Doctoral Training And Higher Education In Africa

Drawing on insights from across Africa, this book investigates the discourses and practices that guide doctoral training today. Higher education is regarded as key for driving development and innovation, creating an informed knowledge base equipped to tackle local and global challenges. For too long external forces defined education in the continent, but now African countries are revitalising higher education, designing doctoral training to fit distinctly African needs and contexts. This book investigates the history, present and future potential of doctoral training on international, regional, national and institutional levels. Bringing together expertise from both research and practice, the book analyses the frameworks and structures of the doctoral phase, and how institutions, supervisors, mentors and young scholars meet the challenges of training in real life. The book covers issues such as access to education, proactive recruitment, funding issues, practitioner expertise, enrolment and drop-out, across a range of countries including South Africa, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Benin, Ghana and Morocco. This book will be a rich resource for higher education administrators and policy makers, as well as researchers and academics with an interest in higher education in Africa.

The PhD Experience in African Higher Education, edited by Ruth Murambadoro, John Mashayamombe, and uMbuso weNkosi, addresses the growing call to invest in the humanities and social sciences by exploring the nature of doctoral training in select institutions of higher learning in South Africa. In the past two decades, South Africa has become a key player in the global higher education landscape and dubbed the hub for doctoral training in Africa because of its developed educational infrastructure and highly ranked universities. Given South Africa’s positioning, the contributors in this volume argue that the government, donors, universities, and faculty have a socio-legal duty to ensure that doctoral programs in the humanities and social sciences are not offered to amass numbers of African graduates but are grounded on equipping students with both hard and soft skills necessary to succeed. This is achieved by offering skills training and research apprenticeships fostered in communities of practice because, as the contributors show, the humanities and social sciences are the backbone of society. Furthermore, they argue that treating doctoral candidates as equal partners is emancipatory because intellectual projects are best nurtured through collaborative learning.

Worldwide, in Africa and in South Africa, the importance of the doctorate has increased disproportionately in relation to its share of the overall graduate output over the past decade. This heightened attention has not only been concerned with the traditional role of the PhD, namely the provision of future academics; rather, it has focused on the increasingly important role that higher education and, particularly, high-level skills is perceived to play in national development and the knowledge economy. This book is unique in the area of research into doctoral studies because it draws on a large number of studies conducted by the Centre of Higher Education Trust (CHET) and the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST), as well as on studies from the rest of Africa and the world. In addition to the historical studies, new quantitative and qualitative research was undertaken to produce the evidence base for the analyses presented in the book. The findings presented in Doctoral Education in South Africa pose anew at least six tough policy questions that the country has struggled with since 1994, and continues to struggle with, if it wishes to gear up the system to meet the target of 5 000 new doctorates a year by 2030. Discourses framed around the single imperatives of growth, efficiency, transformation or quality will not, however, generate the kind of policy discourses required to resolve these tough policy questions effectively. What is needed is a change in approach that accommodates multiple imperatives and allows for these to be addressed simultaneously.

This edited collection is cohesive by a focus on becoming: becoming a doctoral student, becoming a researcher, becoming an academic, and becoming a supervisor. This journey of becoming takes us from pre-enrolment in a doctoral programme, through the many phases of candidature and into the post-doctoral environment. Both advancing theory, and providing very practical examples, this book is of immense value to doctoral students and academics not only in South Africa - for whom it should be a mandatory read - but also for doctoral education researchers, doctoral students and supervisors worldwide, as the themes covered extend well beyond the borders of South Africa.

The book is a must read for policy makers, academics, university administrators and post graduate research students in the broad field of education and in higher education studies in particular. The book brings together a wealth of information regarding the imperatives of transformation in Africa’s higher education systems. Not only do some of the chapters provide critical discussion about the conceptualisation of transformation, the majority of the chapters reflect on empirical evidence for transformation in diverse fields of mathematics, science, gender, the training of doctoral students and the governance and management of universities. This central theme of sustainable change and reform runs across the chapters of the book. For students, the book provides exemplars of practical research in higher education. For scholars in higher education and policy makers, specific issues for reform are identified and discussed.

The first of its kind, this book documents and analyzes the international dimension of higher education in Africa based on country case-studies and a consideration of relevant historical and contemporary themes. It identifies trends, developments, and challenges related to the international dimension of higher educational at the institutional, national, and regional levels. It explores the institutional the opportunities and probes the risks while it responds to the growing need for information and analysis of internationalization of higher education in Africa. On the basis of this book project, an effort is underway to establish the African Network for Internationalization of Education (ANIE). This network aims to develop research capacity and expertise to meet the professional and practical needs of individuals, institutions and organizations interested in the international dimension of higher education in Africa.

This book offers a unique perspective on doctoral supervision in southern Africa, showcasing the potential of scholarly reflection. The aim is to share the benefits with a wider audience, catalyzing the use of scholarly literature in global doctoral supervision. By drawing on the field's literature, it fosters informed and systematic reflection to transform supervision. With a focus on deep development and affordability, this book presents a model that enhances the quality of doctoral graduates. It builds on collaborative work and analysis of supervision experiences, engaging with key literature and exploring facets of practice. Through personal exemplifications, authors highlight complexities and commonalities across cultural contexts, inspiring systematic improvement in supervision. A valuable resource for academics, researchers, and practitioners involved in doctoral supervision, this book provides evidence-based insights and creative approaches to pedagogy. It encourages the systematic enrichment of doctoral supervisors worldwide.

"Universities and economic development in Africa presents the synthesisesand key findings of eight African countries and universities. The analysis and discussions presented in the book draw the following three main conclusions: 1. There is a lack of clarity and agreement (pact) about a development model and the role of higher education in development, at both national and institutional levels. There is, however, an increasing awareness, particularly at government level, of the importance of universities in the global context of the knowledge economy. 2. Research production at the eight African universities is not strong enough to enable them to build on their traditional undergraduate teaching roles and make a sustained contribution to development via new knowledge production. A number of universities have manageable student-staff ratios and adequately qualifi ed staff, but inadequate funds for staff to engage in research. In addition, the incentive regimes do not support knowledge production. 3. In none of the countries in the sample is there a coordinated effort between government, external stakeholders and the university to systematically strengthen the contribution that the university can make to development. While at each of the universities there are exemplary development projects that connect strongly to external stakeholders and strengthen the academic core, the challenge is how to increase the number of these projects. The project on which this report is based forms part of a larger study on Higher Education and Economic Development in Africa, undertaken by the Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in Africa (HERANA). HERANA is coordinated by the Centre for Higher Education Transformation in South Africa"--Back cover.