The economic boom being enjoyed by India is largely because of its outstanding records in higher education. The idea of universities as economic engines is nowhere else more realised than it is in India. India’s record of primary and secondary education is appalling, writes PG Raman.
Some universities have expressed concern about the loss of teaching time in the recent public servants’ strike in which teachers participated. They believe that if a catch-up plan is not implemented effectively, it might affect this year’s matric pass rate. There is concern that weaker matric learners who are borderline university candidates might fail the exam, resulting in a low university intake.
Told in the first person, Elias Masilela’s<b> Number 43 Trelawney Park KwaMagoga</b> (David Philip) puts a tragic, and in some ways nostalgic, human face to life in exile during the apartheid years. The book tells the story of 25 PAC and ANC members who passed through Number 43, Trelawney Park, writes Vicki Robinson.
Like pride, lust goes before a fall. In his novel, <b>When a Man Cries</b> (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press), Siphiwo Mahala chronicles the downfall and uphill struggle of municipal councillor and serial seducer Themba Limba. This is an extract from chapter 11, "Should a man cry?":
As tantalising as titles and book covers go, I can’t remember one that comes close to Shimmer Chinodya’s <i>Strife</i>. When I saw the cover of silhouetted people, arms flailing in the air, and a yellow flame, I thought of the oppressed getting fed up with a dictatorship and rising up in anger.
The psychologist BF Skinner, in 1964, said: “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.” Do universities provide an adequate education to South Africa’s budding social scientists? Having experienced the university system from the inside, I think I am fairly well placed to critique what I believe are the dilemmas of a tertiary education, writes Suntosh Pillay.
Welcome to the University of Michigan (UM) in the city of Ann Arbor, near Detroit, the largest majority African-American city in the United States (US) and also near the city of Dearborn, home to the largest Arab population outside the Middle East. UM ranks as the number two public university and is one of the largest research universities in the US.
Is Ronald Suresh Roberts’ <i>Fit to Govern</i> fit to defend Thabo Mbeki from (mainly) "illiberal" critics of different hues? Roberts has positioned himself as a radical nationalist, and unfortunately most critiques of his book to date presume he genuinely speaks from the left, writes Patrick Bond.
The National Research Foundation (NRF) is investigating ways to increase significantly the monetary values of annual grants for honours, masters and doctoral students as part of its plan to produce more researchers. Professor Mzamo Mangaliso, president and chief executive of the NRF, told Higher Learning that the allocations to honours and masters students, in particular, “were woefully inadequate”.
Joe Abercrombie’s Before They Are Hanged: Book Two of the First Law (Gollancz) puts some very modern preoccupations — the nature of war and the motivation of torturers — under the fantasy glass. His main protagonists are, in his own words, ”a crippled torturer, a sneering, self-serving nobleman and a psychopathic barbarian with a bloody history”, writes Gwen Ansell.