Higher Education funding, Justice and Equity - Critical Perspectives

How governments choose to fund students in higher education (HE) is inextricably linked to the sector’s sustainability and efforts to achieve a just and equitable HE experience and outcomes for all students. The way funding mechanisms are structured and subsequently enacted within the university, has far-reaching consequences, with the implications reaching far beyond the walls of the institution (Shermer, 2021). In the context of austerity, marketisation, credentialisation and related neoliberal conceptions of education and society, student funding models have greatly transformed the sector and its role in enabling or hindering efforts to achieve a more just and equitable society (Quinlan, 2014). However, despite well-intentioned global and national-level policy commitments to achieving justice and equity in and through HE, the persistent effects of geography, race, wealth, gender, and class-based disparities in patterns of access, participation and attainment rates have undermined the idea of HE as a vehicle for just and equitable futures and transformation (Boliver, 2017). Higher education institutions globally find themselves at a crossroads of trying to maintain their core purpose as a public good on the one hand and compliance with global neoliberal policies, which are foundational to the modern university on the other. The tension between these contested and seemingly contradicting paradigms is made visible in how universities respond to issues of inclusion, equity and in how and what they choose to fund

Higher education systems and institutions, Mozambique

The Republic of Mozambique is a country located in southeast Africa. It is bordered by South Africa and Swaziland to the southwest, Zimbabwe to the west, Zambia and Malawi to the northwest, and Tanzania to the north. With a surface area of roughly 800,000 square km and a rapidly expanding population roughly at 29.5 million, it is the second largest Portuguese-speaking country in Africa. Although Portuguese is the official language, most Mozambicans speak Bantu languages. As other Lusophone countries in Africa, Mozambique became independent in 1975 after a prolonged war with Portugal. After that, it had to endure an even longer civil war between former independentist movements which ended only in 1992. At the same time, between independence and the mid-1980s, the government of Mozambique experimented with socialism as a political and economic model of development and social construction. All of these factors have led the country to a desperate socioeconomic situation until...info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Understanding the rise of faculty-student coaching: an academic capitalism perspective

We examine the rise of coaching within management education to support student learning. We question the assumption that faculty-student coaching (FSC) is beneficial and propose that there may be some limitations in the use of FSC that have yet to be adequately acknowledged and discussed in the literature. In particular, we propose that there is currently insufficient evidence to conclude that coaching can produce knowledge acquisition and therefore ask why we persist in the use of FSC when we have limited evidence of its efficacy in delivering a core education outcome. We suggest that the theory of academic capitalism provides a useful, critical lens through which to view the growing trend in FSC, identifying that FSC may be utilized as a method of increasing student satisfaction, perceptions of value for money and as a useful marketing tool for business schools competing for students. However, academic capitalism may also explain the use of coaching via its ability to enhance the skills and attitudes of students, providing outcomes that are valued by students, employers and governments. We conclude our essay by providing recommendations to mitigate these proposed dangers and consequently maximise the effectiveness of coaching as a development tool in management education

Financing higher education in South Africa: Public funding, nongovernment revenue and tuition fees

The funding of public higher education is currently a moot issue in South Africa. Public funding has been declining and opportunities for winning non-government revenue remain limited. The frequent raising of tuition fees, which is one of the main strategies public universities have resorted to mitigate declining state funding is not without controversy. The article discusses these funding challenges. It argues that the current higher education funding conundrum will hamstring the achievement of the important higher education policy goals articulated in the National Plan on Higher Education. The article finally argues for a shift towards a redistributive funding model by changing the current formula for allocating funding for student aid to universities so that resources are redistributed in favour of the genuinely poor. By so doing, it is anticipated that higher education will be affordable for the poor who are generally sensitive to tuition fee increases, and also the rich, who can afford the current (high) tuition fee charges. South African Journal of Higher Education Vol. 22 (4) 2008: pp. 906-91