How higher education can help heal us all
- Beth Amato
“We live in the most unequal country in the world. We can help bridge the divide and we don’t have any time to waste.” – Dr Judy Dlamini.
The higher education sector, with universities a part of this larger “edusystem”, is fundamental to creating and contributing to societies that are equipped for the 21st Century. Beth Amato asks academic experts and vice-chancellors how they envisage higher education in the next 100 years.
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When Professor Yunus Ballim became the first Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the new Sol Plaatje University in Kimberley, Northern Cape, in 2014, he had to contend with the reality of creating a relevant tertiary institution in a saturated market, with deep polarities and divisions threatening to unravel the delicate threads of culture and society.
Ballim knew when establishing the university that the way we think about higher education had to change completely. “For me, it’s about allowing students from a variety of backgrounds to contribute to scholarship meaningfully, and to feel unashamed of the knowledge that they bring and the ways in which they think about and process information,” says Ballim, who remains an Emeritus Professor at Wits University.
Ballim’s approach speaks to the ‘why’ of higher education. In the 21st Century post-pandemic world, information is readymade and pressing global and local challenges need solutions immediately. But a university’s role is also to see the bigger picture – to stoke the fires of critical thinking and ways of knowing and inspire the application of humanity’s best gifts across disciplines.
Functional facilities and individual focus
To facilitate this philosophy, Ballim says that competent classroom teaching and functional learning facilities are critical. “Universities need to ensure that every single student’s educational development is realised. This extends to all features of their university experience, including their interaction with administrative and operational functions.”
One of Ballim’s first tasks was to ban academic development programmes. “We cannot blame students for failing. They fail in part because of our inability to teach them properly. For me, it’s not about English language competence. Let’s look behind that all. We want to increase knowledge and spur action. Therefore, academics must learn to read a particular student’s work and allow that student to feel comfortable in sharing ideas. If you don’t know that a student has six words for ‘uncle’, then you cannot teach that student anthropology, for example,” he says.
Ballim is critical of decolonising the university curriculum. “It’s possible to be racist and right-wing in any language and culture. Poverty hurts, no matter the country in which you live. Both Shakespeare and Plaatje have relevance to readers everywhere. Rather, we need to decolonise the mind. There are so many ways of knowing. Why shouldn’t we read Camus in Tswana? Why aren’t Russians reading Plaatje? It’s about both and not either/or.”