Drawing on the South African case, this book looks at shifts in higher
education around the world in the last two decades. In South Africa,
calls for transformation have been heard in the university since the
last days of apartheid. Similar claims for quality higher education to
be made available to all have been made across the African continent. In
spite of this, inequalities remain and many would argue that these have
been exacerbated during the Covid pandemic.
Understanding Higher Education responds to these calls by arguing for
a social account of teaching and learning by contesting dominant
understandings of students as 'decontextualised learners' premised on
the idea that the university is a meritocracy.
This book tackles the issue of teaching and learning by looking both
within and beyond the classroom. It looks at how higher education
policies emerged from the notion of the knowledge economy in the newly
democratic South Africa, and how national qualification frameworks and
other processes brought the country more closely into conversation with
the global order. The effects of this on staffing and curriculum
structures are considered alongside a proposition for alternative ways
of understanding the role of higher education in society.
