Student Experience - News , Postgraduate Policies and Regulations

What is the real value of a doctoral degree?

Thu, 27 Jun 2019 16:32:31 +0000

Minister Naledi Pandor should be commended for undertaking and completing her doctoral studies (How to complete your doctorate while serving in the Cabinet). And not only for doing so while in full time employment, as a mature student and a female, but also for investing time and money in a venture that many would say is little else than a vanity project unless directly required for a specific job.

The question is what the value of a doctoral degree is, and whether the “four years of little sleep, no weekends and missed meals” will be worth it, as stated by Pandor, the former minister of higher education and now minister of international relations and co-operation.

A PhD is, in most contexts, a piece of in-depth research that not only adheres to stringent criteria for reliability and validity but that also conforms to the specific rules and structures of the academy.

Requirements vary between countries and contexts, as well as between theory-based studies vis-à-vis practice-based ones. Traditionally, the PhD has been a ticket for entry into the academy and today it is a requirement for a job in academia.

The department of higher education and training’s revised strategic plan for 2015-2016 to 2019-2020 clearly articulates the need to improve post-school education and training, and emphasises the importance of improved post-graduate outputs alongside practical skills development to meet very specific socioeconomic development needs.

But, worldwide, the academy is still shaped by its emphasis on theoretical knowledge, often pitting theoretically-based subject disciplines against those perceived as practice-based, with interdisciplinary subject fields and degree paths yet to be developed. No less so in cash-strapped environments where the teaching project is increasingly dependent on, and subsidised through self-sustained funding models, generated through accredited research as well as industry and non-governmental funding sources.

The development of new innovative degree paths and ways of structuring postgraduate research and the effect it can have on socioeconomic development is needed. This is particularly important in light of a rapidly changing economy that is geared up for the fourth — and even fifth — industrial revolution.

South Africa does not have the “problem” faced by many developed economies of an oversupply of PhD holders and higher education is eagerly looking for lecturers with the requisite qualifications. But positions are not readily available despite the National Development Plan’s target of having at least 75% of academics acquiring PhDs by 2030.

Aspiring students do need to weigh up the costs and benefits of pursuing a doctoral degree. The academy aside, industry might not always value doctorates and, in fact, research shows that, bar highly niched industrial research skills, candidates with a PhD might be shunned ahead of candidates with a master’s degree. A master’s degree is seen as more applied and specifically geared towards a profession or field. Thus, for students seeking to do a doctorate with the purpose of improving their employability outside the academy, we need to find ways of making the research and the research process adaptable to the future job market. It’s a job market where research often needs to be geared towards specific timelines and funding requirements, and where findings need to be reported in ways that differ from the ways in which a doctoral thesis is written up for an academic audience or examination panel.

In this regard the professional doctorate as well as a practice-based doctorate play a role. The professional doctorate differs from the traditional PhD in that it is taken predominantly by practising professionals. There is normally a taught component and the research undertaken usually relates to the professional practice of the student and can also be undertaken in the workplace. To get more students into the professional doctorate, we will have to look to streamlining and easing the recognition of prior learning processes that give institutions of higher education the right to recognise experience other than academic degrees for entry into postgraduate studies.

Today, such processes are geared to show that students have acquired the theoretical skills needed to pursue a degree in a specific field rather than actually looking at the practical or other knowledge needed to take the research project further.

In addition, we need to find ways of limiting the costs of pursuing a PhD. This is particularly important if we are to get more women to pursue doctoral studies. The postgraduate students that I have supervised and that have passed through my office over the years have all experienced their own trials and tribulations, and no more so than the female students.

Doctoral students tend to be slightly older than students enrolled in master’s programmes, but what they share is the cost and uncertainties that come with their studies. Whether in employment or not, students come to further their studies to increase their employability and to open doors to new opportunities. They often lack financial and other support that might help to ease the burden of juggling work, studies and family. And the postgraduate journey tends to come at a cost, financially as well as socially.

Hence, I am glad that Pandor had a PhD study group to rely on. This is not always the case and many students find postgraduate studies very lonely, particularly when pursuing research degrees without any taught components. And rarely do they have access to colleagues and professors to guide them and advise them before embarking on their studies.

My own PhD studies were fraught with difficulties. Conducted in London without funding, and topped up by costly study loans, and with three kids, two of whom were born during my studies. I cannot recall ever discussing my research with anyone apart from a yearly catch-up with my supervisor and, of course, with the many people I had the great fortune of interviewing for the thesis itself. But, overall, it was a lonely, expensive and taxing journey.

Pandor stresses the role that her supervisor played but also that of other people inside and outside of the academy, including fellow postgraduate students. Far from the rule, research cohorts need to be made a priority and built into the degree. There are many alternatives to the one-on-one supervision model. It can be divided and shared between different people and different groups and be discipline-specific but also interdisciplinary and consist of academics, fellow students and industry experts, and a student’s employer. Additionally, although the role of a supervisor has traditionally been one of guiding, not only the research but also to mentor students for a future career in the academy, there is a new role and function to be forged here — one that speaks to the supervisor as promotor and mentor in a much broader context to meet the specific needs of the student with regards to employability as well as broader societal needs.

If we do this, we can create new doctoral degrees and qualifications and a new generation of students with degrees that not only take them places but that take our society places.

Professor Ylva Rodny Gumede is with the Department of Journalism, Film and Television at the University of Johannesburg. These are her views

Understanding the impact of grants at universities

Fri, 14 Jun 2019 12:14:05 +0000

The face of the moon was in shadow

Since Africa’s earliest modern public universities were established on the continent in the 1940s, these institutions have struggled to generate adequate and sustainable funding. For the most part, universities on the continent depend on money from national governments; grants; donations from international donor communities and industries to fund their learning, teaching and research activities.

But most lack proper institutional evaluation to record and track the outcomes of various grants after projects or programmes are completed. Usually, evaluations entail nothing more than a financial audit report and main outcome of the project.

This approach does little to show how a particular tranche of funding has contributed to a university achieving its mission, vision and short- to long-term plans. But universities favour it because they pride themselves on being autonomous and self-regulating.

For instance, in recent times some African universities have received grants to train PhD candidates in various fields. When the grants end, there’s only one key indicator: how many beneficiaries have graduated. This doesn’t take into account whether the project followed proper systems of accountability. It also doesn’t identify the various lessons learned from implementing the project. That means there’s no learning platform for future projects.

I set out to study how universities in Africa evaluate funding once programmes or projects are completed. I also offered some ideas about improving this evaluation, and why it is so important. I argue that evaluation is a critical tool for decisions on improving performance. It also ensures that African universities are getting value for money from grants, donations and the like.

University Funding

For starters, it’s useful to identify where university funding is coming from in Africa. Grants are popular. So is financial support from national governments, Northern and Western universities. The international donor community is involved, too, and so are philanthropic organisations.

Some examples from across the continent show just how varied and valuable grants are.

In the 2015-16 academic year, the Office of Research, Innovation and Development at the University of Ghana received US$32 million from nine international donor agencies.

In 2010, a grant profiling on the University of Ibadan in Nigeria’s website revealed that the university had 106 grants worth more than US$17 million – and that 101 of those providing the grants were international.

The University of Nairobi in Kenya is not clear on the amount it receives from donors. But, of the 16 donors it mentions on its website, only one is Kenyan.

So how are these grants and donations assessed? In the last 15 years many of the continent’s universities have established grant offices. Their role is to strategise and attract funds from external sources. But in most cases these offices don’t have clear ‘grant policies’ to guide their operations and the use of grants received. This lack of clear policy also means that programmes implemented under external grants can’t be properly evaluated by the universities when those grants expire.

This isn’t always a problem. International donors almost always have systems in place to evaluate the use and impact of their grants. But industry donors and governments tend not to. So there really isn’t any way for universities to know if these grants are worthwhile, effective and add value.

The solution to this gap is an institutional grants evaluation framework that could be rolled out across the continent. Such a framework already exists elsewhere. For example, the European University Association has an Institutional Evaluation Programme that’s conducted periodically. One of the aspects it examines is how grants are used and whether they are supporting universities’ missions, visions and outcomes.

A valuable framework

This sort of framework would have several benefits for African universities.

It would provide organisational learning and allow for future impact studies and assessments of grants. It would also improve accountability within universities and restore trust among university staff and donors. It would ensure that donor grants are properly used.

Some work is being done to address this issue. The Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, through the Department of Higher Education and Training, is helping the country’s universities to monitor government grant-related activities. Also in South Africa, universities are beginning to draw up frameworks to guide their grant programme implementation.

The broader framework I’m proposing for African universities should focus on improving policy and practice in the utilisation of all grants which flow into a particular university.

In addition, the design of the framework should define activities, inputs, performance indicators, deliverables, means of verification, outcomes and outputs and results expected from the use of the grant. Crucially, it should also speak to the broader mission and vision of the respective universities; their mid- to long-term strategic plans; the expectations from regional bodies from universities; and above all the core mission of every university: teaching, research and community engagement.

This won’t be easy. The continent’s universities lack capacity around issues of monitoring and evaluation. More people are needed who have been trained in higher education operations. Universities need to train their administrative staff in monitoring and evaluation and also employ experts in that field to work in institutions’ strategic offices.

Despite the challenges, though, universities on the continent must prioritise proper grant evaluation. Without real focus and planning, grants will not do the good they ought to and universities may lose out.

Harris Andoh is a research policy expert in institutional research, monitoring and evaluation at the Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa. This article is republished from The Conversationunder a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.