By Investec,
Teaching for a future we haven’t seen yet. Imagine writing a university paper, using ChatGPT to refine your research, and knowing your lecturer wont penalise you for it. In fact, they’re grading you on how effectively you used it.
At the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit in Cape Town this week, University of Cape Town (UCT) vice-chancellor Professor Mosa Moshabela dropped a bomb on traditional teaching: UCT has officially switched off AI-detection software in assessments. Instead of fighting AI, they are teaching students how to master it.
Why? Because, as Moshabela put it, we are preparing our students for a future we have not yet experienced ourselves.
This forward-thinking shift comes at a moment when South African higher education is proving its mettle globally. UCT just climbed back into the worlds top 150 universities, reclaiming its spot as Africa’s top institution, while the University of the Witwatersrand, Stellenbosch University, University of Johannesburg and the University of Pretoria all cemented places in the global top 500.
If you have a child heading to university soon, the biggest question isn’t just which campus they choose, its whether that campus is preparing them for a job market that AI is completely rewriting.
How is your child’s school handling AI right now? Are they still treating ChatGPT like a contraband cheat code, or are they actually teaching kids how to use it?
Why a bachelors pass is failing our first-years?
You get the text in January: a bachelors pass with distinction. The family celebrates, the school posts the photo, and the future looks set.
Then April arrives at university, the first-semester marks land, and the shock hits.Across South Africa, universities are warning that the leap from matric to first-year has become a total system shock.
Bright students aren’t failing because they lack intelligence; they’re failing because high schools have trained them to memorise past papers and rely on short-term cramming.
As academic leaders point out, this isn’t a failing on the students part – its a structural gap created when high schools prioritise exam pass rates over deep conceptual understanding.
