On the Roles of World-Class Universities and the Sustainability Agenda in Africa: A Case Study of Two Universities in South Africa and Egypt
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In the past decade, the World Class University discussion has become rampant due to the integral role that higher education plays in any economy's aspiration to compete globally while still pursuing sustainability. This article reports on a study that explored the roles played by world-class universities (WCUs) in fostering sustainability initiatives and practices in the African context. The article harnesses a document review approach that facilitates in-depth document analysis using two world-class institutions in Africa: The University of Cape Town in South Africa and American University in Cairo in Egypt as case studies. This study finds that world-class institutions in the two countries have rigorous, comprehensive sustainability organisations, synthesised and adopted from international agreements and concepts. The sustainability organisation is characterised by a less hierarchical approach to its management and leadership. Sustainability in research is fostered through environmental research and other key research areas such as food and medicine. Sustainable teaching is fostered through living-learning labs, redesigned curriculums, targeted degree programs and lecturer development through training and awards as incentives. Tangible, sustainable technology and innovation initiatives are also evident. This article comprehensively establishes the links and roles played by WCUs in fostering sustainability. It aids potential WCUs in Africa to understand and adopt sustainable initiatives within different and dynamic institutional contexts.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.015 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".