As South African universities have changed, a sense of malaise has emerged among many academic staff. Yet South African debates on tertiary institutions have tended to sideline and objectify the role of academics. The Council on Higher Education’s (CHE) website, for example, lists some 70 publications, all dealing with crucial tertiary education issues.
A Durban cosmologist, Dr Kavilan Moodley, has been awarded the prestigious Silver Jubilee Medal for 2007, by the South African Institute of Physics. The medal, awarded every two years to young researchers under the age of 35 years, was presented to Moodley at the opening event of the South African Institute of Physics’s 52nd annual conference, held last month at Wits University.
The percentage of women MBA students on campus at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) has been steadily increasing since the first intake of students in the year 2000. “Our MBA programme is currently approximately 40% female, which is a most gratifying statistic for us,” said Shireen Chengadu, director of MBA programmes at GIBS.
Allan Gray has established 10 annual scholarships worth a total of R1,25-million for full-time MBA students at the University of Cape Town graduate school of business (GSB). The company has been providing funding for previously disadvantaged students at the school for a number of years.
Have you ever wondered what the possible reasons are for the slow disappearance of fish from our rivers and if we will ever see their numbers restored? A recent research initiative by the Water Research Commission has assessed the ability of indigenous fish species to negotiate different fishway designs in an attempt to optimise and develop new models.
As we stand in front of the impressive facade of the revamped AngloGold Ashanti building on Turbine Square in downtown Johannesburg, architect, writer-critic and sociologist Professor Alan Lipman explains that Newtown is slowly becoming one of Johannesburg’s most exemplary architectural locations.
A significant tension — if not downright contradiction — is at work in the onÂgoing transformation of South Africa’s university system. Under the singular name of transformation, two projects with distinct and largely opposed political intentions are at work in changing the ecology of higher education. Current policy is stretched between the pull of democratic redress and the push of neoliberal reorganisation.
Until recently in South African higher education, academic freedom was not a sexy issue. Those arguing in its defence were often perceived to have been using the issue to preserve the status quo in higher education and resist transformation. However, this matter is now perhaps the most interesting and hotly contested one in academic and public debates on higher education.
A study aid DVD that is already being used very effectively by students at Stellenbosch University (SU) could make a national impact soon. The LearnWell4Life DVD addresses nine of the most topical study challenges experienced by senior school learners and university students across the world.
Much has been said about the skills shortage in South Africa. Yet, while both the public and private sectors of the economy decry this, almost everyone knows of an unemployed graduate in their area. Many such graduates are engineers. And unemployment rates are highest among young South Africans — 65% compared to 37% of the general working age population.