Max Price was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town in July 2008, completing his ten-year term in June 2018. During the first seven years of his term, UCT experienced growth and success in research and teaching, and global recognition. His continued in the last three years, but was overshadowed by the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall protests during 2015 to 2017. Price led the university through these storms and back to safe harbour in 2018.
Price studied Medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). He subsequently did a PPE degree at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Following clinical work in academic and rural hospitals in South Africa, he gained a master’s degree in Community Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and then worked as an academic in the areas of health policy and economics, rural health services, and health science education.
Price was dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Wits for ten years.
He now consults in public health, higher education, strategic leadership and advises foundations on grant making. He is currently a scholar in residence at the Atlantic Institute. He is the author of Statues and Storms: Leading through change, (2023).