CORRUPTED, a study of chronic dysfunction in South African universities

310pp., map, paperback, Johannesburg, 2023

Jonathan Jansen on the root causes of chronic instability in a sample of South African universities.

"Corrupted tells an unpleasant but very important story not only for South Africa but globally. Jonathan Jansen analyses the nature of universities and then examines how corruption can seep into academic institutions. This is a highly original story engagingly told with excellent documentation." Philip G Altbach, Research Professor and Distinguished Fellow, Centre for International Higher Education, Boston College

"In examining chronic dysfunction in many South African universities, Jansen brings deep experience, extensive research, and unflinching analysis. The result is masterful. It relentlessly bares how and why so many universities have lost their academic purpose, becoming the foci for criminals and politicians who want power and access to the resources that power brings. Anyone who understands the importance of education to a nation’s prosperity should respond to this clarion call for action and stem the greatest loss of all: the theft of young people’s hopes and dreams." Professor Brenda Gourley, former Vice-Chancellor of the Open University and University of KwaZulu-Natal

Jonathan Jansen is a former Vice-Chancellor of several universities and is currently Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Education at the Stellenbosch University. He is author of As By Fire, the end of the South African university, co-author (with Cyrill Walters) of The Decolonisation of Knowledge, radical ideas and the shaping of institutions in South Africa and beyond and editor of Decolonisation in Universities: The politics of curriculum.