South Africa is a multilingual, multicultural space. As is the case for many other countries in Africa, it has a number of official languages – 11. Although the South African Constitution, other legislation and some policies promote the use and development of all 11 languages, this does not happen in practice. For instance, the country’s […] … learn more→

Of all the corrupt, money-sucking fiefdoms on campus, none is more dangerous than the Diversity fiefdoms. Most people think our campuses are divided into departments and those certainly exist, but the departments only generate revenue for the school, providing classes for students to take. Much of that revenue pours in “institutes,” little fiefdoms which few, […] … learn more→

A month or two ago, I wrote a post called ‘The Uneven U’ which outlined ideas about paragraph structure from Eric Hayot’s book “The elements of academic style: writing for the humanities”. Briefly, Hayot claims that there are five levels of abstraction in sentence structure: Level five: Abstract; general, oriented toward a solution or conclusion Level Four: Less […] … learn more→

For book lovers, it may seem obvious to share stories with their children. Why would not they pass on their love of letters to them? However, researchers have shown that the benefits of this activity are not limited to the creation of a link but go far beyond, both from the point of view of the adult […] … learn more→

There’s considerable confusion about what ‘impact’ is, and this is no surprise given that it’s a term that’s used for so many things in the contemporary research space. For my research, I’ve had many, many conversations with people across higher education in Australia and Canada at all career levels (research higher degree students, Early Career […] … learn more→

When it comes to higher education in prison, much of the media and advocacy focus is on trying to get Congress to lift a longstanding ban on giving Pell Grants to people serving time. While a bipartisan effort to restore Pell Grant eligibility to people in prison has stirred optimism among advocates, the top Republican on the House Education Committee – U.S. Rep. Virginia […] … learn more→

School bullying can have serious consequences for victims including depression, psychosis, self-harm and suicide. With increasing evidence of harm, a groundswell of school anti-bullying programs and campaigns in Australia and internationally have vowed to stamp out bullying. The schools’ intentions are good, but often these programs have not been properly evaluated for effectiveness, and studies show some types of programs can actually make bullying […] … learn more→

It’s exam season, a time when textbook publishers’ revenues should be booming, but that’s not quite the reality. About a quarter of students admit that they regularly pirate academic content, and on average academic publishers lose more than 28 per cent of their potential revenue to textbook piracy. The industry has already begun to feel […] … learn more→

Like other professions, the legal profession has evolved in recent years and, like other sectors, has been particularly influenced by globalization and technology. In relation to globalization, on the one hand, there is a greater need to offer legal services of greater international scope and there are also more and more law students who travel […] … learn more→

“Immerse yourself in the language,” “impregnate”, “immerse yourself in a language bath”, all expressions that may suggest that a stay abroad is the miracle solution to learn a second language. Here, we want to quote the author of the blog “The world of languages”  : “the problem with this myth is that it leads you to believe […] … learn more→