Education Minister Naledi Pandor and KwaZulu-Natal Education Minister Ina Cronje have been targeted in a landmark legal challenge aimed at protecting poor parents and pupils.
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/ 22 September 2006
Half the country’s undergraduate students drop out without completing their degrees and diplomas, Education Minister Naledi Pandor has said.
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/ 18 September 2006
Glossy university newsletters do not conventionally stimulate deep reflection, far less memories of Stalin. So it’s perhaps a world first for UKZNdaba, the monthly publication for staff and students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. To the unsuspecting eye, the latest edition of UKZNdaba looks as anodyne as any of its genre.
In a move that is likely to spark controversy, the government looks set to promote a two-tier system of higher education, with some universities selected for growth and additional funding. In the process, the Department of Education has revised its hotly contested 2004 proposals for capping student enrolments at all universities on grounds of low graduation and high dropout rates.
He first experienced a city at the age of 19, learned to speak English at 22, and went abroad (and saw TV) for the first time at 23. Now, at the age of 55, Chris Brink is poised to vacate the vice-chancellorship of Stellenbosch University and take up the equivalent position at Newcastle University in north-east England.
Many university faculties are scrambling to repair their reputations, after the Council on Higher Education accredited only seven of 23 master’s in education (MEd) programmes on offer in South Africa. The MEd is a crucial component of university education qualifications, providing a platform for schoolteachers seeking promotion, and for students aiming at an academic career.
One year after it came into being, Walter Sisulu University (WSU) is facing financial disaster. This follows the recent award of a staff salary increase for which the university has no budget. Documents in the possession of the Mail & Guardian show that WSU management, headed by interim vice-chancellor Nicky Morgan, strongly opposed any increase.
Reactionary troops rallying in mountain hotel hideouts to subvert the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) … or concerned academics meeting to discuss ways of promoting both transformation and excellence. These polar opposites in interpretations of recent upheavals at UKZN emerge from written communications among university staff.
<i>We Remember Differently</i> is an exceptionally moving treatment of major South African preoccupations: race, identity, memory, desire, love, eroticism, women’s domestic and social entrapment, mothers and daughters. This short film will provoke rich debate, suggests David Macfarlane.
Severe governance upheavals at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) have prompted the intervention of Minister of Education Naledi Pandor. But some members of the DUT council fear the minister could dilute or even halt a forensic audit into alleged financial irregularities, and possible fraud, involving more than R150-million.