“It’s time to hand over the baton,” says Prof Chika Sehoole, whose second term as Dean of the Faculty of Education at UP has come to an end.

Where some see stumbling blocks, others see solutions. Professor Chika Sehoole, who recently ended his second term as Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Pretoria (UP), is in the latter category.

“We saw the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality not as obstacles, but as guiding principles,” he said during his farewell speech at a function held at UP in his honour.

Putting those guiding principles into practice when he became Dean eight years ago, Prof Sehoole and his team set off for rural Limpopo, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, with one goal in mind: to identify unemployed youth with high admission point scores who “were sitting at home, unaware that they could apply to university”. They returned, mission accomplished, as the enrolment figures show: the Faculty of Education had only 795 first-time entering students in 2017; in 2025, the figures are almost double that, at 1 556.

“We also boosted the percentage of black students from 54% in 2017 to 85% in 2023, all while maintaining strong academic performance,” says Prof Sehoole, referring to the module pass rate of 94% and the fact that 68% of the faculty’s students complete their studies within the minimum period.

Academia beckons after many years in management. There is much more to say about how the Faculty of Education, under his guidance, shifted from research inactive to research active and has been hailed as a role model of engaged scholarship, including by the World Bank during the G20 conference of university leaders hosted in India in 2023. Prof Sehoole’s efforts also bolstered the faculty’s financial sustainability. In fact, its contribution to UP’s income increased from R96 million in 2017 to R174 million in 2023.

Staff development and promotions were also part of his strategy. Under Prof Sehoole’s tutelage, the number of faculty staff members with PhDs increased from 72% in 2017 to 85% in 2023, while 64 (75%) of them were promoted during the same period.

But now, he’s looking to the future. So what’s next for someone who knew at the age of nine that he wanted to be a teacher, has spent 24 years at UP, served in leadership positions for 13 of them and has worked under six vice-chancellors? The short answer is that he is re-immersing himself in the world of academia.

“I am an academic at heart,” says Prof Sehoole who, after obtaining a PhD in higher education at the University of the Witwatersrand, completed a postdoctoral fellowship in education at the University of Illinois in the US and was awarded a Fulbright New Century Scholarship – an honour awarded to only 30 outstanding higher education scholars a year from around the world.

“I went into management at UP because it was required of people like me to be part of the transformation of government and universities,” he says. “But eight years is a long time to be Dean. I was relevant then, but higher education has changed so much; I had the sense that the faculty needs new ideas and new energy. It’s time to hand over the baton.”

For the past few weeks, Prof Sehoole has been preparing for the handover to the new Dean, Prof Lindelani Mnguni, who assumed the deanship on 1 January 2025.

“Prof Mnguni is a go-getter and a self-starter, and the faculty will be in excellent hands.”

This leaves Prof Sehoole free to go on a year’s sabbatical leave, during which he plans to relaunch his academic career. His plans include writing a book on higher education – a subject with which he is well acquainted, having been in the field for 16 years, not only at UP but also with the University of the Western Cape, Joint Education Trust and the South African Institute for Distance Education.

“As I reintegrate into academic work, I would like to apply for five-year research funding from the National Research Foundation,” says Prof Sehoole, whose research interests are higher education policy, internationalisation and globalisation of higher education, and education policy and implementation.

Not content with that, he will continue to supervise his PhD students, four of whom are due to submit their theses in 2025.

“I think I will also be looking for opportunities to travel abroad for research and teaching purposes. I have some good connections, and I have learnt that the US is not one of them,” he quips, referring to current international developments. “That is why it’s so important to diversify. We’ve got good friends in the East who we can visit.”

When he’s ticked off those assignments he has set himself, Prof Sehoole says, “I will be available for UP to utilise me in whatever role the University sees fit. UP is more than an academic home to me – it is part of who I am.”