South Africa/January 09, 2018/Source: http://www.enca.com
Fees Must Fall activist Mcebo Dlamini said government should not attack the Economic Freedom Fighters for calling on potential students to go to universities and demand free education.
Dlamini, a student activist who has been at the forefront of the battle against university fees said the free education issue should be handled politically.
«We have an obligation as a country and as students and as activist and assist our people at home. The call by the EFF is just a mere protest and it says to government work hard. I am taking it as activist. We need to handle it politically and not attack the EFF,» he said.
Dlamini’s remarks follow the EFF leader Julius Malema’s New Year message where he called on all qualifying students even those who did not apply last year to report to tertiary institutions and take advantage of free higher education.
Malema’s statement followed President Zuma’s announcement of free higher education for most South Africans in December.
However Universities South Africa said no university would allow walk-ins this year and Higher Education Minister Hlengiwe Mkhize accused Malema of making reckless statements.
American technology company, Microsoft has organised an education leaders event in Accra to address the digital transformation of education across the globe.
The event, supported by Zepto Ghana Ltd, Point of View and Africa Schools Online, brought together Heads of Institutions, Directors of IT, Teachers and actors in the education sector to appreciate how Microsoft’s latest technologies and education tools can help institutions save money, attract students, and aid teaching and learning globally.
Speaking on the sidelines of the event, an education director of Microsoft in the Middle East, Jaye Richard Mills, said it was vital that educational institutions employ ‘real-world’ teaching and learning methods in order for the youth to better translate what they study into their daily lives.
“I think the challenge as students is that you come into university or college expecting it to be reflective of the life that you live outside, and what you very often find [that isn’t the case]. We need to make better connections between education and real life outside,” she said.
“So I think the purpose of today is to talk about windows and Microsoft in education, and what Microsoft is doing around the world to encourage the grown of the skills driven agenda in our schools and universities.”
According to her, the world had shifted from knowledge acquisition to a greater focus on skills and capacity development.
“[There’s] a fundamental shift from pure knowledge and acquisition to very much skill for 21st-century life. The skill that you need to take your place in the 21st-century information age, are the types of skills that you need to acquire during education.”
The event saw the unveiling of some new software like Microsoft 365 Education, which combines the essentials of the Windows 10 platform all within a simplified licensing framework for better and easy learning, Office 365 for productivity and collaboration and Enterprise Mobility Suite for security and management.
Jaye Richard Mills also said the programs are meant to better education and equip the young to be able to face and adapt to the technological age, which is at the heart of Microsoft.
“Microsoft is about supporting educators, and supporting them on a journey to improving their skills, and we do that through the various programs that we have for training which you will find on our Microsoft.com/education site, and also in the teams that we have working around the world to develop our software.
“So for Microsoft this is very much about supporting educators to deliver quality education that speaks for purposes in this 21 century information age,” she added.
Resumen: Los sindicatos del personal no académico de las universidades nigerianas han decidido reanudar su huelga el 4 de diciembre, en protesta contra la financiación deficiente de las universidades y otros asuntos relacionados que afectan el bienestar de sus miembros.
The non-academic staff unions of Nigerian universities have resumed their suspended strike.
The unions, members of NAAT, NASU, and SSANU, announced the resumption of the strike in a joint statement on Thursday night.
They said the strike will resume on Monday, December 3.
The statement was signed by the national presidents of NAAT, Sani Sulaimon; NASU, Chris Ani; and SSANU, Samson Ugwoke.
They workers said they reject the mode of sharing the recent financial allocation to universities.
«We wrote a letter to the federal ministry of education to explain the criteria for the allocation and we gave them seven days notice to do the needful. But the date has elapsed without a response from the federal government,» they said.
PREMIUM TIMES reported how the mode of sharing N23 billion sent to universities by the federal government had caused protests in many universities as the non-academic workers accuse their academic counterparts of unfair distribution formula.
The unions suspended their strike and asked their members to resume work on September 25 after signing a memorandum of understanding with the federal government.
They gave the federal government one month to start the implementation of the agreement; but said on Thursday that the government is yet to meet their demands after two months.
BIGGEST EDUCATION EXHIBITION OF PAKISTAN TO TAKE PLACE ON 28-29 APRIL 2018
EdEx Pakistan – The Higher Education & Training Exhibition will be held from 28 – 29 April 2018 at the Karachi Expo Centre. The largest Education Expo to be held in Pakistan, it will feature over 80 leading local and international universities, colleges and higher education institutes, various training institutes from all across the globe.
Organized by Expology Private Ltd., EdEx Pakistan will provide an ideal platform for local and international universities and colleges to promote their accredited courses – ranging from Bachelor›s Degree, Post-Graduation/Masters and Doctorate Programmes. The Expo also opens a window of opportunity for these higher education institutes to meet with key Government entities, professionals and local students seeking to study abroad.
Apart from playing a prominent role in the country’s development, the exhibition is organized with the objective of helping institutes of higher learning reach a cross section of Pakistani students who have the qualification and the means to contemplate further education in Pakistan or abroad. Faculty, admission officers and career counselors will interact with the visiting students directly on a one-on-one basis.
One of the largest and complete education fairs, EdEx Pakistan sets the stage to meet aspiring and promising students interested to study in Pakistan and abroad. You cannot afford to miss out Pakistan’s most important event of international universities, business schools and colleges which brings you thousands of potential students face-to-face, parents and agents from all over the country. Students can be informed about the study opportunities offered at your campus.
EdEx Pakistan is a unique education fair showcasing universities, colleges and other educational Institutions from all across the world. This fair is the most exciting platform for introducing your institutions to an eager and growing market of potential students ready to study abroad.
Pakistan is one of the leading international markets in Asia for recruiting students in to educational institutions from all over the world.
For Exhibiting Enquiries and Sponsorship Opportunities in EdEx Pakistan, please contact Mr. Muhammad Usman, Expology on Mobile No: +92 322 2711608 or e-mail media@edexpak.com, Website: www.edexpak.com
Ireland/ September 19, 2017/By: Eamon Sikafi/ Source: http://www.independent.ie
International educational services have become one of the fastest-growing business sectors in the world. In the Middle East, in particular, there are significant, untapped opportunities for Ireland.
The technology-based learning specialist Eduware puts the value of the education sector in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region at $61bn (€51bn) and the share of private education at $5.5bn (€4.6bn). As the Gulf economies look to diversify, improve public sector efficiency and grow their private sector workforce, they are seeking a new mix of skills across disciplines and levels. According to PwC Middle East, governments in the region are encouraging public-private partnerships to meet increasing demand, and international partnerships are becoming increasingly sophisticated to offer the best of global good practice in a localised environment.
The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland identified this opportunity over a decade ago and now operates campuses in Dubai and Bahrain. However, there is far wider potential, not just for our universities and institutes of technology – but also for companies in the education and training space. Those that seize the opportunity will find that they are, in many ways, pushing an open door. This is particularly the case in the UAE, where Ireland’s education system is highly regarded.
This is evident from the large numbers of Irish teachers and nurses employed across the Emirates, as well as newer developments. For example, the Irish book publisher CJ Fallon recently entered a school-book partnership with the UAE Education Ministry. In January, a delegation from the ministry travelled to the Young Scientist Exhibition in Dublin, with a view to replicating the competition at home. In addition, the Ministry has stated its intention to recruit more Irish teachers and Irish inspectors, with immediate effect.
There are many examples of co-operation in the medical area too. The UAE is replicating Ireland’s training system for paramedics and has committed to send 50 Emirati paramedics a year to Ireland for training. Similarly, the Dubai Ambulance Service follows Irish ambulance service guidelines, and the fit out of ambulances in Dubai is undertaken by three Irish companies.
These developments suggest a receptive market, with significant potential for other Irish businesses. Enterprise Ireland’s offices in Dubai, Riyadh and Doha can help companies will the right offering and ambition to understand the Gulf markets and their key players. We are also focused on helping our universities and institutes of technology win a greater share of students from the region. The UAE’s outbound student mobility rate is one of the highest in the world.
Ireland is seen by the Arab world as providing a safe and welcoming environment, particularly for female students. In addition, given the evolving political landscape in the United States and the fact that Ireland will be the only English-speaking country in the EU after Brexit, we are uniquely positioned to attract high-quality Middle Eastern students.
However, the value of international students is not always fully understood in Ireland. The economic impacts can spill over into other sectors such as tourism. Students will be visited by their families and friends, and after they graduate they are likely to return with their own families.
A more diverse student population enables Irish students to build international contacts and gain a better understanding of other cultures, which is increasingly important in a globalised world. Equally, experience tells us that for overseas graduates, great memories of their student days and a deep appreciation of their formative years in Ireland foster long-term goodwill and international understanding. These graduates will, in effect, become a significant part of Ireland’s new diaspora and a powerful asset in the decades ahead.
Kenia / 20 de septiembre de 2017 / Por: OUMA WANZALA / Fuente: http://www.nation.co.ke/
It will now be easier to identify students in universities after a number of the institutions rolled out a biometric registration of the learners this month.
Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, University of Nairobi and Maasai Mara University are among the institutions that registered first year students biometrically in compliance with a directive from the government last year.
Some 88,626 students were placed in 59 universities. A total of 71,089 students joined 31 public universities while 17,368 others have joined private institutions.
The institutions admitted the students last week for the start of their academic year.
Most universities cited cost implications for the delay in the implementation of the directive.
TERROR THREATS
The move to register students biometrically was due to terror threats after it emerged that university students were easy targets of terror networks.
University of Nairobi Vice-Chancellor Peter Mbithi said new students had been registered biometrically. However, Prof Mbithi did not disclose the cost implication.
Moi University Vice-Chancellor Laban Ayiro said the institution had put in place modalities to register the students biometrically. “The launch will be held next week through a local bank,” said Prof Ayiro.
According to the directive from the government, universities were required to develop a functioning electronic register of all students registered by the respective university and college.
Mount Kenya Vice-Chancellor, Prof Stanley Waudo, said the institution had embraced the technology.
BIO DATA
USIU-Africa Principal Marketing and Communications Officer Jackie Chirchir said: “USIU-Africa has a biometric registration system in place which was launched in 2008 and upgraded in 2013.”
Higher learning institutions were also to capture bio data for students living in the institutions’ hostels.
Commission for University Education Chairman Chacha Nyaigoti Chacha said he hoped all universities will comply with the directive.
At the same time, university lecturers have written to their employer asking it to implement new salary scales or face industrial action.
Universities Academic Staff Union (Uasu) Secretary-General Constantine Wasonga said lecturers will down their tools if their pay demands are not met by the end of this month.
“We want the new salary structure to be effected without delays,” said Dr Wasonga. “Uasu is deferring giving a strike notice to grant the university councils an opportunity to urgently streamline matters.”
The march in Charlottesville, Va., earlier this summer by white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists illuminated the growing danger of authoritarian movements both in the United States and across the globe.
It’s signalling a danger that mimics the increasingly forgotten horrors of the 1930s.
Neo-Nazis in the United States, and possibly those worldwide, appear especially emboldened because they’ve found a comfortable, if not supportive, place at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
President Donald Trump’s administration has included white supremacist sympathizers like Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller. All three embrace elements of the nefarious racist ideology that was on full display in Charlottesville.
Trump’s refusal to denounce their Nazi slogans and violence in strong political and ethical terms has suggested his own complicity with such movements.
It should surprise no one that David Duke, a former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, told the media in the midst of the violence in Charlottesville that white supremacists were “going to fulfil the promises of Donald Trump … to take our country back.”
‘God bless him’
Nor should it surprise anyone that Trump’s silence delighted the far right.
The Daily Stormer, a white supremacist website, even had this to say: “No condemnation at all. When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.”
It appears that the presence of Nazi and Confederate flags celebrating a horrendous history of millions lost to the Holocaust and slavery, of lynchings and church bombings, and the assassinations of Black civil rights leaders like Medgar Evans and Martin Luther King, Jr., did little to move Trump.
Charlottesville has resurrected elements of a past that resulted in some of the worst crimes in human history. The ideology, values and institutions of a liberal democracy are once again under assault by those who don’t believe in equality, justice and democracy.
All of these alarming developments raise serious questions about the role of higher education in a democracy.
What role, if not responsibility, do universities have in the face of a new wave of authoritarianism?
What purpose should education serve when rigorous knowledge is replaced by opinions, the truth is labelled “fake news” by the president of the United States and his devotees, unbridled self-interest replaces the social good and language operates in the service of fear, violence and a culture of cruelty?
Universities must hold up democratic ideals
Surely, institutions of higher education cannot limit their role to training at a time when democracy is under assault around the world.
Colleges and universities must define themselves anew as a public good, a protective space for the promotion of democratic ideals, of the social imagination, civic values and a critically engaged citizenship.
Renowned education professor Jon Nixon argues that education must be developed as “a protected space within which to think against the grain of received opinion: a space to question and challenge, to imagine the world from different standpoints and perspectives, to reflect upon ourselves in relation to others and, in so doing, to understand what it means to assume responsibility.”
Given the ongoing attack on civic literacy, truth, historical memory and justice, surely it’s all the more imperative for colleges and universities to teach students to do more than master work-based skills.
Instead, we must educate them to become intelligent, compassionate, critically engaged adults fully aware of the fact that without informed citizens, there is no democracy.
There’s much more at stake here than protecting and opening the boundaries of free speech. There is the more crucial necessity to deepen and expand the formative cultures and public spheres that make democracy possible.
Educators cannot forget that the struggle over democracy is about much more than the struggle over economic resources and power. It’s also about language, agency, desire, identity and imagining a future without injustice.
Return to authoritarianism not far-fetched
As the historian Timothy Snyder has observed, it’s crucial to remember that the success of authoritarian regimes in Germany and other places succeeded, in part, because they were not stopped in the early stages of their development.
The events in Charlottesville provide a glimpse of authoritarianism on the rise and shine a spotlight upon the forces that are trying usher in a new and dangerous era, both in the United States and worldwide.
While it may seem far-fetched to assume American-style totalitarianism will soon become the norm in the United States, a return to authoritarianism is clearly no longer the stuff of fantasy or hysterical paranoia.
That’s especially since its core elements of hatred, exclusion, racism and white supremacy have been incorporated into both the highest echelons of political power and throughout the mainstream right-wing media, especially Fox News and Breitbart.
The authoritarian drama unfolding in the United States includes the use of state force against immigrants, right-wing populist violence against mosques and synagogues and attacks on Muslims, young Blacks and others who do not fit into the vile script of white nationalism.
Charlottesville was just part of a larger trend of domestic terrorism and homegrown fascism that is on the upswing in the United States.
Trump’s administration, after all, has announced it will no longer “investigate white nationalists, who have been responsible for a large share of violent hate crimes in the Unites States.”
Trump has also lifted restrictions imposed by the Obama administration in order to provide local police departments with military surplus equipment such as armed vehicles, bullet-proof vests and grenade launchers.
These actions accelerate Trump’s law-and-order agenda, escalate racial tensions in cities that are often treated like combat zones and reinforce a warrior mentality among police officers.
Equally telling is Trump’s presidential pardon of Joe Arpaio, the notorious white supremacist and disgraced former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. Not only did Arpaio engage in racial profiling, despite being ordered by the court to desist, he also had a notorious reputation for abusing prisoners in his Tent City, which he once called “a concentration camp.”
A nod to domestic terrorism
There is more at work here than Trump’s endorsement of white nationalism; he’s also sending a clear message of support for a culture of violence that both legitimizes and gives meaning to acts of domestic terrorism.
What’s more, there’s a clear contempt for the rule of law. And there’s also an endorsement not just for racist ideology, but for institutional racism and consequently the primacy of the race-based incarceration state.
In his various comments, tweets and policies, Trump has made clear that he does not see himself as the leader of the country, but as the head of a right-wing movement fuelled by rage, isolation, social atomization and communal disintegration, galvanized by a culture of fear and bigotry. He preys upon a populist hatred of democracy.
At the moment we’re seeing a looming collapse of civic culture.
A healthy democracy always struggles to preserve its ideals, values and practices. When taken for granted, justice dies, social responsibility becomes a burden and the seeds of authoritarianism flourish.
We may be in the midst of dark times, but resistance is no longer an option but a necessity.
And educators have a particular responsibility to address this growing assault on democracy. Any other option is an act of complicity, and a negation of what it means for education to matter in a democratic society.
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