South Africa’s National Digital University dream must become a reality WESLEY DIPHOKO wesley.diphoko@inl.co.za
IN 2012, a woman was killed next to the gates of the University of Johannesburg. She was the mother of a prospective student. Nine years later a father has lost his life again next to a university, this time near Wits. The reason why these two people died is partly related to the difficulty of accessing higher education in South Africa. One was queuing, trying to get her son registered, the other was a bystander shot when police were shooting at students fighting for access to higher education. While the details of these tragic incidents are more nuanced than that, they force us to think deeper about what it will take to address the access to
The reason why these two individuals died is partly related to the difficulty of accessing higher education in South Africa education challenges. One would think that a loss of life in 2012 would have moved society to come up with a solution to this challenge, but we are still here with a significant number of young people who cannot access higher education because of space constraints
and limited resources. We live in an era where technology makes it possible for people to access almost everything that has to do with learning and education. A year ago, as people were contemplating the prospect of weeks or months of lockdown, two young academics thought up a novel community service project: helping people to use their free time to learn a valuable new skill. They set out to turn Stanford’s introductory coding class, CS106A, into a massive virtual community: Code in Place. Two months later, the results were in: 10 000 students from
