Universities strive to meet South Africa's urgent need for postgraduates
- Published on 30 Aug 2013
- Dr Shireen Motala
Building postgraduate enrolment and graduation is a critical challenge for South African universities, many of which aspire to a 50:50 ratio of postgraduate to undergraduate students. Competition for the small pool of post graduate students is fierce, as institutions make plans to improve on knowledge transfer, supportive infrastructure, and most of all, funding.
South Africa produced little over 1 500 doctoral graduates in 2011, according to the Department of Higher Education and Training. Although this is substantially up on the number generated a decade before, it is far too low to satisfy the country's developmental needs, grow the economy and improve our HR capacity. International demand for South African graduates and the ongoing brain drain cause further shrinkage of this small body of professionals, adding urgency to the situation.
In their initiatives to upgrade postgraduate studies and increase enrolment, local universities have opted for different models. Some have left the responsibility within their individual faculties. We, at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), have gone for a cross-disciplinary approach, establishing the Postgraduate Centre (PGC) three years ago. Its mandate is to provide support in the broadest sense - from accommodation to quality scholarship - to some 6 000 students in its postgraduate community.
UJ has committed to being among the top universities globally and a force in the international arena. Research capacity within the PGC is essential to increase its legitimacy and enable it to interact at the appropriate level with similar structures within South Africa and abroad. This capacity will also enable the PGC as an entity to develop research-led qualifications that can be offered to champion specific areas of interdisciplinary research.
While the full impact of the PGC is expected to become evident in the next two years, there are already early successes:
- Between 2011 and 2012, masters qualification was up 9.14% and doctoral graduation by 60.29% - an impressive achievement albeit from different cohorts.
- Internal and external sources of funding have improved and UJ's published research has spiralled.
