As the SANORD conference entered its final day, the keynote speakers offered two case studies on inclusion and exclusion in the Nordic and South African higher education environments respectively. This set the scene for engaging debate on the socio-economic constraints to creating an inclusive society, pedagogical methods to enhance inclusivity in education, issues of poverty, unemployment and HIV/Aids.

Professor Risto Rinne, Director of the Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning and Education (CELE) in the Department of Education at the University of Turku, Finland, delivered a keynote address titled “The Changing Faces of Higher Education and Inclusion and Exclusion: The Nordic Tunes”.

Rinne analysed the historical changes of the higher education environment, the expansion of higher education and issues of inclusion and exclusion in higher education world wide as well as in the Finnish/Nordic case.

“There have been enormous historical changes in the place and position of Higher Education all over the world. The old historical elite university has changed to become the ‘multiversity’ in a higher education system with an enormous growth of student numbers,” said Rinne. “There are currently 140 million tertiary education students in the world. The university and higher education has become a strongly market oriented enterprise university to promote academic capitalism and human capital in the ever more competitve global space.”?

He said the old Nordic as well as the Finnish model of university, which was built up in the 20th century, was especially thought to be as one of the spearheads of Nordic welfare society: “In that model the educational politics aimed at diminishing widely the inequality of educational opportunities by large expansion of the higher education system and thus diminishing the inequality of social opportunities in the society. But the tides have changed also in the Nordic countries including Finland.

“The huge expansion of higher education has undoubtedly opened new opportunities for many disadvantaged and marginalised groups to climb up the educational ladders. But the inclusion processes in higher education must not obscure the fact that exclusion in higher education still is the crucial truth all over the world and that there seems to be persistent inequality of educational opportunities for many sub groups of society. It seems to be evident that the expansion of higher education is not the same thing as the equality of educational opportunities.”

A member of the Steering Group of European Society for Research on Education of Adults (ESREA) (2005-), the board of Nordic Network of International and Comparative Education (NICE) (1997-) and the board of European Educational Research Association (EERA) (2000-2003), Rinne has also had numerous invitations to offer expert advice to the EU, UNESCO, OECD, Council of Europe, Finnish Ministry of Education, Finnish Academy, Norwegian Research Council and the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.

His main research areas are sociology of education, adult education, history of education, educational policy and comparative education.

Dr Saleem Badat, Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University will delliver a keynote address titled “Redressing the Apartheid Legacy of Social Exclusion: Social Equity, Redress and Admission to Higher Education in Democratic South Africa.”

“In South Africa social inequalities characterised all spheres of social life, as a product of the systemic exclusion of blacks and women under colonialism and apartheid. The higher education system was no exception. Social, political and economic discrimination and inequalities of a class, race, gender, institutional and spatial nature profoundly shaped, and continue to shape, South African higher education,” said Badat.

South Africa’s new democratic government committed itself in 1994 to transforming higher education as well as the inherited apartheid social and economic structure and institutionalising a new social order. “Necessarily, social equity and redress for historically disadvantaged social groups in higher education has loomed large in policy discourse,” said Badat.

In his talk, Badat analysed the colonial and apartheid legacy in so far as the provision of higher education and the participation of black South Africans are concerned. He advanced propositions on the erosion of the apartheid legacy in higher education and realising social equity and redress for students from historically disadvantaged social groups. Describing the approach to social equity and admissions under democracy and its outcomes to date, he dentified the critical challenges that confront the state and higher education institutions if constitutional and legislated values and goals with respect to social equity and redress are to be realised.

Between 1999 and 2006 Badat was the first head of the higher education policy advisory body to the Minister of Education. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of York. His research interests in higher education include policy making, institutional change, social inclusion and exclusion, and student politics.

Picture Caption: (L) Professor Risto Rinne, Director of the Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning and Education (CELE) in the Department of Education at the University of Turku, Finland (R) Dr Saleem Badat, Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University