New Fort Hare vice-chancellor Mvuyo Tom is under no illusions about the challenges he faces at the country’s oldest historically black university. And he knows he will have to confront at least one of them as soon as he takes over in January. ”Like other black institutions, Fort Hare has been dealing with its disadvantaged history,” he tells the Mail & Guardian.

Confident insider predictions about who the University of Cape Town would appoint as its next vice-chancellor have proven to be wide of the mark. The UCT council will announce today that Max Price takes over the reins when current vice-chancellor Njabulo Ndebele’s second term comes to an end in June next year.

For a university leader who has just weathered yet another eruption of torrid student protests against fee increases, Wits vice-­chancellor Loyiso Nongxa was exuding an impressive degree of serenity and confidence this week. These qualities in the softly spoken mathematician were so noticeable that the Mail & Guardian was moved to ask him what he does to relax.

The government’s introduction this year of full-cost bursaries for students studying to become teachers has had an immediate impact. The number of first-year university students in initial professional education of teachers programmes is double that of last year. But there has been no rise in the number of people training to become African-language foundation-phase teachers.

Staff at Rhodes University are seething over the revelation that former vice-chancellor David Woods, who retired in April last year, received a covert gift of R1,67-million paid from university funds. This gratuity was over and above contractual obligations Rhodes had to Woods, such as cash payouts to him for leave untaken by the time he retired.

Eradicating massive backlogs in school infrastructure will cost about R40-billion. This represents nearly 40% of the current year’s education budget. The infrastructural challenges facing thousands of schools emerge from the most comprehensive audit ever done on the physical state of the country’s 25 000 public schools.

Imminent changes to employment conditions of lecturing staff at technical colleges are eliciting alarm about the ability of these institutions to meet the country’s skills needs. The alarm centres on how many lecturers at further education and training colleges will be removed from their positions by changes to their contracts that the government is intent on making.

Strict conditions placed on the merger of two giant publishers of school textbooks have not eliminated concerns that the market still fails to provide schoolchildren with reasonably priced, high-quality books. The Shuttleworth Foundation, which strongly opposes the merger, has recommended that the government investigates the whole school textbook

Unisa managers and academics are lining up for a legal confrontation. Negotiations between the university’s bosses and the main academic union over new conditions of employment failed last week. Management has said it will implement the new conditions from next month, but the Academic and Professional Staff Association has vowed to contest this in court if management does not resume negotiations.