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The Responsive University puts forward the proposition that the societal legitimacy of universities depends on whether and how they respond to societal challenges. This issue is exemplified in South Africa, one of the most unequal countries in the world.
In South African higher education, the images of dysfunction are everywhere. Student protests. Violence. Police presence. Rubber or real bullets. Class disruptions. Burning tyres. Damaged buildings. Injury and sometimes death. Reports of wholesale corruption. Year after year, often in the same set of universities; the problem of routine instability seems insoluble. The financial, academic and reputational costs of ongoing dysfunction are high, especially for those universities caught-up in the never-ending struggle to overcome apartheid legacies. Any number of explanations have been ventured, including a lack of resources, shortage of capacity, rural location, corrupt officials, and endemic conflict. Corrupted takes a deeper look at dysfunction in an attempt to unravel the root causes in a sample of South African universities. At the heart of the problem lies the vexed issue of resources or, more pertinently, the relationship between resources and power: who gets what, and why? Whatever else it aspires to be—commonly, a place of teaching, learning, research and public duty—a university in an impoverished community is also a rich concentration of resources around which corrupt staff, students and those outside of campus all vie for access. Taking a political economic approach, Jonathan Jansen describes the daily struggle for institutional resources and offers accessible, sensible insights. He argues that the problem won’t be solved through investments in ‘capacity building’ alone because the combination of institutional capacity and institutional integrity contributes to serial instability in universities. Rather, durable solutions would include the depoliticisation of university councils and appointments of academics with integrity and capacity to manage and lead these fragile institutions. This groundbreaking and long overdue study will offer a promising way forward for universities to better serve their communities and the country more broadly.
Creating the New African University grapples with the existence of African universities, particularly in post-independent Africa, where Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are supposed to live up to the expectations of being adaptive in dealing with prevalent complex, dynamic contemporary and future challenges facing African societies. The book tackles the issue of what ought to be done for African universities to maintain a structure and identity that ensures their relevance in Africa’s development through generating and transforming knowledge into actions for the common good. It engages issues within the context of how post-colonial transformative obligations have been managed in light of the prevalent epistemological and pedagogical underpinnings that form the foundations of these universities as they seek to break from the clutches of colonial legacies. This book further highlights an urgent need to do away with silos and embrace a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary dialogical approach towards knowledge generation. Such an approach is essential in efforts aimed at enhancing the sustainable reconfiguration of university structures and functions whilst linking knowledge produced to diverse social, economic and political facets of African societies in ways that promote and sustain competitiveness in a rapidly globalising world beset with technological advancements.
What is the role of a university in society? In this innovative book, Chris Brink offers the timely reminder that it should have social purpose, as well as achieve academic excellence. The current obsession with rankings and league tables has perpetuated inequality and is preventing social mobility. This book shows how universities can – and should - respond to societal challenges and promote positive social change.
Democracy, sustainability and social justice: the leading role that higher education must play in maintaining these three principles This publication, Higher education leadership for democracy, sustainability and social justice, arises from the global forum that the Council of Europe, the International Consortium for Higher Education, Civic Responsibility and Democracy, the Organization of American States and the International Association of Universities organised at Dublin City University in June 2022. It also arises from the challenges of Covid-19, which both highlighted and contributed to the fragility of democracy, with the increasing erosion of democratic participation, the deepening of extreme inequities, the strengthening of identity and nationalistic politics and the promotion of populist anti-intellectualism, involving attacks on science and knowledge itself. In this book, authors from Europe, the United States and Latin America argue that democracy, sustainability and social justice are inextricably linked, and that we can impact none of them unless higher education plays an important role in identifying the issues and helping society devise a viable and robust response. The book argues that higher education must do more than develop and disseminate knowledge and understanding. Higher education must influence the way individuals and societies behave. Higher education must lead. The importance of this leadership is illustrated by the inclusion of the Dublin Global Forum in the programme of the Irish Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe and will be borne out by the positions and actions of the higher education community.
This book explores new models and future possibilities of university governance in a Latin American context using management and leadership theories. The dramatic changes and uncertainty facing the world recently have forced us to reimagine the future of education. Changes such as digitalization, the increasing number of corporate universities, and the need for cost-effective educational programs and services require universities to keep evolving while ensuring that they maintain their essence as a critical social asset. This book offers a new approach to managing and leading the university, particularly by embracing the role and responsibility of delivering quality educational programs and services, by being innovative and flexible enough to make urgent decisions and act upon them in a timely and appropriate manner. With its contributions to management and the social sciences, this interdisciplinary book will serve as a valuable resource to researchers, administrators, and students alike.
The Engaged University is a comprehensive empirical account of the global civic engagement movement in higher education. In universities around the world, something extraordinary is underway. Mobilizing their human and intellectual resources, institutions of higher education are directly tackling community problems – combating poverty, improving public health, and restoring environmental quality. This book documents and analyzes this exciting trend through studies of civic engagement and social responsibility at twenty institutions worldwide. This timely volume offers three special contributions to the literature on higher education policy and practice: a historical overview of the founding purposes of universities, which almost invariably included a context-specific element of social purpose, together with a survey of how these "founding" intentions have fared in different systems of higher education; a contemporary account of the policy and practice of universities – all over the world – seeking to re-engage with this social purpose; and an overview of generic issues which emerge for the "engaged university."
A particularly timely book, given the high proportion of international students and staff in higher education Public health was the immediate concern when the Covid-19 pandemic struck in Asia, then in Europe and other parts of the world. The response of our education systems is no less vital. Higher education has played a major role in responding to the pandemic and it must help shape a better, more equitable and just post-Covid-19 world. This book explores the various responses of higher education to the pandemic across Europe and North America, with contributions also from Africa, Asia and South America. The contributors write from the perspective of higher education leaders with institutional responsibility, as well as from that of public authorities or specialists in specific aspects of higher education policy and practice. Some contributions analyse how specific higher education institutions reacted, while others reflect on the impact of Covid-19 on key issues such as internationalisation, finance, academic freedom and institutional autonomy, inclusion and equality and public responsibility. The book describes the various ways in which higher education is facing the Covid-19 pandemic. It is designed to help universities, specifically their staff and students as well as their partners, contribute to a more sustainable and democratic future.
Centred on five mentoring conversations around SDG-related topics such as quality education, gender equality, climate action and sustainable cities and communities, Mentoring Within and Beyond Academia showcases the link between professional academic development and its impact beyond campus walls.
The volume explores and thinks through the process of decolonising the South African higher education system by examining #MustFall. The text offers theoretical insights from a historical, contemporary and multidisciplinary lens, while examining the embedded meanings of the university as an institution, idea and set of practices to show the shifts and changes that were inaugurated by #MustFall along with the historicities that define the university both locally and globally. The retro- and prospective insights presented in the book surface the crisis of authority that places the university in a state of precarity, which is framed in the book as the ‘border’. The volume proposes the concept of the ‘border’ (recognising its conceptual and analytical dynamism) as a generative space that can facilitate new imaginaries and articulations of this social institution: the university.