Erika Jacobs knew that by attaining an MBA degree she would be better equipped to start her own business, so she registered for the Unisa MBL. She wanted to acquire strategic information on markets, labour issues, legislation and interest rates.
Jacobs had to produce a research thesis, which turned out to be a roller coaster ride. As a BCom accounting graduate, she did not have much experience in writing essays of an academic nature. Now she was expected to produce a research paper of huge proportions. ‘Universities teach you rules but don’t give you a structure on how to write a thesis,” she says.
Jacobs was advised to attend a course on how to produce a good thesis, which she found extremely useful. She started work on her thesis in January last year and had her supervisor and a thesis course trainer to answer any questions, but ultimately had to produce a research paper (on Islamic banking products) on her own.
The thesis entailed writing a proposal and then collecting, analysing and defending data, which takes time but is easier if there is an understanding of what is expected. ‘My work would come back from my professor full of green and red marks. It was not good enough.”
Jacobs handed in her thesis in November last year, graduating summa cum laude. She stresses the importance of remaining focused on your studies no matter how desperate your situation. Jacobs also advises having a good relationship with your supervisor and gaining the support of your employer.
Jacobs is one of a few thousand masters students who manage to graduate each year — many drop out. According to Dr Erik Hofstee — who owns Exactica Thesis and Dissertation Solutions, a company that runs dissertation workshops for students — South Africa’s output of masters and PhD students is ‘not good enough to run a knowledge society”.
Citing the department of education’s Education Statistics at a Glance, 2003 to 2005 Enrolment and Graduation, Hofstee says that in the masters category in 2003 there were 7 516 graduates out of an enrolment of 43 953 students. In 2004, of the 45 333 students who enrolled, only 7 922 graduated. In 2005 only 8 018 out of 44 533 graduated. Among doctoral students in 2003, of the 8 380 candidates who enrolled, only 1 032 graduated. In 2004, 1 116 out of 9 104 graduated and, in 2005, 9 434 enrolments resulted in only 1 189 graduations.
Hofstee says: ‘We need to produce many more. These are the people who are going to develop the country.” If you lower the standards and increase the enrolment of students, the output percentages will stay the same.
If students understand what is required in the production of a thesis and how to do it efficiently, they can create good dissertations in a reasonable amount of time.
Hofstee, who holds two masters degrees and a PhD, says in general ‘students are not told how to [produce dissertations] in a way that makes sense” while supervisors — who are specialists in their fields, but not always on writing theses — often struggle to assist them.
Hofstee has marked several dissertations and says recurring problems are language issues, lack of structure and attention to detail. ‘Sometimes … the work doesn’t form a coherent whole. Sometimes the literature review is not good because of secondary research problems and an inability to structure and analyse the works in the context of what students are doing. Often the method section has gaps in it or there are problems with the data [collection procedures]. The referencing may be faulty, the topic or problem is often far too broad and ill-delineated to address properly, or the analysis is not rigorous or only one side of a story is presented.”
For Hofstee, most of the errors are a result of not knowing what to do or how to do it properly. ‘It’s not that students lack the potential, it’s just never been explained in a way that makes sense. Consequently they make all the errors that one would expect and some give up entirely. Of those who don’t give up, all too often the result is long completion times and work that is inferior to what they could have produced. This lack of knowledge about how, practically, to go about conceptualising, researching, structuring and writing a dissertation is a big contributing factor to why students don’t complete their degrees.”
Hofstee’s company, which offers two-day workshops on thesis writing, has been in existence since 2003. His clients include universities, research institutes, government, corporations and individual postgraduate degree candidates.
Hofstee has also written a non-academic book, Constructing a Good Dissertation, which takes students through the step-by-step process of producing a quality thesis.
Two days to success
Dr Erik Hofstee’s two-day workshops show students how to:
find a good topic,
identify a doable problem within that topic,
formulate and evaluate thesis statements,
research hypotheses,
write a successful proposal, and
create a successful meta-structure for the dissertation.
The workshops also teach students how to:
- plan the dissertation project,
- construct functional timelines,
- research the structure,
- write the introduction, literature review, method, the body (presentation of research, analysis and arguments) the conclusion and appendices,
- edit effectively, and
- deal with the formalities involved in writing dissertations,
Students are also taught academic writing style and how to influence the choice of and interact with supervisors.