SAJHE Annual Report 2025

2025-03-29

Report on Volume 36 (Six Issues) of SAJHE

Volume 36 presents a comprehensive and multidimensional exploration of contemporary higher education, particularly within the South African and broader African context. Across its six issues, the volume demonstrates strong coherence around the evolving identity, governance, pedagogy, and social responsibility of universities.

Collectively, the volume reflects engagement at three interconnected levels:

  1. Structural and Systemic Dimensions

Several issues examine higher education as a regulated, contested, and politically situated system. Themes include:

  • Academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and public accountability
  • Governance, leadership, and organisational culture
  • Legal frameworks and policy reform
  • Managerialism, corporatisation, and competitive intelligence
  • Political activism and the moral positioning of universities

These contributions position the university within broader socio-political and democratic struggles, highlighting tensions between autonomy, accountability, and transformation.

  1. Pedagogical and Curriculum Innovation

A strong emphasis throughout the volume is placed on teaching and learning reform, including:

  • Supervision and research development
  • Curriculum transformation and disciplinary renewal
  • Extended curriculum programmes and student transition
  • First-year experience and academic literacy
  • Digital pedagogy, AI, blended learning, and online assessment
  • Work-integrated learning and professional readiness

This strand presents higher education as an evolving pedagogical space responding to technological shifts, post-pandemic realities, and demands for employability and epistemic renewal.

  1. Equity, Inclusion, and Transformation

Across the six issues, there is sustained attention to:

  • Decolonisation and indigenous knowledge
  • Gender equity and LGBTQ+ inclusion
  • Academic exclusion and under-preparedness
  • Multilingualism and mother tongue education
  • Student well-being and academic staff well-being

These themes underscore higher education as a site of social justice contestation and democratic reform.

Taken as a whole, Volume 36 portrays higher education as:

  • A regulated system shaped by law, policy, and governance pressures
  • A pedagogical laboratory adapting to digital transformation and curricular change
  • A professional formation space concerned with graduate competence and employability
  • A political and ethical arena negotiating academic freedom, activism, and public accountability
  • A transformative project grappling with equity, decolonisation, and epistemic justice

The progression across the six issues reveals a movement from structural and systemic concerns (Issue 1), to internal institutional practice (Issue 2), to practice-oriented pedagogical innovation (Issue 3), to deep normative debates on academic freedom (Issue 4), to political and ethical engagement (Issue 5), and finally to student-centred performance, curriculum, and professional identity questions (Issue 6).

Volume 36 offers a sustained and coherent engagement with higher education as a dynamic, contested, and evolving ecosystem. It captures the complexity of universities operating under conditions of technological disruption, democratic transformation, institutional accountability, and social inequality.

Overall, the volume reflects a sector simultaneously negotiating governance pressures, pedagogical reform, political responsibility, and inclusion – positioning higher education as both a site of constraint and a space of possibility.

All articles published in this volume underwent rigorous peer review and were returned to authors for revision. We are pleased to note that the authors responded thoughtfully and diligently to reviewers’ comments, strengthening their arguments, clarifying conceptual frameworks, refining methodologies, and enhancing the overall scholarly contribution of their work. The revised articles reflect a serious engagement with critique and a commitment to advancing knowledge in the field of higher education.

Our editorial office remained actively involved throughout the process of selecting, coordinating reviews, and compiling the six issues. Considerable care was taken to ensure that each contribution met the journal’s scholarly standards and aligned meaningfully with the thematic orientations of the respective issues. The final published articles attest to a high level of quality – both theoretically robust and practically relevant – offering informed, critical, and contextually grounded analyses of South African higher education.

We extend our sincere gratitude to our reviewers for their rigorous, constructive, and collegial evaluations, which were indispensable in strengthening the scholarship presented in this volume. We are equally appreciative of the authors for their intellectual commitment, responsiveness, and dedication to producing well-informed and impactful contributions. Together, these collaborative efforts have resulted in a volume that meaningfully advances debate, reflection, and research on higher education in South Africa.

Yusef Waghid
Editor-in-Chief South African Journal of Higher Education