By Geoff Maslen – Acting Global Editor. As Karen MacGregor reports in our lead story this week, the Somalia-based Islamist militant group al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the brutal attack on Garissa University College in northeast Kenya. Nearly 150 people were killed – most of them Christian students.In Commentary, Jenny J Lee and Chika Sehoole describe how South Africa has become a regional hub of learning for students from across Africa and also an emerging global destination for international students.
And, going further afield to China, Juan Hu and Jiali Qin raise questions about who wields power over academic matters in the giant nation’s universities: the government, administrators or academics themselves? And on to the United States where William Patrick Leonard argues in this week’s Blog that the era of increased enrolments and ever-rising tuition fees in America’s regional universities must end and institutions should scale back their ambitions to ensure they are sustainable.
Meantime, in our Debates section, three writers present opposing views of the South African student protests to have the Rhodes statue removed from the University of Cape Town and to abolish other symbols of British colonialism. William Saunderson-Meyer describes the student efforts as an “urge to rewrite history – a profoundly totalitarian act”, while Zenobia Ismail relates it more to a sense of alienation that non-white students “still feel about South Africa’s premier universities and the legacy of white dominance”. Cape Town academic Xolela Mangcu, however, says the protests could be an early warning of a racial war. Read more...
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