Decolonising Universities in South Africa: Rigged Spaces?

This article provides a broad overview of the necessity for and challenges of decolonising universities in South Africa. It situates the student protests for the decolonisation of knowledge within the debates on the African Higher Education landscape, the ideology of Pan-Africanism, and calls for an African Renaissance. The article highlights the context in which the Fallist Movement emerged in South Africa and the demands it articulated. This article questions whether or not the decolonisation of knowledge, and the broader university system, can truly materialise, given the inherent nature and functioning of these institutions and the current practices of decolonising universities. The article argues that to date the decolonisation of universities has largely been ad-hoc, performative, and technical, rather than the sustainable and substantive transformative processes that should be at the heart of any decolonisation project. Furthermore, the article asserts that the universities that we are trying to decolonise are rigged spaces as they have been fashioned in the image of western universities and align with their norms, values, and epistemologies. To break this foundational epistemological and cultural bedrock requires a complete overhaul of the structure, ideology, and functioning of the universities. Without major shifts in the power relations, orientation and forms of knowledge production at these universities, there can be no decolonisation.     

Cultural sexism and the UK Higher Education sector

Despite the advances of the feminist movement, and wider structural legislative interventions, women remain under-represented at senior levels within academia and (some) women still experience both direct and indirect forms of discrimination throughout their careers. This article seeks to understand why this might be the case, and what, if anything we can do about it.

Using qualitative interview data which gives voice to women’s experiences, this article explores the cultural dimensions which serve to reinforce women’s structural disadvantage within the academy. Drawing upon these empirical data and informed by reflections on the notion of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ in a neo-liberal environment, this article contends that ‘cultural sexism’ provides a vocabulary through which to make sense of this structural disadvantaging. It is argued here that an understanding of the ‘ordinariness’ of cultural sexism means we can both ‘raise consciousness’, and, explore emancipatory opportunities where cultural resistance and change might be possible.     

Digital camera identification using PRNU: A feature based approach

Source camera identification is one of the emerging field in digital image forensics, which aims at identifying the source camera used for capturing the given image. The technique uses photo response non-uniformity (PRNU) noise as a camera fingerprint, as it is found to be one of the unique characteristic which is capable of distinguishing the images even if they are captured from similar cameras. Most of the existing PRNU based approaches are very sensitive to the random noise components existing in the estimated PRNU, and also they are not robust when some simple manipulations are performed on the images. Hence a new feature based approach of PRNU is proposed for the source camera identification by choosing the features which are robust for image manipulations. The PRNU noise is extracted from the images using wavelet based denoising method and is represented by higher order wavelet statistics (HOWS), which are invariant features for image manipulations and geometric variations. The features are fed to support vector machine classifiers to identify the originating source camera for the given image and the results have been verified by performing ten-fold cross validation technique. The experiments have been carried out using the images captured from various cell phone cameras and it demonstrated that the proposed algorithm is capable of identifying the source camera of the given image with good accuracy. The developed technique can be used for differentiating the images, even if they are captured from similar cameras, which belongs to same make and model. The analysis have also showed that the proposed technique remains robust even if the images are subjected to simple manipulations or geometric variations.     

政法高职教育发展的基本历程和主要经验[1]--以北京政法职业学院为例

政法高等职业教育从20世纪80年代创建以来,先后经历了从办学性质转变、到办学规模扩大、再到办学内涵提升的发展过程及其不同阶段,在办学定位、人才培养、教学改革、专业建设、课程建设、实践教学、学生管理、社会服务、科学研究等方面积累了丰富经验,取得了一系列标志性成果。在现代职业教育体系和“双一流”建设的新形势下,回顾和总结几十年来政法高等职业教育发展的基本历程和主要经验,对于推进政法高等职业教育的发展、构建现代职业教育体系、办好人民满意的高等职业教育等,都具有重要的理论价值和现实意义。     

高职大学生日常教育管理模式探索

高职生是不同于普通大学生的特殊群体。因此,对高职大学生日常教育管理模式应采用如下原则：差异化原则;以人为本原则等。对其日常教育管理的途径有传统教育管理手段和现代管理教育手段相结合;学校教育与自我教育相结合等。     

Rethinking governmental licensing of higher education institutions

In many countries around the world, governmental authorities control the market entry of new providers of higher educational services. By means of ex-ante licensing in the higher education sector, government ensures that students are only confronted with academic programs and institutions that at least meet certain minimum quality standards. This quality-assuring intervention by government may be taken for granted. From an economic viewpoint, however, it seems worthwhile to scrutinize the regulatory status quo. In order to rethink existing licensing arrangements’ raison d’être, the present paper addresses the question whether governmental market entry control in the higher education industry is necessary at all.

注重人文教育提倡精神成人

大学是大学生精神成人的重要场所,是培养大学生精神成人的摇篮,是人文精神的一面旗帜.精神成人就是要求大学生探寻"如何做人"这个终极命题,它同样要求人要全面发展,提高人的素质.目前,我国高校的实际工作中存在的一些问题,是导致大学生人文精神欠缺的一个重要原因.加强高校的人文教育应该是学校和学生双方共同努力,共同来营造一种人文精神的氛围,这是培养大学生精神成人的有效途径.     

MOOC在高职教育应用中的前景分析

随着计算机技术和网络技术的发展,全球化大数据日新月异,学习方式和学习方法已经发生了重大的变革。MOOC的出现和推广,有助于推动高职教育创新教育模式,提高高职教育教学相长的可能性,从而全面促进我国高职教育的长足发展。     

高等教育评估中多元主体的研究

随着我国经济、社会和教育的发展,高等教育评估主体多元化已成为重要趋势。这打破了政府单一主体评估的局面,有利于保证评估的公平、公正性,提高评估质量,有利于促进高等教育的发展。目前我国的高等教育评估在宏观上还缺少完善的制度和法律规范,在微观上各评估主体在自身建设上还有欠缺。这些问题成为制约我国高等教育评估实施和多元化评估主体发展的重要因素。通过对我国高等教育评估主体多元化问题进行研究,以期促进高等教育评估多元主体的发展,进而促进我国高等教育的健康发展。     

Hochschulföderalismus zwischen Kooperationszwang und Blockadegefahr: Deutschland und die Schweiz im Vergleich

In diesem Artikel werden jüngere Entwicklungen föderaler Koordinations‐ und Verflechtungsstrukturen in der Hochschulpolitik Deutschlands und der Schweiz untersucht. Seit rund zwanzig Jahren führen politische und funktionale Herausforderungen, beispielsweise die Anbindung nationaler Bildungspolitik an internationale Entwicklungen im Bildungsbereich, zu Anpassungszwängen hochschulpolitischer Governance‐Strukturen. Beide Länder waren aber für strukturelle Reformen relativ schlecht gerüstet: Deutschland litt unter der Schwerfälligkeit seiner föderalen Entscheidungsstrukturen, während die Schweiz gerade in der Hochschulpolitik große Mühe hatte, das Handeln zwischen Bund und Kantonen zu koordinieren. In beiden Länder wurden bis ins Jahr 2006 grundlegende Reformen der Governance‐Strukturen im Föderalismus durchgeführt. Der Artikel untersucht, inwiefern diese Reformen dazu beigetragen haben, die Schwächen in der föderalen Koordination beider Länder zu überwinden. Es wird aufgezeigt, dass sich Deutschland trotz der umfassenden Reformen nur wenig gewandelt hat, während die Schweiz institutionell deutlich verflochtener wird, aber institutionelle Mechanismen etabliert hat, die möglicherweise Entscheidungsblockaden verhindern helfen.