Search results

The recent development of higher education in Africa has been spurred, in part, through a variety of cross-border higher education (CBHE) initiatives. However, this is not a new trend and this chapter traces the development of CBHE activities in Africa from the early 1900s through the current era. While the earliest forms of CBHE were largely fostered through Western nations providing advice and validation to institutions in Africa, the types of CBHE engagements are much more varied, including collaborations among African nations. The chapter also explores the push by some African nations to become educational hubs, the variability of CBHE policies across nations, and the shift of collaboration from the global north to south.

The history of empire, conquest, and the role of the university occurs at the confluence of White supremacy and anti-Blackness. Knowledge is classified not only in texts but also through images, artwork, and even statues—all of which are found on university campuses around the world. The production of knowledge is uniquely tied to power through empire, belief systems, and economy. When universities house knowledge that is rooted in a Eurocentric view of the world and are situated in Black and Brown communities in the global South, they function as conflicted carriers of White dominance. This is evidenced via monuments, statues, physical architecture, curricula, language of instruction, and codes of conduct which all serve as indicators that the university stands at the nexus of empire maintenance and the cultures they invaded. This chapter includes case studies in three regions of the world: South Africa, Brazil, and Oceania (particularly Australia and New Zealand). The ways in which universities are both complicit actors in invasion as well as byproducts make the examination of universities as carriers of White dominance a global and complex project. This historical and contemporary examination provides an in-depth view of university participation in global White dominance through a tenacious and lasting global anti-Black sentiment.

This case discusses a programme to develop areas of ‘education strengths’ in the curricula of a foreign branch campus of an Australian university. The programme may be seen as a means for organisational change, enabling academic staff to define their own areas of speciality and foci for curricula development and stimulating them to greater levels of ownership, interest and enthusiasm in their teaching. This program enrichens the curriculum by ‘localising’ it for the student cohort, it thus impacts positively on student retention.

The aim of this chapter is to describe a four-type model of organisational structures and to discuss two cases, Embrapa and the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, as well as additional cases at SAM-Research and the centre for shared medical support services established at the University of Bologna.

These cases should help readers understand the importance of designing distinctive, tailored-made support services while keeping these structures flexible for further adaptation under unforeseen changes.

The chapter concludes by stressing the role of institutions to steadily invest in the design of these tailored support structures and in personalised training for their support staff.

What are the current trends that mark out the process of internationalization of higher education? In what directions do these trends influence the direction of research and development in African universities? Does internationalization of higher education have the potential to boost knowledge production relevant to Africa’s development needs or it will further hasten the marginalization of both African universities and African development agendas within the global network of scientific knowledge? Internationalization of education is not new. Historically, students have sought better higher education abroad influenced by the desire to benefit from better opportunities provided by universities in the developed countries. The current phase of higher education internationalization has however emerged more vigorously in the 21st century and is associated with the twin trends of globalization and liberalization. Proponents of globalization have argued that higher education is bound to be more strongly affected by worldwide economic developments. They also point out that higher education institutions in developing countries should embrace aspects of internationalization to boost their efforts to be ranked among the best league of universities globally. At the national level, internationalization of higher education is presented as a process that institutions in developing countries must embrace in order to address the persistent challenges of sustainable development. For universities in Africa, the literature argues that internationalization provides them with opportunities that cut across disciplines, institutions, knowledge-systems, and nation-state boundaries thereby exposing the institutions and academics to the world’s best scientific research and infrastructures. In summary, it is contended that internationalization is a strategy to realize success in human-capability and institutional-capacity development in the universities. This chapter revisits these assertions and their tenacity to developing a culture of research and innovation in African universities, and linking the universities to the continent’s development aspirations.

Qatar’s higher education system is growing rapidly, as science in the Islamic world witnesses a contemporary renaissance. Steering a course toward becoming a “knowledge society,” Qatar and other countries in the Arabian Gulf region are now home to dozens of universities. The establishment of many international offshore, satellite, or branch campuses further emphasizes the international dynamism of higher education development there. The remarkable expansion of higher education in Qatar builds upon unifying two distinct strategies, both prevalent in capacity-building attempts worldwide. First, Qatar seeks to cultivate human capital domestically through massive infrastructure investment and development of educational structures, including Qatar University. Second, Qatar seeks to match the strongest global universities through direct importation of existing organizational capacity, faculty and staff, and accumulated reputation. Local capacity in higher education and scientific productivity is built simultaneously with the ongoing borrowing of ideas and talent from different regions of the world. The relative youth of the higher education system and the state’s small geographic and demographic size are being compensated by considerable investments in the standard-bearing university – a national university taking root – simultaneously with hosting branches of eminent foreign higher education institutions, mainly on the Education City campus. Exemplifying extreme glocalization and mondialisation, Qatar has become a regional hub, bridging the traditional university strongholds in the West and the rising powerhouses in the East.

This chapter discusses the Government of Barbados’s 2014 introduction of partially student paid tuition fees for Barbadians attending the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus. This introduction of a student paid tuition component came after fifty years of state-funded education at the local UWI campus. In this chapter I assert that this introduction of fees altered the existing postcolonial “social contract” that has developed in the country and that has been integral to Barbados being presented as a “model” for small developing states in the Caribbean and beyond. In the chapter I argue that the social contract in the country was altered in light of the alleged demands of financial crisis and that this crisis climate allowed for “decision-making by surprise” in a country in which collaborative education governance has grown to be accepted as the norm.