16 June 2022  Issue No: 364

Ministers who are responsible for education, training, science, technology and innovation from the member states of the Southern African Development Community or SADC are to meet in Lilongwe, Malawi, on 17 June to evaluate various initiatives in the sector, including the region’s qualifications framework.

South Africa can claim to be the home of the most successful higher education system in Africa, as seven of its 26 public universities were ranked among the top 1,000 universities globally in the 19th edition of the QS World University Rankings.

Plogging Nigeria, an environmental movement founded and driven by students across 22 higher education campuses, is combining exercising with the picking up of waste. It has also been training volunteers and community members on topics such as sustainability, climate change and waste management.

Ethiopia has a unique ‘model’ of deploying its intellectual diaspora – academics, researchers and high-level professionals – by integrating their competence, experience, knowledge and networks to help resolve societal questions in their home countries and advance knowledge-generation. This effort should be vigorously scaled up.

In a context in which major publishers earn about US$2 billion annually from article processing charges, questions are being raised about a system in which article processing charges are increasing and ‘buy’ authors open access, according to a new study.

The mental health of university students is of growing concern. Those who are battling with depression and anxiety may benefit from Stepped Care, which draws inspiration from the World Health Organization’s mental health tools that fit support mechanisms with individual learners’ needs.

Respected global medical journal The Lancet will continue to reject papers with data from Africa that fail to acknowledge African collaborators, in the interest of building African research and of promoting integrity, equity and fairness in research collaboration, according to Senior Executive Editor Dr Sabine Kleinert.

The real cost of the virtual conference, particularly in the case of early-career academic staff, is that it constrains opportunities for serendipity and limits the chances for connecting, networking and community building that can only be fully realised through presence and proximity.

The abolition of tenure for academic faculty and the restrictions on the teaching of critical race theory in universities in the United States are both part of nationwide conservative efforts to take over higher education classrooms and rein in what is perceived to be liberal academia.