demanded.

During the conference, we will also present the findings of our two-years research project, entitled “The Contentious Politics of Higher Education. An International Comparison of Student Movements”, whose aim was to compare and assess the political and policy outcomes of the recent student protests occurred in Chile, Quebec, England, and Italy.

Contacts:
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact either Lorenzo Cini (lorenzo.cini@sns.it) or Cesar Guzman-Concha (cesarguz@gmail.com).

Saturday 20 May 2017

Teaching and Learning Principles for Decolonised Social Sciences in Africa

I came across this article in The Conversation Africa Edition, which is a semi-academic news/short feature online publication well worth reading.

The article talks about the efforts in a new university in Mauritius to design a decolonised approach to teaching and learning social sciences. It's different: in the South African context since the #RhodesMustFall student activists made the notion of a decolonised curriculum popular every other wannabe intellectual manager-academic appropriates the idea, and university third stream research funding offices have their feeding frenzy on new money from the grant making world throwing good money after a good idea at the wrong people and approaches. Oh don't you worry, there will be many more books (of the ilk of #FeesMustFall produced by Booysen et al). But​ please, keep your hopes down that any of these "research projects and book outputs" result in anything like a curriculum (or fee structure) that is any more transformed/decolonised than pre-2015.

Well, what do the Mauritians say that is so different from the SA story? For one, they are actually seeming to apply their minds quite thoroughly, and in a forward looking way. Not playing the blame game, but creatively seeking out solutions.. The article is not detailed, but there are more than some good hints. In South Africa, the discourse on decolonization (and in that it is similar to the transformation discourse of the post-2000 era) is held within a racialised frame of understanding the world - keyword: whiteness. That's appropriate to a point, but SA is now so "post-rainbow" that the whiteness discourse, along with related ones in other even more politicised spaces and with respect to topics, such as land redistribution, unemployment,  inequality, poverty and  wealth, is actually feeling racist (and here i refer to the expanded definition of racism, not that which claims Africans can't be racist...).

In contrast, the article about social science education at the new African Leadership University takes a different, surprising approach, basing their 'decolonised' social sciences curriculum in 7 principles that thoroughly affirm diversity in so many ways, along with social justice components that are essential for a decolonised African university curriculum. Keywords: open access, reciprocity, multilingualism, internationalism, knowledge production rather than consumption, student-centred, orality along with literacy, literature along with other artefacts of African social reality, and so forth...

Read it here:  https://theconversation.com/what-a-new-university-in-africa-is-doing-to-decolonise-social-sciences-77181

And here is an article about the launch of the University in 2016:
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20160331161118251

Friday 5 May 2017

Human Sciences Research Council - One month on


It is quite fascinating to work at a new place; and while I have not yet had my 100 days of settling in, there are some observations which I can make, comparing this to my earlier institutional homes.

Now about that, Burton Clark has remarked over 30 years ago, that an interesting aspect of the academic profession is that academics are more tied to their disciplines, subjects or fields than their institutions. It is quite easy for a professor in, let's say, chemical engineering education to move from the University of Cape Town to Virginia Tech in the USA, but for the same Prof. Jenni Case, it would be almost impossible to move from UCT Chemical Engineering to, let's say, the Department of Archaeology in the same institution. That, however, does not mean that there are no important differences between Engineering Education at UCT and Virgina Tech (and Jenni has already had a glimpse of that).

In the same way, being a political scientist working in the field of higher education studies, it has been relatively easy to move from the national Council on Higher Education (i.e. the statutory advisory and quality assurance body in SA HE), to the Institute for Post-School Studies at the University of the Western Cape, then to the Directorate for Institutional Research at the University of the Free State, and eventually into the HE Unit of Education and Skills Development at the Human Sciences Research Council. In all these cases, my major responsibility has been to conduct higher education policy-relevant research as an engaged scholar. The emphases of course are different: The CHE was focused very strongly on national level, policy-relevant research. At UWC, my research (which was mostly linked to the Centre for Higher Education Transformation/CHET) was mostly 'blue-sky': studies into the contribution of higher education to the development of citizenship competences among students. Conversely, at the UFS, the focus was decidedly institutional: my researchers and I mostly dealt with matters that would ultimately advise rectorate and the university council, like the language policy review, the student affairs quality enhancement review, the review of student governance, the institutional culture studies.

Here at the HSRC, the scope and focus is honed by South African national developmental priorities, variably widened to consider the broader continental and international context, or narrowed to 'drill down' into subsystems and institutions. This does not preclude my involvement in larger projects, of course, especially my passion in publishing projects (such as the UNESCO-IASAS Handbook on Student Affairs and Services, or my work on African University Presses and into Student Politics, including most recently the #MustFall student movement of South Africa).

What is somewhat different here at the HSRC is that researchers are treated as professionals and knowledge producers in a different way than an academic at the universities where I have previously worked. The difference is that your autonomy to research what you want is somewhat conditional upon your ability to generate funds for that; otherwise, there are enough opportunities to do 'consultancy-type' research for, e.g. the Department of Higher Education and Training, or Department of Science and Technology, and so forth, who have diverse data and policy-relevant research needs. It is a more 'managed' (managerialist?) environment, perhaps. We'll see.

I have never had the 'luxury' to research just what I like - even as a student - I have always done a combination of 'bread-and-butter' research and 'love projects'. So far, I have never had the questionable pleasure of a full-time permanent (tenured) professorial appointment of the old-fashioned kind (and given the teaching loads these days, I'm quite happy to be able to pick and choose what I want to teach and who I want to supervise without having to fill that quota!). What I've done, being quite frugal, is to occasionally finance my own sabbatical; and of course, I have been able to crowd out time during my normal work hours and after-hours, to pursue passion projects. That's the good thing when your job is also your passion and hobby. Anyhow, one month on, and I am getting to know the HSRC and its peoples, structures, functioning. Soon, I will have more to say about the way forward with the new unit on HE that I am leading within the Education & Skills Development programme. I might just get attached here. :)

Wednesday 15 March 2017

OMG - Gotta Present at HSRC ! 💓😓💓

Today I am meeting all (yes... ALL) my new colleagues from the HSRC Education and Skills Development programme for the first time in Durban. And... I gotta present on my past research work. OMG. What am I gonna tell them... google me? wow... mxm... maybe... NOT. How about, I show them some of what I  published, that gives a good idea. And do a wordcloud?


Monday 30 January 2017

African HE expansion - It's now encyclopedic!



....i know... in the age of Wikipedia it really doesn't seem to be that much of a great deal to write an entry for an encyclopedia....

But hey, as much as I am for open access, it is also OK sometimes to contribute to one of those massive reference books that come in handy when you want an authoritative source and yet can't do a literature review all on your own right now. This one is the new Springer  Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions (2017), and I feel super honoured to have been included as one of its authors.

My chapter is called "Higher Education Expansion in Africa and Middle East". And, of course, I think it is a very smart chapter, lol.  If you like a pre-print copy of my article, please feel free to email me. If you find a mistake (God forbid), by all means let me know. 

Thursday 26 January 2017

NRF researcher rating application? Done! 🙊


It might not seem like that much of a big deal, but as a researcher in South Africa working in a public university or the like, it is. The NRF or National Research Foundation has a system for rating researchers which involves a rigorous process of peer review and expert panels. An NRF rating is a mark of the extent to which a researcher is recognised nationally and globally for her or his quality of research. It benchmarks South African researchers against the very best in the world.

The rating process is coordinated by members of academia who are represented in 25 specialist committees, an executive evaluation committee, and an appeals committee. Each researcher's portfolio is evaluated by international peer reviewers. The ratings that are awarded fall within the following categories:

A – Leading international researchers
B – Internationally acclaimed researchers
C – Established researchers
P – Prestigious Awards
Y – Promising young researchers

Wednesday 25 January 2017

South African Higher Education Reviewed: Two Decades of Democracy

Here it is: the full e-book copy of the excellent CHE (2016) book "South African Higher Education Reviewed: Two Decades of Democracy".

This excellent book, which is the product of the work of eight expert CHE Task Teams plus a reference group including luminaries such as Saleem Badat, Ahmed Bawa, Trevor Coombe, Brenda Gourley, Molapo Qhobela, Barney Pityana and Rolf Stumpf, sports an excellent introductory chapter written by Denyse Webbstock as well as well-researched chapters on the developments and current state of HE in SA with respect to:

- Regulation (Yunus Ballim & Ian Scott)
- Governance (Lis Lange & Thierry M Luescher)
- Teaching and Learning (Sioux McKenna)
- Research (Genevieve Simpson & Wieland Gevers)
- Community Engagement (Judy Favish & Genevieve Simpson)
- Academic Staffing (Denyse Webbstock and Chika Sehoole)
- Funding (Charles Simkins, Ian Scott, Rolf Stumpf & Denyse Webbstock).

Have a look! Open Access here.

Saturday 7 January 2017

Student Politics and Protest: International perspectives (2017, Routledge) Edited by Rachel Brooks


The book edited by Rachel Brooks (Surrey) on international perspectives on student politics is finally published - congratulations. It can be viewed here. Manja Klemencic and I wrote the 'Africa chapter' for the book, drawing on the work we did for the book project Student Politics in Africa: Representation and Activism (2016, African Minds - available open access here and in print here). 


About the Book Student Politics and Protest: International perspectives

Student Politics and Protest: International perspectives (Paperback) book coverDespite allegations of political disengagement and apathy on the part of the young, the last ten years have witnessed a considerable degree of political activity by young people – much of it led by students or directed at changes to the higher education system. Such activity has been evident across the globe. Nevertheless, to date, no book has brought together contributions from a wide variety of national contexts to explore such trends in a rigorous manner. Student Politics and Protest: International Perspectives offers a unique contribution to the disciplines of education, sociology, social policy, politics and youth studies. It provides the first book-length analysis of student politics within contemporary higher education comprising contributions from a variety of different countries and addressing questions such as:

What roles do students’ unions play in politics today?
How successful are students in bringing about change?
In what ways are students engaged in politics and protest in contemporary society?
How does such engagement differ by national context?

Student Politics and Protest: International Perspectives explores a number of common themes, including: the focus and nature of student politics and protest; whether students are engaging in fundamentally new forms of political activity; the characteristics of politically engaged students; the extent to which such activity can be considered to be ‘globalised’; and societal responses to political activity on the part of students. Student Politics and Protest: International Perspectives does not seek to develop a coherent argument across all its chapters but, instead, illustrate the variety of empirical foci, theoretical resources and substantive arguments that are being made in relation to student politics and protest.

International in scope, with all chapters dealing with recent developments concerning student politics and protest, this book will be an invaluable guide for Higher Education professionals, masters and postgraduate students in education, sociology, social policy, politics and youth studies.

Bourdieu and the Doctoral Student Experience in Africa

Doctoral candidate, Benedicta Daniel-Oghenetega is up to giving Bourdieu a run for his capital, as she looks at the student experience of African doctoral students at UWC through his conceptual lens of capital, habitus, field and practice.

Daniel-Oghenetega is almost done, and her study shows that there are important points to consider when taking Bourdieu on a journey to South Africa. The.cultural capital of African students, often dismissed in the academic context as 'irrelevant', proves to be a key factor in their resilience to succeed at the highest levels of academic achievement. Bourdian notions of family and its relevance to understanding the transmission of cultural capital to the university students also requires a great deal of rethinking. The French notion of the nuclear family is a great deal different from the extended family networks,  community relations, and age peer groups available, as are the role of siblings (including older cousins and younger uncles) in the transmission of cultural capital and in role-modelling. What are the implications of this for understanding student success, and more specifically for supervison and forms of institutional support?

Wednesday 5 October 2016

#FeesMustFall: An Internet-Age Student Movement in South Africa and the Case of the University of the Free State



Publication CoverFinally online (Yippee):



A somewhat optimistic take on the student political potential of social media use:  #FeesMustFall: An Internet-Age Student Movement in South Africa and the Case of the University of the Free State: (2016). Published online in Politikon: The South African Journal of Political Studies



#FeesMustFall: An Internet-Age Student Movement in South Africa and the Case of the University of the Free State. Politikon. Ahead of Print.

doi: 10.1080/02589346.2016.1238644

University House Tswelopele's LGBTQI in the News

Former residence head student (or 'Prime' as we say at Kovsies), Tshepang Mahlatsi took the initiative to make good on a 'campaign promise' and lead the all male residence in discussion on the not-so-easy matter of how to approach LGBTIQ issues in the testosterone-rich environment of an undergrad male res. Well, it was an extremely encouraging discussion, which took the better of three hours.  The original article by the UFS News is available at:



Thursday 29 September 2016

TEDx UFS highlights

What a great project TEDx UFS is: Here a teaser to the soon to be uploaded video clips of the talks.






Friday 23 September 2016

Free Education Movement: It's about time


Coming from a working class family from Switzerland to Africa, first Ghana on a culture and youth exchange and then South Africa to study, I've always been amazed by the "education ideology" I've encountered across the continent.There is so much importance attached to formal education. I'm not surprised to have seen placards today "free education is the solution for South Africa". And indeed, education is critical for social mobility. Sure, there's entrepreneurship and we need much of that, but even that needs a good educational foundation.I support the free higher education movement not so much because I think that we need free higher education for all - in fact, I think for now we first and foremost need free higher education for the poor, and affordable higher education for all. Because before we can make higher education free,we must make universal early childhood education free, then primary education, and technical, vocational education, and other secondary education, and then finally higher education.What is shocking to me is how much the African education ideology is indeed an ideology in the Marxist sense.... It is presented by ruling parties like the ANC as the universal ticket to a better life for all, and indeed I agree it could be that, but then the actual politics and policy framework is not adjusted appropriately. Please, let public policy specialists do some out of the box thinking and create something new in Africa; not some semi-dictatorial Asian developmental state but an African educational state that makes the African renaissance and African Century a reality with a massive investment in the most important resource of the continent: the beautiful, diverse and rich African people.Akere.

Wednesday 14 September 2016

Candidates for Vice-Chancellor & Rector post at the University of the Free State

It is not a secret anymore: the University of the Free State has announced the shortlist of candidates for the vice-chancellorship of the University. The post was vacated end of last month by Prof. Jonathan Jansen who will be taking up a fellowship at his alma mater, Stanford University in California. The three formidable candidates are all currently deputy vice-chancellors at historically white universities: Prof. Themba Mosia (University of Pretoria), Prof. Francis Petersen (University of Cape Town) and Prof. Lis Lange (University of the Free State).

While all three candidates have a lot going for them, my preference is Prof. Lis Lange for a great number of personal reasons. Not the least because I have had the pleasure of seeing her in action during her time at the head of the Council on Higher Education (CHE) and the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) in South Africa. I was the first researcher/research manager of the CHE - from 2002 - 2008 first full-time and then in part-time capacity while researching my own PhD. I don't think there are many current higher education leaders in SA who have such a thorough understanding of the system and individual institutions, and been part of developing and transforming SA higher education for the better in almost two decades.

I have also worked with her on research projects into various aspects of higher education, including most recently an in-depth longitudinal analysis of governance, leadership and management in the sector. Our study has highlighted the pervasive problems of management failures and corruption in many institutions, and I trust her to be the corruption-buster that any university needs today.

Prof. Lange is not only highly qualified as leader and manager in the sector - and  since 2010 at the UFS itself - but also as a scholar. She has made numerous high-level presentations and given keynotes, as well as written numerous scholarly articles and commentaries. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Acta Academica, which under her editorial leadership has regained a reputation of quality and avoided being de-accredited by the Department of Higher Education and Training.

In my very own book published in 2016, which has received a great deal of local and international attention, i.e. Student Politics in Africa: Representation and Activism, co-edited with M Klemencic (Harvard) and JO Jowi (Moi), Prof Lange has written the Epilogue (see blog entry from 2015). Prof. Lange wrote her insightful epilogue because she understands student issues and has been a driving force behind current projects at the UFS to improve the student experience: this includes the project for improving the admission and registration processes, the complete overhaul of the quality assurance regime, the development of institutional research capacity, and last but not least, the project of improving student participation in all aspects of university governance. The student representation in academic governance project is the first project of this kind, and it looks in great depth into the innovative ways in which students in some of the UFS departments, schools and faculties are already included in improving teaching and learning, so that what works can be recommended to units that have not yet developed such systems.

It is therefore extremely disconcerting that in the Bloemfontein Kaasblad (masquerading as an actual quality newspaper in Afrikaans), Prof Lange is being thrown with mud, yet again. It appear that for the few highly conservative forces that push a anti-UFS agenda at Die Kaasblad she is some kind of threat. Or is it some kind of sexism or xenophobia? None of that has any place in academia: here one has to be accountable to actual objective criteria of quality and merit... and that is precisely what transformation tries to achieve: equity - meaning fairness; so that at some point we can all partake together in a prosperous and successful, united and diverse nation. How I ask can one explain the lies that were written about her in the Kaasblad article published on the front-page of 14 September?

As for me, I guess I always believe to much in the goodness of people, and that finally the truth will prevail. I certainly hope that in the selection process for a new rector and vice-chancellor, the candidate who is best suited to lead the UFS will win. I have stated my personal preference; in my professional life, I will serve any of these excellent candidates to the best of my ability and that of my great team and my many and diverse colleagues at the UFS and beyond. May the best woman win! :)

PS: The picture of the three candidates (above) is my snip of the front-page of Die Volksblad.


Monday 15 August 2016

Changing tomorrow today: TEDx UFS Talk on Student Activism and a New Political Culture

Tomorrow at UFS: Students' changing tomorrow's universities today. I will be talking about the fascinating use of social media as platform for political mobilisation, conscientisation, and intermediary between on the ground activism and public media / broadcasters.

Here is the link to the TEDx talk on Youtube.