Access to education is a significant determinant in future success, not only for a country but equally for individuals. Higher Education (HE) thus is an integral part of the Sustainable Development Goals and vital in supporting African development. Despite this, there is often a lack of access to HE in many parts of Africa, distance education can subsequently play an important role in increasing access to education by providing materials online. Even though institutions such as the University of South Africa, a provider of Open Distance Learning (ODL), can open access to HE for many marginalised and peripheral communities, we cannot separate access to ODL education from the debate of access to ICTs. Students in urban areas have a significantly different educational experience to students with poor ICT access in peri-urban and rural areas. This paper explores the nature of access to ICT and how this affects students' ability to access HE.
Internationalization efforts in higher education have often been categorized according to Jane Knight’s binary of “Internationalization at Home” (IaH) and “Internationalization Abroad” (IA). However, a rising number of technology-supported activities have created new opportunities for university internationalization. For example, students can now remain “at home” while using technology to study with an institution or program that is simultaneously located “abroad.” We have conceptualized these activities as a new third category called Internationalization at a Distance (IaD). In this article, we introduce the concept of IaD and outline an in-depth case study of an international distance education provider at scale, the University of South Africa.
The international mobility of institutions, staff, students and knowledge resources such as books and study materials have usually been studied separately. This paper, for the first time, brings these different forms of knowledge mobilities together. Through a historical analysis of South African HE alongside results from a quantitative survey of academic staff in three international branch campuses in South Africa, the paper suggests three things. First, it points to the importance of regional education hubs in the global South and their role in South-South staff and student mobilities. Second, it points to the importance of reading these mobilities as outcomes of historically attuned policy making-educational, migratory and political. Finally, the paper points to the theoretical possibilities that arise by bringing institutional, staff, student and knowledge resource mobilities in place and suggests new avenues for further research.
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