25 March 2021  Issue No: 306

Student loan schemes are enabling poor students across the world to obtain degrees. Despite the provision of financial aid in many countries, the pressure for free university education, often fuelled by protests, has not abated. In South Africa, a deepening student debt and fee crisis could have been foreseen and offered lessons best left unrepeated.

The vice-chancellor of the iconic University of Fort Hare, South Africa, an institution that has produced presidents, princes, pop stars and poets, has rubbished claims by a ruling African National Congress member of parliament, Jane Mananiso, who claimed that black university heads were not carrying their weight compared with other race groups at institutions of higher learning.

Increasingly, countries set research and development intensity goals as an essential element of science, technology and innovation plans. But policy-makers should review the goals-based approach to research and development-based innovation and growth, because unrealistic goals based on political considerations are undermining its credibility.

Plans to build the Robert Mugabe University in Zimbabwe, named after the country’s late founding president, have been shelved, with the staggering US$1 billion needed for the project unlikely to be raised following his death in 2019.

Democracy is at a crossroads. Amid the ravages of COVID-19, growing divisions and the aftermath of an assault on the Capitol, the United States needs academics who challenge norms, search for the truth, encourage listening and understanding and create a society that promotes democratic values.

The link between resource allocation and position in Chinese universities has been little studied, but it is clear that publication rates rise significantly after an academic becomes a dean at a lower ranking university. This power effect is constrained, however, at top universities.

A new book examines the psychological struggle under-represented, racially minoritised students suffer in United States science, technology, engineering and mathematics or STEM programmes and provides searing analysis of the failure of what is often touted by liberals as the gold standard of interacting with these groups of students, the claim to being ‘colour blind’.