scholarly journals Going to University: The Influence of Higher Education on the Lives of Young South Africans

Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Case ◽  
Delia Marshall ◽  
Sioux McKenna ◽  
Mogashana Disaapele

Around the world, more young people than ever before are attending university. Student numbers in South Africa have doubled since democracy and for many families, higher education is a route to a better future for their children. But alongside the overwhelming demand for higher education, questions about its purposes have intensified. Deliberations about the curriculum, culture and costing of public higher education abound from student activists, academics, parents, civil society and policy-makers. We know, from macro research, that South African graduates generally have good employment prospects. But little is known at a detailed level about how young people actually make use of their university experiences to craft their life courses. And even less is known about what happens to those who drop out. This accessible book brings together the rich life stories of 73 young people, six years after they began their university studies. It traces how going to university influences not only their employment options, but also nurtures the agency needed to chart their own way and to engage critically with the world around them. The book offers deep insights into the ways in which public higher education is both a private and public good, and it provides significant conclusions pertinent to anyone who works in – and cares about – universities.

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-115
Author(s):  
Bruna Papa ◽  
Ervin Demo

Abstract Albanian higher education sector has undergone various changes in the last years. Such changes have brought different implication and challenges for higher education institutions. HEIs need to find new and innovative ways to be able to respond properly and play their role in the society. This paper aims to provide an evaluation of the staus quo of 5 public higher education instituions, that took part in the study, in regard to 6 aspects of the entrepreneurial university model.Interviews were conducted using HEInnovate tool as a theoretical guideline and questions were asked by being grouped in 6 categories: on aspects such as governance and lidership, internationalization, knowledge exchange, human and financial resources, entrepreneurial education and start up support and measures, were conducted in order to have a general overview and identify potential areas of improvement. Entrepreneurship needs to be supported and formilazed by the top lidership and effective organizational structure that promotes entrepreneurshop at all levels of the institution, financial stream needs to be diversified, blended learning needs to be encourgaed and promoted and public HEIs need to increase their international cooperation and presence. The study shows that HEIs need to implement new practies in order to better be prepared to face the current and future challenges. The findings and recommendation can be used to present measures to be undertaken both at institutional level of HEIs and at the level of policy makers in Albania.


2018 ◽  
pp. 192-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Mark Cohen ◽  
Leigh Raiford

In “At Berkeley: Documenting the University in an Age of Austerity,” Michael Mark Cohen and Leigh Raiford address documentary’s evolving capacity for political mobilization by focusing on the role of documentary photography and film in the struggle around austerity at the University of California, Berkeley. While the university administration used documentary’s graphic appeal to enlist alumni in a fund-raising campaign that effectively naturalized the privatization of public higher education, students took up documentary forms to challenge the logic of neoliberalism. Working with Cohen and Raiford, who teach at UC Berkeley, student activists produced their own counterdocuments, repurposing documentary images that the university uses to sell education in an era of skyrocketing tuition fees, and rendering themselves as active participants in the struggle to reshape the university and the broader society.


This chapter explores how activism is positioned within the world and within higher education. Societal expectations of college students are discussed and include the idea that student's mirror the larger world around them. This leads to students' use of technology as a form of activism, and ultimately, how students balance their own independent thinking and their relationships with faculty members. A second perspective presented is how activism looks to college administrators and policy makers, noting that technology-based activism may draw upon a larger collection of students, but may actually result in less disturbance and impact on campus. The chapter concludes with projections as to what activism will look like in the future.


Author(s):  
Pamela A. Lemoine ◽  
Thomas Hackett ◽  
Michael D. Richardson

The leadership needs to develop new organizational structures and systems that will promote and encourage quality learning and the ability to assess the impact of the teaching. Governments across the world have steadily minimized their support for public higher education, and costs associated with gaining a degree have increased constantly over the last decade. Most universities are forced to adopt a restructuring model for commoditizing education to make a profit from large numbers of students. The road ahead for higher education is filled with challenges, risks and uncertainties that begin with education being valued as more than a simple commodity: education becomes a public good. Higher education is increasingly viewed as a major instrument of economic development. In order to hold universities accountable despite limited governmental budgets, many nations have adopted performance-based university research funding strategies for targeted programs.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 800-819 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antigoni Papadimitriou ◽  
Daniel C Levy ◽  
Bjørn Stensaker ◽  
Sanja Kanazir

The article presents an analysis of the developments of higher education laws and regulations in the Western Balkans for the period 1990–2015, with the aim of mapping the regulatory arrangements for the private higher education sector and to explore the relationship between public and private higher education in the region. Based on a conceptual framework highlighting the competitive and complementary regulatory design options available in current governance arrangements, the study finds much ambiguity in policy designs regarding how private and public higher education should co-exist in the Western Balkans. As such, it is argued that the study contributes to a better understanding of the unclear role private higher education is playing in the development of the region.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 144
Author(s):  
Andrés Santos Sharpe

This paper is derived from a field study in the framework of my doctoral dissertation, in which we analyze life stories (Bertaux, 2005) of young people who have discontinued their studies at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) in four courses with a high rate of dropout between the years 2005-2015: Computer Engineering, Anthropological Sciences, Chemical Sciences and Communication Sciences. With that goal in mind, seventy-five interviews were conducted with fifty-nine people: sixteen key informants and forty-three young people who discontinued their university studies between 2005 and 2015.In this paper we present one aspect of the analysis: the reconstruction of the symbolic framework of the discontinuation experience from the perspective of its protagonist, and how this outlines specific types of discontinuation. 


NASPA Journal ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan J. Norris

Internationalization is a familiar theme in higher education. "Transforming Higher Education: Views from Leaders Around the World" is intended to address what the author characterizes as one of the ironies of higher education: while faculty members are well-internationalized, policymakers tend to focus on the higher education of their own nation. The intended audience, apart from scholars, is those who are or who work with leaders, policy makers, and administrators in higher education organizations around the world. The goal of the book is to demonstrate that despite the differences that exist from nation to nation, higher education faces problems and forces that are remarkably similar throughout the world.


2010 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Ulriksen ◽  
Lene Møller Madsen ◽  
Henriette T. Holmegaard

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothy Chansky

In 2011 and 2012, I undertook a two-part survey to answer some large questions about the use of plays in translation in the higher education drama classroom in Anglophone North America and to test my ideas regarding the simultaneous ubiquity and invisibility of translation there. My project here is to report on that survey and to make clear why translation studies is ready to take a prominent role in theatre studies. U.S. colleges and universities constitute one of the largest single markets in the world for drama translated into English. Most U.S. theatre history classes include plays from the world canon, and many specialized classes in theatre departments focus on plays from non-Anglophone cultures. In English departments, where other genres in translation (e.g., the novel) may be approached with caution, drama seems to be offered a “pass” because the notion of being dramaturgically literate depends on some knowledge of a sizable canon of non-Anglophone plays. Yet despite its ubiquity, translation is often so normalized as to be invisible to those who depend on it. As Laurence Senelick notes, “For most students, a work exists wholly in its translated form, spontaneously generated.” Translation, as the survey confirmed, is part of the DNA of theatre studies. As such, I argue, it needs to be brought to the foreground of the field. In saying this, I am not unaware of the rich work undertaken by scholars, editors, and practitioners who are enmeshed in the difficult issues involved with translating plays, which include pressing for greater attention to cultural sensitivity and literacy. My focus here is on the academy and the classroom, where, for better or worse, the vast majority of future dramaturgs and audience members will cut their teeth on a critical mass of plays and where no single language or production entity or publisher can claim pride of place.


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