Obituary: Dr Prem Naidoo of the Higher Education Quality Committee

It is with great sadness that SAIDE learnt of Prem Naidoo's untimely death in February 2006.

Over the last few years many of us at SAIDE have had the privilege, and pleasure, of engaging with Prem in his various capacities at the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC). We enjoyed his infectious enthusiasm, his huge energy, his keen intellect and his high principles. Prem never stood still: there was always a new challenge to be met; taken-for-granted truths to be interrogated; different understandings to be explored; and another new idea of how to improve the quality of higher education to be executed.

A key dimension of Prem was that so many of these ideas were so carefully implemented. We salute in particular the manner in which he oversaw the HEQC's response to the issues of quality in distance education that SAIDE had highlighted in its 2004 report to the CHE.  

South Africa is a poorer place without Prem.  May his memory continue to inspire us.  

Jenny Glennie