Enhancing Postgraduate Environments

The Higher Education sector in South Africa is going through a fundamental transformation process, addressing several challenges such as inequality of representation amongst existing staff, high student : staff ratios, low throughput rates, limited qualifications of existing staff and an inadequate postgraduate pipeline. Therefore, the government aims to identify and nurture academic talent, support newly recruited academics to acquire Doctoral and Master’s degrees, and develop their research skills. Also, the roles of professionals in Higher Education operating in the ‘third space’ are increasingly important as universities seek to differentiate themselves in how they create a valuable student experience; ensure student outcomes; and positively impact their local, regional, and global communities and economies through research and engagement. The project will address these aspects with a focus on strengthening postgraduate environments, reinforcing academic cultures at public universities in South Africa. This will contribute to transforming public universities, creating more conducive environments for postgraduate studies and sustainable supervisory capacity. The project intends to support universities to develop supervision capacity, nurture academic talent, assist them in training newly recruited academics to acquire Doctoral and Master’s degrees and develop research skills of academic staff.At individual level, participants will be coached to design a tailor-made programme to develop postgraduate supervision, while taking into account the historical background, nature of the concerned institute, its ethos, its vision and mission and available resources. At institutional level, the extended tailor-made programme designed by the participants will be presented to their research office, faculty and university leadership, anticipating approval and implementation of (essential elements of) the proposed programme to enhance their postgraduate environment.