The National Research Foundation (NRF) is investigating ways to increase significantly the monetary values of annual grants for honours, masters and doctoral students as part of its plan to produce more researchers.
Professor Mzamo Mangaliso, president and chief executive of the NRF, told Higher Learning that the allocations to honours and masters students, in particular, ‘were woefully inadequate”. He said the NRF ‘has to make concerted efforts” to rectify the situation.
The plan comes as the country is battling to plug the widening gap between the number of new researchers joining academia compared to the number of older researchers who are retiring.
At present, only 1% of researchers are younger than 30, down from 6% in 1992. Simultaneously, 50% of researchers are older than 50.
This means South Africa is experiencing a critical shortfall of young knowledge producers and a growing number of senior, established researchers who are retiring.
In addition, the skills needed in the economy and for events such as the Fifa World Cup in 2010 were attracting talented graduates in to the labour market, instead of retaining them at higher education institutions.
‘We must raise the allocations to postgraduate students sufficiently. The honours year is the cherry-picking year, but we have to push up the funding aggressively,” Mangaliso said. ‘At honour’s level, we can look at increasing the grant three- to fourfold. The allocation for masters students should be closer to an employment income.”
The NRF, the government’s national agency promoting research and innovation, was in the middle of a strategic planning exercise.
Its new strategic plan was expected to include initiatives to help bridge the chasm that had developed in South Africa’s research community. ‘There is no pipeline,” said Mangaliso, adding that the problem started at schools, which did not generate enough higher-grade maths and science matriculants.
South Africa produced only 23 PhD graduates per million people a year, compared to 210 per million in Australia and 147 per million in Korea.
‘By 2024, we want to increase the number fourfold; in other words, we must produce 92 PhDs per million people per year,” said Mangaliso.
Increased funding, as an incentive to attract students to postgraduate studies, a restructuring of degrees to allow for a PhD to be obtained in eight years, instead of the current nine to 10, luring back South African researchers from abroad and a PhD fair could make inroads, he said.
An initiative that Mangaliso hoped would attract South African researchers back to the country was the South African Research Chairs Initiative.
A total of 72 research chairs (well-endowed, focused research positions) had been awarded already. This was well ahead of the target of 55 for this year. The goal was to have 210 chairs by 2010.
He encouraged institutions, which wanted to bring South Africans back from overseas universities, to contact the NRF, which could ‘leverage” assistance under the government’s human resources development strategy.
Mangaliso said there had to be goals and incentives for senior researchers to train young researchers and consequences if targets were not met. ‘It is time to be serious about this,” Mangaliso said.
He said part of the problem might be the high expectations that institutions such as the NRF placed on researchers to churn out papers and patents.
In addition, the rewards for training young researchers were not comparable to the rewards of producing research. ‘We will have to put our heads together with researchers to ensure that while we are shooting for excellence we are not letting go of redress. The emphasis is on quality and quantity, but not enough on redress,” he said.
Mangaliso agreed with other higher education commentators that the salary structure of academics was a problem. ‘The reward system concerns me. We have a situation where government departments and science councils attract the best brains. The system is rewarding bureaucrats and managers, not the people in the trenches. This is a big problem,” he said.
Departments of education, science and technology and the science councils had to revisit salary structures to ensure the best brains were maintained for research and for nurturing another generation of researchers, he said.
The NRF was planning to host a PhD fair to find professionals who were keen to pursue doctoral studies.
At the fair, prospective students would be helped with their applications, funding and general information, such as the requirements for completing a PhD successfully.
Despite the crisis in research, Mangaliso said there were positive developments, such as the growth in the expenditure on research and development.
Science and Technology Minister Mosebudi Mangena announced in his recent budget speech that the target of spending 1% of GDP on research and development by 2008/09 was within reach.
At present, the spending was R14-million or 0,91% of GDP, up from 0,87% in 2005/06.
Mangena said the national spending on research and development had increased by about R4,5-billion in the past five years.
Postgraduate awards
At present, the monetary value of scholarships and fellowships are as follows:
Honours: R8 000 per annum
Masters: R33 000 to R40 000 pa
Doctoral: R65 000 pa
The National Research Foundation (NRF) also administers honours, masters and PhD grants for scarce skills on behalf of the department of labour. These grants carry a higher monetary value than the ones allocated by the NRF. — Source: NRF