Students are not just in the room – they are shaping the university

Students should not simply have a seat in the room when universities make decisions about their education – they should help shape what happens.

That was a central message that emerged from a lively panel discussion on student co-creation at the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit in Cape Town on 29 September. University of Cape Town (UCT) student Kolosa Ntombini and former student Dr Nkosinathi Koela reflected on how activism, lived experiences and indigenous knowledge can reshape universities.

The session, titled “Students as co-creators: Reimagining teaching, technology and knowledge production across diverse contexts”, explored how universities can move from treating students as recipients or occasional consultants to recognising them as partners in learning, research and institutional transformation.

For Ntombini, an assistant lecturer and PhD candidate in UCT’s Department of Environmental and Geographical Science, that shift is deeply connected to her own journey through student activism, transformation and academia.

“Before you enter the doors of learning … you’re confronted with a colonial history that carries a residue.”

“I’m a child of UCT in many ways because I started as a student activist,” she said.

Her undergraduate years coincided with the student protests of 2015–2017, including Rhodes Must Fall. She recalled the campaign to remove the Cecil John Rhodes statue as an example of students not merely commenting on institutional decisions but actively initiating them.

“We participated in the decisions to remove the statue and what should be done with the statue,” she said.

The significance extended beyond the statue itself. Its presence at the university entrance raised a deeper question of belonging for her.

“Before you enter the doors of learning, so to speak, you’re confronted with a colonial history that carries a residue,” Ntombini said.

Although the statue was removed, she noted that its “shadow” remained – a reference to the continuing work of transforming the university and its curriculum.

From protesting students to knowledge producers

In a session that was moderated by Bryan Bergsteedt, a South African representative in the Global Youth AI Advisory Body of the United Nations, Ntombini argued that student agency should extend into the curriculum itself.

She recalled lecturers who invited students to help determine what they wanted to learn, rather than simply delivering a predetermined curriculum. As a postgraduate student and tutor, she also experienced how academic flexibility could make a difference to students navigating difficult circumstances.

That experience later informed the Black Geographies Collective, which she helped establish with fellow students.

The collective became a space for students to read, debate, and develop alternative intellectual resources, while building a reading list they could bring into conversations about curriculum transformation.

“We needed to fight for our right to the discipline,” Ntombini said.

Her experience suggests that co-creation does not always begin with a formal university initiative. It can emerge from students organising themselves, producing knowledge collectively and creating intellectual spaces where they see gaps in existing curricula.

For Dr Koela, a ritual custodian and cultural practitioner whose work explores indigenous knowledge and decolonial approaches within the university, the student movements of that period went even further.

He described students as having effectively become lecturers and knowledge producers themselves.

“They were the university,” he said, arguing that the intellectual work generated through student-led struggles has subsequently been researched, cited and developed into new avenues of learning.

Koela cautioned against viewing movements such as Rhodes Must Fall simply as protests about statues. Instead, he said, they reflected students’ attempts to articulate the intersections between lived experience, institutional structures and the forms of knowledge recognised by universities.

“They were looking at the invisible,” he said, describing how students challenged institutions to recognise previously overlooked experiences.

Decentralising the university

Koela also challenged universities to reconsider where knowledge is produced.

Rather than positioning the university as the sole authority on knowledge, he argued for stronger relationships between universities, students and communities – particularly in the South African context.

“The academic institution needs to have the foresight and the courage to decentralise itself as a site of knowledge,” he said.

This did not mean universities should disappear, he stressed, but rather that they should create space for other sites of knowledge to exist and interact with academic knowledge.

Such relationships, he argued, could bring together student experience, community knowledge and academic expertise to identify and address societal challenges.

“The university of the people who embody it … it’s not a building; it’s not a statue; it’s not a painting,” Koela said. “It’s understanding the university as a site of knowing; a site of knowledge production.”

That perspective also led him to challenge the way universities sometimes engage young people.

At one point during the discussion, Koela objected to the panel being told it was running out of time, arguing that limiting the space for young voices could reproduce the very exclusion universities claim to be addressing.

His intervention underlined one of the session’s central tensions: inviting students to participate is not necessarily the same as giving them meaningful power.

Co-creation must not become another burden

Mia Stevens, a recent graduate of the University of Bristol and former graduate education officer in its student union, brought a different perspective to the discussion, highlighting the practical structures needed to make student partnership meaningful.

At Bristol, she described an agreement between the student union and university executive through which students identify three priorities each year, based on research and engagement with the student body.

The priorities are jointly developed with university leaders, formally signed off and monitored throughout the year.

One outcome has been the creation of paid student roles in each school, enabling students to work with academics to improve assessment and feedback.

For Stevens, paying students is crucial. “We can’t expect them to give up unpaid time,” she said, particularly when co-creation may also involve significant emotional labour.

She also cautioned against relying on a single student to represent an entire community – for example, expecting one neurodivergent student to speak for all neurodivergent students.

Instead, she advocated broader participation from students and staff with relevant experiences.

And, importantly, students need to be involved from the beginning rather than being brought in once decisions have already largely been made.

“Having our students involved right from the beginning helps them feel like genuine partners,” she said.

For Ntombini, meaningful participation also requires universities to confront the conditions that make students feel they do not belong.

“First, we name the unbelonging,” she said.

She pointed to the importance of language, collective organising and practical resources in creating spaces where students can assert their belonging.

The Black Geographies Collective, for example, secured external funding to support a reading group involving students from UCT and the University of the Western Cape.

Even something as ordinary as sharing a meal, she argued, can become part of how students create spaces of belonging.