Rector Connect – South Africa’s Universities – the Past Year and the Future

In early November a pleasing number of parents gathered to engage with the topic I presented: Our Universities in Turmoil and Reflections from School. We were privileged to be joined by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic at Wits University, Professor Andrew Crouch, who presented fascinating perspectives based on his personal experiences and insights.

The Rector Connect provided us with an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the current crises and opportunities in our universities, and to reflect on implications relating to the community of learning and transformation at St Stithians.

The reputation of leading South African schools is tied up with the stature and quality of South Africa’s leading universities. It is critical that we, as South Africans, work together to create a way forward in promoting high-quality universities that are valued as an essential public good in our unequal society.

The slides I presented at the Rector Connect can be found here.

The November Council meeting included on its agenda a special focus on our universities, with presentations by our District Bishop, Gary Rivas, and our alumnus, Revd Matthew Charlesworth, both of whom have been involved as clerics in the frontlines of the campus conflict at Wits.

Our Matrics are graduating into a tertiary sector which currently is gripped in a conflict which is at once university-specific and a microcosm of wider conflicts in our divided and alienated society. Institutions of higher learning are severely compromised by the presence of security forces, destruction of property, and the absence of rational engagement and debate in the search for solutions. The current crises of the #Feesmustfall campaign are far bigger than the capacity of universities themselves to solve, but the campus interface is where the conflicts are being played out.