Global representatives flock to Stellenbosch for 3rd student affairs global summit

Media release, Division of Corporate Communication, Stellenbosch University, 28 October 2016

Student governance in transition : University democratisation and managerialism : a governance approach to the study of student politics and the case of the University of Cape Town

Includes bibliographical references (p. 209.245).In the aftermath of university democratisation, only one critical change in university governance has sparked nearly as much academic interest and debate: the rise of managerialism. The participation of students in university governance was the key issue in debates on university democratisation; however, in the recent debates about managerialism in universities, there is little mention of the new place of students in university governance. This dissertation revisits the general topic of student participation in university governance. It sets out to provide a theoretical and empirical perspective on the interaction between university democratisation and the rise of managerialism in terms of their respective impacts on student participation in university governance. It does so in a number of ways: (i) based on a literature review of international debates and trends; (ii) by developing a theoretical framework for a governance approach applied to higher education, and; (iii) through an extended case study of student politics and transitions of university governance. In the theoretical investigation, I adapt Goran Hyden's theoretical conceptualisation of 'governance' for a study of student participation in university governance. Key to the adaptation is a typology of four ideal-type regimes of student governance focused on respectively different conceptions of 'student' involved in different justifications of the inclusion (and exclusion) of students in formal decision-making in universities. This typology and related conceptualisations of regime transitions is nested within distinct 'visions' of the university and embedded in Hyden's general governance approach

Quality Enhancement in Student Affairs and Social Justice: A Reflective Case Study from South Africa

Quality enhancement in student affairs is an integral part of professional practice, and its documentation and reflective evaluation are important in the ongoing professionalisation of student affairs in Africa.  This article proposes a way of conceptualising a reflective scholarship of practice in student affairs inAfrica and method to conduct reflective practice studies to build a relevant knowledge base. Based on this methodology, it then analyses a student affairs quality enhancement review at a South African university in detail, showing its conceptualisation and implementation, and reflecting on its outcomes.  The article thus provides evidence of a ‘home-grown’, ‘activist’ QE review that focuses on key issues in the South African context and the context of the case university: the professionalisation of student affairs, the co‑curriculum, and social justice models such as participatory parity, universal design for learning, and student engagement

Guest editorial: Space, language and identity politics in higher education

No Abstrac

Are African flagship universities preparing students for citizenship?

This article investigates the contribution of higher education to democratisation in Africaby studying the political attitudes of undergraduate students at four African flagshipuniversities in Botswana, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania. It analyses students’ attitudesagainst those of youths without higher education and mass publics in their respectivecountries. The study focuses on flagship universities because of their role as importantplayers in the development of the social, economic and political leadership of theirrespective countries. The surveys used stratified random samples of third-year studentsacross all faculties and years of enrolment, which resulted in a weighted sample of 400students from each of the participating institutions. Students’ attitudes are compared withthose of the same age percentiles of youths without higher education, and those of theentire population sample, from the nationwide public opinion surveys conducted byAfrobarometer. The analysis of the data uses the notions of commitment to democracy,critical citizenship and political engagement to show that students at the four flagshipinstitutions have significantly higher levels of political awareness and political participation,and higher levels of criticalness, than youths without higher education and the generalmass public. However, no consistently higher levels of commitment to democracy werefound among students. We therefore argue that the study provides evidence of the politicalhothouse conditions typical in many African universities. It also provides grounds for thecall that African higher education institutions should be more conscious of, and explicitin, the cultivation of the norms, values and practices conducive to democracy in orderfor higher education to contribute in enduring ways to citizenship development and thedeepening of democratisation in Africa

Inserting Space into the Transformation of Higher Education

In this article we argue for a socio-political conception of space in order to show how conceptualisations of space can provide conceptual tools in the reframing of policy and designing of policy interventions in pursuit of higher education transformation goals. In keeping with Lefebvre and others, we conceptualise space as a co-producer of social relations with agentic capability in the transformation of higher education. Using this understanding of space as a conceptual framework, we analyse four national cornerstone policy documents on higher education transformation in South Africa. We find that space is almost consistently conceived of only as an object in transformation – be it with respect to macro policy on mergers to reconfigure the apartheid spatial landscape of higher education, or with respect to discriminatory institutional cultures and the need to create secure and safe campus environments.  Since the landmark White Paper on Higher Education of 1997, it is only the most recent policy document we analyse, the Draft National Plan for Post-school Education and Training of 2017, which blurs the lines between the social ills affecting higher education, the student experience and student academic performance, and different functions of space. We conclude by introducing the conceptual tool of spatial types as an opening gambit for a research agenda that aims to explore the organisation of space in higher education institutions to identify the underlying rules that govern their social nature and promote conceptualisations of social space in the reframing and design of policy that respond to calls for the creation of transformed and ‘decolonised’ higher education, as heard in studentmovement campaigns in 2015/16

The politics of student housing: Student activism and representation in the determination of the user-price of a public–private partnership residence on a public university campus in South Africa

South African universities have been facing a critical shortage in the provision of studenthousing for several years now, and the establishment of public–private partnerships(PPPs) is seen as part of the solution to address the shortage (Rensburg, 2011). Thisarticle investigates the effectiveness of the Students’ Representative Council (SRC) ofthe University of the Western Cape (UWC) in representing student interests during itsnegotiations with university management to reduce the user-price per student for the newKovacs Residence, a PPP student housing complex on the UWC campus. It thus highlightssome of the complexities involved in public–private collaborations on student housingprovision, including the tension between profitability, affordability and equity in the face oforganised student power.The article shows that, considering the various initiatives taken by the SRC to engageuniversity management, and the resulting reduction of the user-price per annum, students’interests were effectively represented by the SRC, even if this view does not correspondwith the perceptions of students. Our analysis uncovers many deficiencies in studentrepresentation processes both within student structures and university management. It issupported by data from in-depth interviews and a focus group discussion. Interviews wereconducted with SRC members and university management, and a focus group discussionwas facilitated with students in residences