Fancy degrees cannot mask ugly racial hatred

One thing Matthew Theunissen and Ntokozo Qwabe have in common is degrees from top universities. The other thing they share, of course, is their racial hatred. 

Universities are consumed by capture (new students), coverage and completion rates for in this way we maximise subsidy income from the state in times of great financial uncertainty.

This new managerialism in universities, across the world, has eclipsed attention to questions of what is worth teaching and learning in the first place.

So, for example, while universities everywhere profess commitment to the three tasks of teaching, research and community service, the fact is institutions pay lip service to public duty; show me one university that promotes an academic based on their commitment to community work.

The money comes from teaching as many students as you possibly can (hence the overcrowded classrooms) and generating as many units of publication as possible (hence the many undercooked articles in low-level South African journals).

Theunissen and Qwabe are merely products of a weakened educational system; both will find excuses for their behaviour even if one or both come to mumble an apology.

To spend too much time, therefore, on the ranting of two individuals on social media is to distract us from the more serious post-apartheid question of what education is really for?

Professor Jonathan Jansen is the vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State