<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>Higher education, I don\u2019t need to tell you, is under growing pressure to change. Not just because technology is moving quickly, but because the world of work is changing just as fast.<\/p>\n<p>Employers are looking, I think, for more adaptable, work-ready graduates. Students want more flexible and relevant learning pathways, and institutions are being forced to rethink everything from curriculum design to digital delivery.<\/p>\n<p>Now against that backdrop, Eduvos says the next decade of higher education will belong to institutions that are more agile, more industry-aligned and better able to prepare students for a fast-changing African economy.<\/p>\n<p>This is an important issue. I want to discuss it in a little more detail with Dr Riaan Steenberg, who is executive director at Eduvos. Riaan, a very warm welcome.<\/p>\n<p>When you talk about a future-ready institution, in practical terms, what does that mean for a South African student who is choosing where to study?<\/p>\n<p><strong>RIAAN STEENBERG: <\/strong>Thank you Jeremy. For me, really, a future-ready higher education institution is one that deliberately designs for constant change rather than stable, predictable careers.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Universities can no longer assume that graduates will follow linear professional paths.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Instead, they must prepare students to move across roles in industry and context over time.<\/p>\n<p>This requires a strong emphasis on adaptability, problem solving [and] applied thinking, rather than training students for a single occupational outcome that may not exist for long.<\/p>\n<p>I think we can all recognise that. You used to train for a single career, and even the things that we trained [on] when we were young are very, very different now.<\/p>\n<p>That requires us as institutions to shift away from content delivery as the primary measure of success, and really look at an environment where information technology is widely accessible.<\/p>\n<p>The differentiator is not what students know, but how effectively they can interpret information, ask better questions, work critically with technology, and apply knowledge in an unfamiliar, real-world context because that\u2019s what\u2019s going to happen to them.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re going to change. The world is going to change around them, and they need to be ready to understand the basics, but also to adapt in that world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>Riaan, you\u2019re absolutely right, and everything these days is moving at warp speed. It\u2019s difficult to make sure that qualifications stay connected then to the real economy, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>RIAAN STEENBERG: <\/strong>Yes, Jeremy. I think that there are some perceptions that a degree is not enough, but also increasingly not all degrees are equal. I think that that\u2019s something that we do have to recognise.<\/p>\n<p>For us, our academic model is definitely aimed at creating future-ready graduates and really working with industry to constantly adapt because industry is looking towards young people to go into positions to make the changes that require them to be relevant and so on.<\/p>\n<p>What I do find is that although you could get a BCom from two institutions, if the one is future-ready, then they\u2019ve taught you how to use technology tools and all the resources around you to achieve the outcomes; while the people who take a more classical view think it\u2019s important to give you more theory lessons so that whenever there is something that happens that you could deeply revert to theory.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve experienced this, Jeremy, but I think the theory is changing so fast.<\/p>\n<p>Everything that we believe we knew in any field is advancing so rapidly that we need to look at the situation in front of us, and like you say, connect it in a real-world economy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>That\u2019s so important because you talk about something called stackable qualifications and flexible pathways.<\/p>\n<p>The reality of the situation, I guess, is that younger professionals may have to reinvent themselves more than once in their careers, and I\u2019m probably being kind here; I would imagine probably every two to three years these days, they might need to reinvent themselves.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RIAAN STEENBERG: <\/strong>Yeah. We used to say in information technology [IT] that everything changes every 90 days.<\/p>\n<p>I think with artificial intelligence [AI], everything changes every two weeks.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not sure one can really prepare for that other than to look at how do we take human intelligence and teach it to be critical about machine intelligence and all the other tools that\u2019s around you.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>But also, what we do see is that stackable qualifications allow students to build their capacity progressively, pause and pivot their studies when necessary, and align learning more closely with shifting career trajectories.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Something that happens very practically in our space is that because we work so closely with industry, they are in the classroom, they are there with us.<\/p>\n<p>We give people the opportunity to understand that curriculum content, assessment design, applied projects, working with community projects.<\/p>\n<p>We have, for example, a law clinic where we\u2019re actually working with people in the real world and their issues, and we\u2019re expanding that into other areas.<\/p>\n<p>That really creates a real-world grounding and those flexible skills, so that when you\u2019re a graduate, you can hit the ground running, but you also have that flexible skill, that meta skill of being able to adapt. That, for us, is super critical.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>It\u2019s also about how the information or the knowledge is imparted these days. In your view then, where does digital learning genuinely improve outcomes? And maybe just share some thinking on how the human element still matters?<\/p>\n<p><strong>RIAAN STEENBERG: <\/strong>Absolutely. I think we must all recognise that hybrid work environments are here to stay and that the typical university does not teach you to do that kind of hybrid work.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Just because you have to log into a website to submit your assignments doesn\u2019t mean that you\u2019ve learned to work in virtual teams and how that all pulls together.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>We create digital spaces that help students develop autonomy, time management, and adaptability as part of their learning experience rather than as secondary skills.<\/p>\n<p>That has to be done through curriculum by design. We design our curriculum to take people into spaces where their interaction matters, where their human perspective matters.<\/p>\n<p>There was an interesting study recently that showed the higher the level of your education, the better you use, for example, AI. I think that that\u2019s so critical because as the machines are getting smarter, we\u2019re going to have to be more precise about what we want from it, and we\u2019re already seeing that with the latest advances that the human is important.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>Just a final one on the democratisation of education. We know that the continent has a rapidly growing youth population. But fair to say, a very uneven access to quality higher education. What, in your opinion, needs to happen for that growth to become an economic advantage rather than a missed opportunity for so many people?<\/p>\n<p><strong>RIAAN STEENBERG: <\/strong>Absolutely. At Eduvos, we\u2019ve got about 25 000 students across our 12 campuses, and we typically assist quite a few of them every year to move between campuses, delivery modes and stages of life.<\/p>\n<p>So giving people an opportunity to resume their studies or through recognition of prior learning, get into qualifications after they may have paused it some years ago.<\/p>\n<p>We recognise that education is a service and not the random thing that is happening at most public institutions at this point in time where you enter with a promise and there\u2019s a 10% chance of you finishing.<\/p>\n<p>I think we need to rethink what education is doing and give people the skills and opportunity to reskill for employability, rather than relying on a single credential to secure a lifetime career.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS: <\/strong>Thank you very much indeed. That\u2019s Dr Riaan Steenberg, who is executive director at Eduvos.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>#Stackable #qualifications #reshape #higher #education<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here. JEREMY MAGGS: Higher education, I don\u2019t need to tell you, is under growing pressure to change. 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