Targeted PhD numbers raise many questions at a recent colloquium
Numbers are always a key focus in any discussion on postgraduate students: the currently enrolled numbers vs those to which the university sector aspires, within what timeline.
Dr Nomakwezi Mzilikazi’s keynote address at the recent Enabling Quality Postgraduate Education (EQPE) colloquium probed these numbers and their implications, and many colloquium delegates interrogated the numbers in response to her keynote titled Why We Need Postgraduate Studies in South Africa. Mzilikazi is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (DVC) for Research, Innovation and Strategic Partnerships at Rhodes University (RU).
The colloquium, hosted by Universities South Africa’s Community of Practice for Postgraduate Education and Scholarship, took place on the East Rand in Gauteng on 17 and 18 March. It was a collaboration with the EQPE project housed at Rhodes University’s Centre for Postgraduate Studies.
The QnA below has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Rhodes University’s Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy, Professor Sandile Khamanga (right), asked if it was by design that the number of students in South African universities had doubled from just under a million in 1994 to just over a million today. Or did it just happen? “If we cannot calibrate that, it means that in itself is a risk, because instead of doubling, we can halve that. We need to understand systems.”
Regarding Dr Mzilikazi’s comment on the African Union’s target of producing 10,000 PhD graduates annually within the next 10 years, Professor Khamanga said we should not lose sight of proper planning. In her address, she had asked how universities on the continent were gearing themselves to achieve that target. Professor Khamanga then asked: “What informs that? I come from a mathematics background, so it’s important to know our capability index from the start,” he said, citing its impact on infrastructure and institutional governance, “so that things don’t fall apart”
Dr Mzilikazi responded that the expansion of access since 1994 had been planned. “It was partly a social justice imperative, because pre-1994, we would have had very low participation rates in higher education for social groupings that were not white.
“That 10,000 number, I would imagine, and hope, is based on some AU modelling, but strategy needs to be resourced. So, if the continent has identified a need for doctoral graduates for its socioeconomic wellbeing, that must be followed by appropriate investments in infrastructure, student funding, and training, instead of saying ‘we don’t have what it takes, therefore let’s not do it’.”
The delegates also posed questions based on Dr Mzilikazi’s other presentation at the colloquium, themed Exploring Preparedness for Postgraduate Studies.
Question: Professor Moses Mbewe (left), DVC: Postgraduate Studies, Engagement, and Planning, University of Mpumalanga: How do we balance the gap in the number of PhDs we are supposed to be producing in terms of the students, especially South African students [with inherent family support responsibilities] viz a viz the demands that a particular student should become independent of supporting families? Do you see us reaching 5000 PhDs per annum, if we balance that?
Mzilikazi: Over time we will achieve the targets, but not by 2030. That’s only 48 months away.
Question: Professor Neil Koorbanally, Dean of Research, University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN): For a long time now, South African universities have been preoccupied with targets and playing that numbers game — for funding and subsidy purposes. The PhD targets are also numbers-driven. We need to consider quality and impact. That’s how South Africa would get an international footprint.
Mzilikazi: I absolutely agree.
Question: Professor Liezel Frick (right), Vice-dean (Research & Postgraduate Studies) in the Faculty of Education, Stellenbosch University: I don’t think the question is, can we produce 10 000 or 5000 PhDs per year, depending on how you look at it, but should we? Then link that to the performance appraisal, which presupposes that supervisors are primarily responsible for students’ throughput. The majority of South African PhD students are part-time students, with many other factors playing a role in their lives beyond the control of supervisors. We need to think carefully about the unintended consequences of simply building students’ throughput into performance appraisal. We’ve seen the unintended consequences of the subsidy system on collaboration. We risk the same kind of unintended effect if we do not have a nuanced understanding of students’ throughput at a doctoral level, given our context.
Mzilikazi: I agree with a nuanced approach, and I hope I stated clearly that I am not an advocate for the performance management of academics. If you swing too far out, either side of the pendulum, you’re in trouble. Our centres for postgraduate education must consider a nuanced approach to supporting, especially part-time students, because they partner with supervisors. Supporting students in teams works especially well, as opposed to one student or one supervisor at a time. I’m a great advocate for team and cohort supervision.
Question: Professor Vitallis Chikoko, Dean: School of Education, UKZN: Regarding quality, I get a sense that, to some extent, we undermine our sector, especially when an academic moves from one institution to another. Having left one institution as a lecturer, they are made a full professor at another. I respect each institution’s academic freedom but as a macro system, we must ask those hard questions.
Mzilikazi: I do acknowledge there is a challenge, even though I don’t know how prevalent this is. It becomes problematic when institutions dangle associate professorships to make their senior-level demographics look better. I have heard at my institution that we are now nervous to invest too much in our younger black academics because they could be poached elsewhere, with the promise of a higher academic rank. It is the responsibility of the institution to ensure that its promotion and recruitment criteria are in order and defensible.
Question: Professor Emmanuel Mgqwashu, Director: Center for Higher Education Professional Development, North-West University: You said we are the only country on the continent with an honours qualification. Perhaps one can flip the question and ask, how do our undergraduate qualifications compare? Isn’t this a subtle admission of the quality of our undergraduate tuition, especially when, at most universities, you consider the juniorisation of undergraduate teaching?
Mzilikazi: I honestly do not have an evidence-backed answer, so I’m reluctant to comment.
Question: Professor Sanjay Balkaran (left), Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Management and Public Administration Sciences, Walter Sisulu University: I read an article by Mark C Taylor, who says ‘shut down all PhD programmes.’ He advocates that most doctoral programmes conform to a model defined in the Middle Ages. And these PhDs are processes of cloning what the supervisors want the PhD students to do. We have heard today that problems will never be solved if each institution continues to act independently. He proposes a consortium of a core faculty drawn from a home department and a rotating group of faculty members from other institutions. In effect, this would reduce both the number of graduate programmes and the number of faculty members. What are your comments?
Mzilikazi: Only 2.3% of all our students are in doctoral education. Therefore, I disagree with the idea of shutting down all doctoral programmes. I agree that doctoral training by the apprenticeship model has reached its sell-by date. If we’ve been saying that for the past 15 years, why haven’t we moved on? We acknowledge that we have inadequate supervision capacity. We also know that team or committee supervision yields a whole range of advantages because of a skills mix.
If we are not going to depart from the apprenticeship model, we need to, at the very least, complement the types of supervision arrangements we have at our universities. I think this was also discussed at the 2024 colloquium.
Gillian Anstey is a contract writer for Universities South Africa.
