Research leaders develop an action plan for students and the sector’s well-being

One of the key features of the recent Exploring Preparedness for Postgraduate Studies colloquium was a two-hour breakaway session in which research leaders and organisational managers from 22 of the 26 South African public universities and two private higher education providers deliberated on the well-being of postgraduate students and planned possible intervention strategies.

She said all institutions want their students to be successful and motivated. Students need a sense of self-worth and that they are achieving their goals to be positively disposed, successful people.

“When we talk about preparedness, and we do all the time, saying students come to us unprepared, what do we expect them to be able to do for themselves, to be better prepared and feel better about it?” she said.

“Let’s develop an action plan. Let’s talk, not just about the problem, but what can we do as this group?”

She asked them to consider four questions:

• What should students be?
• What can we expect students to do about it?
• What can academics do?
• What can universities do?

“We, as this group, are well-positioned to recommend what we could be doing on a practical basis,” she said. It was about gearing up for action, such as, “What shall we do on Monday?

“We need a holistic approach to what we’re trying to achieve in terms of the well-being of our higher education sector and our students. This is not something any one person in a university can achieve. It’s neither up to the director of postgraduate studies nor the deputy vice-chancellor responsible for research. It’s up to the whole institution, everyone, including the students,” said Professor Burton.

Delegates handed written feedback to Burton, accompanied by oral feedback presented by one person on each group’s action ideas. Below are some edited comments:

• Do we need research to take place at all universities in South Africa? Should some universities look for niche areas and allow those with the resources and the infrastructure to offer PhD and other postgraduate programmes?
• We have such a diverse range of students, universities and disciplines that we need to hold workshops specifically to determine what needs to be done at university level, at a discipline level and at a degree level, to make a well-rounded student.
• Students should have emotional intelligence and not receive supervisors’ criticism negatively. They should also cultivate a world view and engage in mobility programmes — an opportunity to utilise resources that might not be readily available at their home institutions.
• Students should be committed to complete their studies in record time. They should be able to identify research gaps, produce new knowledge, and be receptive to supervision. And they should aim to mentor their peers who would relate better to somebody who completed their master’s more recently, in comparison to someone who did so 20 to 40 years ago.
• Students sometimes complain that when they send a question to their allocated supervisor, they get a response only three or four months later. Senior academics should be responsive and visible.
• Students and supervisors should sign a memorandum of understanding to ensure accountability both ways. Academics should ensure they understand their students’ goals and work to align those goals with their own so that they don’t work in different directions. In instances where universities incentivise academics who graduate doctoral and master’s students, the academics should value quality over quantity. Incentives could easily motivate academics to push exclusively for quantity.
• We must standardise fees because most students enrol in postgraduate studies without financial support. Perhaps DHET needs to come up with a financial support framework.
• Supervisors must be accessible and not become monsters. They mustn’t say things such as “You don’t know anything” and “You are not a researcher,” because the supervisor is the one who is supposed to develop the student into becoming a researcher.
• Universities should share resources. Some offer detailed information on their websites about training supervisors and thesis writing. Others have just one line about that.
• There’s a great need for institutions to benchmark their processes, for example, ethics approval of students’ research projects and examination of dissertations. These differ vastly across universities. Of course, some institutions are so big that faculties, even within the same university, follow different processes.
• Why do we, as academics, supervise students? The reasons could include pursuing a promotion to professorship. Supervisors also must understand why students are enrolled in postgraduate education because the reasons vary vastly. Knowing one’s student’s reason may enable the supervisor to use that reason to motivate the student.
• Some postgraduate entities are directorates, some are heads of departments. Universities use such a variety of terminologies that one wonders: do they all perform the same function? Do they serve students’ needs or are they purely administrative positions? If we talk about, for example, the Director of Research, are they directing the processes of examinations, or do they also keep in touch with postgraduate students and their supervisors? These are some of the things we need to look at in terms of standardising practice. Universities also need baseline data on what students need rather than impose what universities think they need, to avoid this patronising culture, where universities determine what postgraduate students need and set those interventions in motion only to become frustrated when the students don’t show up. That baseline data cannot be limited to the beginning of the year. It needs to be continual.
• Postgraduate student voices are underrepresented in structures such as SRCs.
• Most universities will not allow anybody to stand in a classroom without prior training on pedagogy: teaching and assessment methodologies. Similarly, we shouldn’t be expecting anyone to supervise a student without having had appropriate training, so we must insist on it. It is not that we don’t trust supervisors. But we need to provide an enabling environment. If we expect them to supervise, that expectation should be coupled with support.
• We need a gathering for postgraduate students — prospective and current doctoral students. So current masters and current PhD students should meet once a year, similarly to what we do as managers, leaders and policymakers. We need to create a similar space for supervisors.
• We need to challenge the time frame for when master’s and doctoral studies need to be completed. We need to use available evidence on how long it takes and reconsider the realistic completion time.

On the recommendation for in-person gatherings of postgraduate students and supervisors, Professor Burton said the concept has many models, for example, doctoral schools. These gatherings could be regional versus national, or both. USAf’s Community of Practice for Postgraduate Education and Scholarship could help with such meetings. “We should make starting such networks one of our action points,” she said.

She said completion times for master’s and doctoral degrees is strongly linked to funding, “undoubtedly one of the big elephants in the room for the whole postgraduate education system”.

In agreement, Professor Sioux McKenna, the EQPE coordinator from Rhodes University, said there had never been a regulation time for the doctorate. “It’s not written down anywhere. Universities made that up. This idea that a PhD is three years is because of the funding…”

Still on completion times, Professor McKenna mentioned the Council on Higher Education’s (CHE’s) new draft Higher Education Qualifications Sub-Framework (HEQSF), which states in its introduction that a master’s coursework is 180 credits, which, in theory, can be done in one year.  Considering that a PhD carries 360 credits, it has always been possible to complete a PhD in a minimum of two years, she said. But if universities adopted that as the norm, “it would worsen our current position,” said McKenna.

Burton said universities also need to consider the CHE’s Doctoral Degrees National Report of March 2022, which delves deeper into doctoral graduate attributes and its expectations of what a PhD student needs to achieve. She does not think those attributes can be achieved in two years.

Professor Burton expressed satisfaction with the ground covered in this Colloquium. “I really hope we can resume these [recommended actions] sooner than next year’s colloquium, through a series of regional gatherings,” she concluded.

Gillian Anstey is a contract writer for Universities South Africa.