Category: Commentary

Comments on news and other commentaries on the state of the contemporary university.

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Commentary Core Theory Key Insights

The Paradox of Precision: How Ranking Frameworks Re-engineer Reality Through Observation

Institutional ranking frameworks, like India’s NIRF, successfully drive measurable improvements (e.g., more research, higher faculty qualifications) by defining specific metrics. However, this very act of measurement creates a new reality […]

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Commentary

Building with Borrowed Blueprints: The Paradox of African Higher Education’s Quest for Autonomy

How can African higher education genuinely ‘Africanize’ internationalization when foundational initiatives and long-term sustainability are still heavily influenced, if not funded, by external partners? The call to “Africanize” the internationalization […]

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Commentary Core Theory

The Re-Description of Higher Education: From Autopoietic Enclosure to Geopolitical Operability

A response to the University World News article: Southern African universities build more scholarly bridges The contemporary higher education system, historically observed as an entity primarily defined by its internal […]

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Commentary Core Theory

The Regulator’s Paradox: How the Quest for Order Creates Systemic Disorder

A primary function of any governance structure is to observe the system it regulates and introduce distinctions that reduce complexity, thereby ensuring stable and predictable operations. When a regulatory subsystem, […]

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Commentary

AI: The Unflattering Mirror

Recent articles on AI in higher education highlight its potential to deepen institutional inequality, reveal flaws in current teaching practices, and expose the fragility of the university’s business model. However, […]

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AI Commentary Core Theory

From Sovereignty to Systemic Curation: The University’s Second-Order Imperative

The discourse surrounding universities and artificial intelligence has coalesced around a seemingly robust concept: “AI sovereignty.” As articulated in recent analyses and presented by the University World News, this involves […]

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AI Commentary

The Steering Problem: Why Universities Are Teaching the Wrong Lessons About AI

Universities are treating AI as a crisis of cheating, when it’s really a crisis of assessment. The essay was never the learning itself, just a convenient proxy for it—and that […]

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AI Challenges Commentary

The Great Educational Awakening: How AI Forces Universities to Remember They’re Human

AI isn’t replacing education—it’s forcing education to become authentically human for the first time. By handling all the mechanical parts of learning, AI reveals a profound paradox: the very human […]