Sharjah is implementing a new model of early education by opening Early Development Centers that will house nurseries and kindergartens in one complex.
Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, a member of the Supreme Council and Ruler of Sharjah, announced this initiative and approved the plan for admission to public nurseries for the 2026–2027 academic year. This plan provides for an 18 percent increase in places compared to the previous year.
During the Direct Line program, the Ruler explained that the new centers solve the problem of continuing education for children from nurseries who do not have kindergarten sections. Sheikh Dr. Sultan noted that while the construction of the Early Development Centers is not yet complete, children can attend public schools. He added that he personally monitors this issue and is working towards the speedy creation of kindergarten classes in existing nurseries, as they have special advantages.
Currently, four centers in the areas of Al Suwaiq, Al Rahmaniiah, Al Lulu'iyah, and Kalba have already accepted 200 nursery graduates into the kindergarten section. The implementation of the plan will proceed in three stages, during which the number of public nurseries in the emirate will increase from 40 to 47.
The first stage will begin in August 2026 and provide places for 2402 children. The second stage starts in January 2027 with a capacity of 332 children, and the third stage is planned for April 2027 and is designed for an additional 270 children. The total number enrolled, including re-enrollments and new students, will reach 3004.
Sheikh Dr. Sultan also announced the upcoming opening of Al Mansour Fort in Khorfakkan, which will provide information about the city's history. He mentioned that the Portuguese built a triangular fort on the coast in 1639, erecting it on the site of the original Qaid bin Adwan Al Qasimi fort after a significant part of the city was destroyed during the occupation in 1622. The Ruler stated that Al Mansour Fort will become the main landmark of Khorfakkan.
In response to a question about the lake project near the sea entrance in Kalba, the Ruler clarified that the project has not been canceled but temporarily suspended due to a technical problem with the overflow of the lake near the Sharjah Communications Technology Department building. He explained that engineers advised increasing the lake to provide additional capacity for incoming water, otherwise, it could lead to structural damage. The revised project will now include a large lake at the confluence of the wadi, which will flow directly into the sea.
Regarding the Al Sur area in Kalba, Sheikh Dr. Sultan reported that planning is ongoing. Residential development will be limited to the area near the Corniche, and other buildings will be relocated to the suburbs of Al Dhahiyat (Al Nakheel area).
Finally, the Ruler highlighted the Al Hosn project in Al Madam—a major infrastructure initiative to modernize buildings and roads from Al Madam Hospital to Faya. Sheikh Dr. Sultan noted that development in the country is happening at an astonishing pace, and strengthening people's connection to their homeland gives them every reason to be proud of it.
The analytical center Global Higher Education Analyst (QS) has released the ranking of the best student cities for 2027. This ranking is of great importance to students dreaming of studying abroad. This year, Seoul, the capital of South Korea, took first place among the best student cities.
Several Indian cities were also included in the list. While Mumbai's ranking showed an improvement, Delhi was included in the list as the most economical city for students.
According to the QS Best Student City 2027 ranking, Mumbai's global ranking was 91st, placing it first in India. Previously, in the QS Student City 2026 ranking, Mumbai's global ranking was 98th. Thus, Mumbai's ranking improved by 7 positions compared to the previous year. This year, Mumbai scored 61.8 points, surpassing Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai.
As part of this ranking, Delhi was declared the cheapest city in the world for students. The capital was ranked 99th, which is lower than Mumbai's. Nevertheless, Delhi also improved its position, achieving a total score of 60.3, which represents an improvement of 5 positions compared to last year when its rank was 104.
The QS report explains why Delhi is considered the cheapest city for students. According to the report, the average tuition fee for international students in Delhi is about $2700 per year, which makes it the most affordable for students.
Besides Mumbai and Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore are also featured in the QS Best Student City 2027 ranking. However, both Chennai and Bangalore saw a decline in rankings. Chennai's ranking is 123rd, meaning a drop of 5 positions, and Bangalore's ranking is 114th, with a drop of 6 positions.
The top ten cities include: Seoul (South Korea), Tokyo (Japan), London (United Kingdom), Melbourne (Australia), Munich (Germany) — jointly, Sydney (Australia) — jointly, Paris (France), Berlin (Germany), Vienna (Austria), and Zurich (Switzerland).
The ranking is determined based on several factors: quality of universities, prestige of employers and employment opportunities, cost of tuition and living, diversity of students, and student experience.
In the face of a rapidly changing economic environment, business schools are facing an existential crisis. The author argues that artificial intelligence is exposing flaws in traditional curricula, demanding a fundamental rethinking of business education.
The greatest threat to business schools is not artificial intelligence itself, but what it reveals: many institutions continue to train graduates for organizations, economies, and careers that no longer exist.
The world that shaped modern business education is disappearing under the influence of the digital economy, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the knowledge economy, and rapidly changing global political economics. According to the World Economic Forum's report on future jobs for 2025, technological changes and AI will transform millions of jobs by 2030. Meanwhile, employers are increasingly prioritizing analytical thinking, technological literacy, adaptability, creativity, and continuous learning over mere traditional degrees.
Nevertheless, many business schools remain stuck in an industrial-era model. Students continue to attend lectures, absorbing information that AI can provide instantly. Curricula maintain the structure of disciplinary silos, and grading often rewards memorization rather than innovation. Universities track graduation rates, while employers grow increasingly skeptical about graduate readiness.
This leads to a growing gap between what business schools teach and what society needs. This is most evident in South Africa. In a situation where unemployment remains one of the highest in the world, and youth unemployment threatens social stability, business schools cannot allow success to be defined solely by graduation statistics and international rankings.
The task before these institutions goes beyond academic matters—it becomes a development challenge. The harsh reality is that many institutions continue to produce managers for systems that are becoming increasingly inefficient. South Africa, Africa, and much of the developing world need not so much corporate managers as ethical innovators, development entrepreneurs, digital strategists, and systemic thinkers capable of addressing unemployment, inequality, weak state apparatus, corruption, climate change, and economic exclusion.
The question is not whether business schools should teach AI, but whether AI should fundamentally change the goal of business education. The answer is yes. McKinsey research shows that AI is causing the most significant organizational transformation since the Industrial Revolution. The company describes the emergence of the 'agentic organization,' where humans and AI systems increasingly collaborate in decision-making, coordination, and value creation. Hierarchies are becoming flatter, workflows more dynamic, and organizations more networked.
If organizations themselves are undergoing restructuring, why do business schools still teach management models created for the twentieth century? The future leader will manage not just people, but the relationships between people, technology, data, and intelligent systems. The future organization may bear little resemblance to the traditional corporation; it could be a collaborative ecosystem linking business, government, communities, civil society, and AI-based platforms to solve complex social problems.
This reality has profound implications for business education. The business school of the near future should not be built around traditional disciplines such as marketing, accounting, and management. It should be organized around social missions. Imagine a curriculum built around questions, not subjects.
How can AI reduce unemployment? How can digital technologies support entrepreneurship in suburbs? How can ethical AI improve governance and reduce corruption? How can data analysis strengthen healthcare delivery? How can innovation promote inclusive economic growth?
These are not just business questions; they are development questions, and they must be at the core of every business school in the Global South. The future curriculum must integrate AI literacy, entrepreneurship, sustainable development, public policy, behavioral science, systems thinking, and ethical leadership. Equally important are unique human capabilities that technology cannot easily replicate: critical thinking, creativity, empathy, judgment, and collaboration.
The future belongs not to graduates competing with AI; it belongs to those who know how to work with it. Research must also change. For decades, business schools measured superiority by publications, citations, and rankings.
While academic rigor remains important, societies grappling with unemployment, poverty, and inequality have the right to ask a different question: what real benefit has this science brought? Has it created jobs? Has it improved governance? Has it influenced public policy? Has it strengthened entrepreneurship? Has it contributed to economic development?
The future business school should not abandon research excellence, but redefine it by incorporating social impact.
This brings us to one of the most complex issues in education: rankings. Global rankings reward graduate salaries, international mobility, placement in corporations, and publication volume. These metrics may be useful measures of prestige in Northern countries, but they are less relevant in societies struggling with deep development challenges.
A business school that helps create thousands of jobs, strengthens local entrepreneurship, and develops AI solutions for public tasks can contribute more to society than one that merely produces highly paid graduates for multinational corporations. South Africa and the Global South need not more globally ranked business schools, but more locally indispensable ones.
The most important ranking for a South African business school should be determined not by its position in an international leaderboard, but by its contribution to national development. How many jobs have its graduates created? How many entrepreneurs have emerged through its programs? How many communities have benefited from its innovations? How effectively has it used technology to solve real problems? These are the questions that matter.
Pedagogy must also change. Artificial intelligence has fundamentally altered the knowledge economy. Information is no longer a scarce resource. The value of higher education increasingly lies in what AI cannot easily provide: mentorship, ethical reflection, critical inquiry, teamwork, creativity, and solving real problems.
Future business schools must function not as lecture factories, but rather as innovation laboratories. Every student must participate in work-integrated learning. Every student must interact with industry, government, NGOs, and communities. Every student must graduate with proof of their impact, not just a transcript of completed courses.
The business school that South Africa and the developing world need is not a smaller version of Harvard, Wharton, or INSEAD. It is an entirely new institution: AI-oriented, development-focused, ethically grounded, deeply community-connected, and relentlessly focused on solving real problems. The choice is clear: business schools can continue training graduates for vanishing organizations, or they can become engines of social transformation in the emerging world. Only one of these futures deserves to survive.
} } ]The University of South Africa (Unisa), located in Makleneke in Pretoria, has evolved into one of the world's largest universities. It provides higher education to over 370,000 students within South Africa, as well as across the African continent and beyond.
According to official university data, Unisa awards approximately 13% of all degrees issued by the 26 state and technological universities of South Africa, making it the country's largest graduate producer. As a leading institution in Open Distance and Electronic Learning (ODeL) in Africa, Unisa has transformed access to higher education through a network of seven regional campuses, 28 learning centres across South Africa, and an international campus in Ethiopia.
The history of Unisa spans over 150 years. It was founded in 1873 as the University of the Cape of Good Hope (UCGH) and is the oldest institution in South Africa specializing in distance education, as well as one of the pioneers of correspondence education globally. Initially, established by an act of the Cape Colony Parliament and modeled after the University of London, it functioned more as an examination body than a teaching university. It set academic standards and conducted examinations for affiliated colleges, laying the foundation for a higher education system that underwent significant changes in the following century.
Over time, the institution evolved from a colonial examination body into a university aimed at expanding access to learning for students from all corners of South Africa and eventually the entire continent. Professor Andrew Manson noted that the transformation of the institution into the University of South Africa in 1916 was one of the defining moments in its history. After the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the university became a federal examination body supporting colleges across the country before relocating to Pretoria under a new name in 1918.
Manson emphasized that the university reflected the realities of colonial South Africa, as it was created to meet the growing educational and economic needs of the Cape Colony. He quotes: 'Many colleges, such as the South African College and Stellenbosch Grammar School, laid the foundations of higher education in the region, which ultimately led to the creation of a university capable of responding to the evolving educational landscape.'
Although Unisa was initially conceived to expand educational opportunities, its history is closely tied to the political and social evolution of South Africa. Many institutions it previously examined, including what later became the University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch University, eventually gained independence, prompting Unisa to reconsider its role as a teaching institution. A turning point was the establishment of the External Research Department in 1946. This step made Unisa the first state university in the world to teach exclusively through distance education, revolutionizing access to higher education by allowing students to study regardless of their place of residence.
However, this important phase occurred during the apartheid era, adding complexity to the university's legacy. During this period, Unisa regulated curricula and examinations for racially segregated colleges, reflecting the contradictions of working within an unequal education system while simultaneously expanding access through distance learning. Nevertheless, historians point out that Unisa remained one of the few South African universities accepting students of all races throughout apartheid, largely because its distance learning model operated outside the traditional on-campus residency system.
Over the decades, Unisa has continued to adapt as South Africa has undergone profound political changes—from colonial rule and apartheid to democracy and the transformation of the nation's higher education sector. One of the most significant events was the merger on January 1, 2004, with Technikon South Africa and the inclusion of the Vista University distance education campus. This merger formed the modern comprehensive university, uniting three distinct institutional traditions: the traditional university, the technically oriented technikon, and the distance learning institution primarily serving urban communities.
Manson also notes that the university was shaped by nationwide student movements demanding accessible and affordable higher education. He references the statement by former President Jacob Zuma in 2017 regarding the introduction of free higher education for eligible students. This decision reignited debates about the history of South African universities and the role they should play in a democratic society. The policy announced on December 16, 2017, shortly before the 54th ANC National Congress, mandated the government to fund tuition, accommodation, meals, and learning materials through grants for eligible students from households earning less than 350,000 rand annually.
This decision followed years of #FeesMustFall protests that swept university campuses since 2015, and it was adopted despite the Heer Commission concluding that South Africa did not yet have the financial capacity to provide free higher education to all. Today, Unisa remains one of South Africa's most influential higher education institutions under the leadership of Director and Vice-Chancellor Professor Puleng Lekanabul, who became the first woman to hold this position in January 2021. In December 2024, the university council extended her mandate for another five years, starting January 1, 2026.
The university's continental presence continues to grow. The regional learning centre in Ethiopia, opened in Addis Ababa in 2007, is set to graduate over 1,160 students by the end of 2025, including more than 600 doctoral candidates. Unisa views this centre as a strategic hub for further growth in East Africa. More than 150 years after its founding, the history of Unisa reflects the journey of South Africa itself through colonialism, apartheid, democracy, and transformation. From its beginnings as an examination body to becoming one of the world's largest distance learning institutions, the university constantly reinvents itself to meet changing educational needs. In the future, Unisa faces the challenge of preserving its remarkable heritage while responding to the demands of the rapidly changing higher education landscape. For millions of graduates whose qualifications have opened careers, leadership opportunities, and social mobility across Africa and beyond, the university's legacy lies in resilience, transformation, and the transformative power of education.
