Education (Im)possible: A Historic View on the Adequacy of Higher Education in South Africa
Keywords:
Higher education, Africanisation, Access to education, Colonialism, ApartheidAbstract
This paper highlights the historic foundations of the current higher education system in South Africa. The system has seen the application of restrictions from two successive oppressive systems: colonialism and apartheid. Neither of these allowed access to education to the majority of the country’s people. Both systems left an impact that is making it very difficult to ensure that HE is able to be relevant in terms of curriculum, and accessible in terms of quality and number of graduates. While there is agreement that substantial change has to happen in HE it cannot happen at all costs. It is important for the youth to realise that what appears to be a system that does not want to change, is in fact a system with its foundations in almost 200 years of suppression of progressive contextual intellectual thought.
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