Indira Management Review

Robin Cohen ¹

Affiliations
1 University of Cape Town, ZA

Abstract

In South Africa, there are intense discussions of the future of higher education and many major changes have already been implemented. South Africa's problems are acute, but they are also part of a wider sense of crisis in the sector that became particulariy apparent at the dawn of the new millennium. For example, the Japanese literary scholar, Masao Miyoshi (2000: 7), claimed: 'Higher education is undergoing a sea change. Everyone knows and senses it, few try to comprehend its scope or imagine its future'. I'm not sure there have been too few attempts to understand or envisage the future; rather the problem is that there is little consensus on how we are to meet the challenges of the 21^st century. Such are the rapidity of the changes thrust upon us and so quickly have we had to respond that many universities are in a state of shock, or to use Alvin Tofler's (1970) well-wom expression, future shock'. At any one time, those in the foaming brine - university teachers, administrators, researchers and students - are not quite sure whether we are sinking or swimming.

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