Students Participation In University Governance In South Africa

The purpose of this book is to examine the academic experiences of students who participated in university governance at South African universities. Scrutiny is placed on the alignment of student representative council constitutions and university statutes with the actual experiences students had in discharging their roles in governance and in the way this impacted their academic progress. Through a multi-site case study design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of the student representative council who participated in university governance and supported by document analysis and observations to generate the data. The study adopted Tinto’s Integration Theory and Astin’s Theory of Involvement as the two frameworks are based on the relationship between students’ extra-curricular activity and their academic experiences. The study invokes a greater awareness of students as major stakeholder in governance and informs policies and practices that may better serve students’ academic experiences. The study will contribute to the understanding of cooperative governance principles while drawing from the perspective of the students on their understanding, limitations and challenges in discharging their roles in university governance.

The second volume of the African Higher Education Dynamics Series brings together the research of an international network of higher education scholars with interest in higher education and student politics in Africa. Most authors are early career academics who teach and conduct research in universities across the continent, and who came together for a research project and related workshops and a symposium on student representation in African higher education governance. The book includes theoretical chapters on student organising, student activism and representation; chapters on historical and current developments in student politics in Anglophone and Francophone Africa; and in-depth case studies on student representation and activism in a cross-section of universities and countries. The book provides a unique resource for academics, university leaders and student affairs professionals as well as student leaders and policy-makers in Africa and elsewhere.

The book presents the most comprehensive and most thorough study of the developments in South African higher education and research after the first democratic elections of 1994, that is of post-Apartheid South African higher education. The benefits to the reader are that he/she will get a detailed insight into the new (i.e. post-1994) South African higher education system. The large number of experienced authors and editors involved in the book guarantees that the reader will be introduced in the new SA higher education system from a large number of perspectives that are presented in a consistent and coherent way.

This book examines the concept of the democratization of governance in universities in Kenya with particular emphasis on students involvement in governance processes and decision making. Data were collected from members of the student community utilizing a structured self-administered questionnaire and from purposively selected key informants and focus group discussants drawn from Kenyatta University (representing the public sector) and the United States International University (representing the private sector). The guiding argument for the study was that shared governance, one of the principles of good governance, is critical in enabling the universities to deliver their visions and the missions effectively. The results revealed that while in principle, Kenyan universities have embraced democratic governance in which all stakeholders, including students, have a role to play, in practice they continue to violate the core principles of good governance, particularly shared governance. Specifically, students, who are major stakeholders in university education, are largely excluded from significant structures of governance thereby limiting their influence and participation. Although their representation is mainly provided via student self-governance organs (unions, associations and/or councils), their effectiveness is undermined considerably by the lack of trust and confidencec of the student body and the unending manipulation by top university administrators and external political actors. Student active involvement in decision making is mainly confined to lower levels such as the school/faculty and departmental/programme. The authors call for a paradigm shift in the involvement of students in the governance of universities in ways that discourage the current culture of tokenism and political correctness that characterizes public and private universities in Kenya.

This book examines the role of the university governing council and the changing nature of university governance using a case study from a South African university. The book considers the key challenging features of South African higher education in relation to current competing international trends in higher education governance. It shows how major decision-makers within the university operate within competing governance knowledge domains to exercise good practice within turbulent institutional contexts. These diverse institutional cultures are examined in terms of their contribution to various governance practices, presenting an emerging model of university governance known as the structural–systemic–cultural model. Throwing light on the nature of challenges associated with the governance of universities in the post-apartheid era, this book will be of interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of higher education, comparative education and education governance. Also, it will appeal to university councils and management across Africa.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, universities around the globe have taken numerous extraordinary measures and implemented many changes to their strategic, operational, and academic activities. Currently, there is a transformation taking place from the emergency decision-making in the early stages of the pandemic towards reflection and resolution on how the past months can shape governance and strategy. Higher education institutions have been facing challenges with the alignment of their university governance for their strategic and operational plans. Presently, university leaders have prioritized risk management and financial management over all else. Unfortunately, due to these priorities, university responses to the pandemic took the top-down approach of management, rejecting the shared governance structures and collegial practices of the institutions. The pandemic has accelerated the openness to change by creating an emergency or steering response team led by university presidents and provosts, with sub-teams focusing on operations and other academic advisory groups working together to deal with the fast-rising scenarios. The consequence is a clear flow of information and strong communication across the institution, which sequentially builds on mechanisms to respond to the secondary effects of the pandemic. Moreover, higher education institutions are continuously facing challenges with their strategic alignment of business objectives in order to have a diverse educational system in response to the pandemic. Assessing University Governance and Policies in Relation to the COVID-19 Pandemic presents the latest research and studies investigating information on university governance and adapting previous, existing, and proposed models for the current pandemic. This book is comprised of chapters contributed by various leading international authors to discuss and analyze all aspects of university governance in relation to their impact on strategies in finance, sustainability, academic issues, research, faculty and students, leadership, campus, employment and recruitments, and more. This is an essential text for university presidents, strategic planning authorities in universities, college deans and academic department chairpersons, government authorities and policymakers, researchers, students, and academicians.