8 March 2020  Issue No: 588

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued guidance in response to the global outbreak of novel coronavirus advising all higher education institutions to “consider postponing or cancelling” upcoming foreign exchange programmes and asking current programme participants to return home.

A record 8.74 million students are about to graduate from universities and colleges across China, but as a result of economic slow-down, the China-United States trade war, and now severe disruption of higher education and the economy from the coronavirus shutdown, their employment prospects look bleak.

The United States higher education sector continues to decline, while China’s rate of improvement has slowed down, but the United Kingdom is beginning to regain lost ground, in the latest QS World University Rankings by Subject. The University of Cambridge, UK, has the most top 10 programmes.

Higher education is at a turning point and needs to re-examine its position in society as a knowledge producer and re-imagine its role on the planet as a contributor to the common good, addressing the contemporary needs, concerns and problems of humanity.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa has recently proposed several changes to the humanities and social sciences in African universities, but they need first to consider what the purpose of these disciplines is in an African context – and link those changes to what is happening in schools.

Daniel Burston, in Pscyhoanalysis, Politics and the Postmodern University, argues that the crisis in the liberal arts, the loss of faith in evidence, has led not to any sort of liberation but, unknowingly, has furthered the corporate agenda now dominating many North American universities.