/ 19 February 2008

PhD lessons from Brazil

Notwithstanding signs of increasing commitment by the state, many worries continue over the future of South Africa's higher education system. The elephant in the room remains the fact that the system is not reproducing itself. Many whispers in the corners suggest that the system may now border on being unsustainable.

Notwithstanding signs of increasing commitment by the state, many worries continue over the future of South Africa’s higher education system. The elephant in the room remains the fact that the system is not reproducing itself. Many whispers in the corners suggest that the system may now border on being unsustainable.

A quick and dirty measure suggests why these whispers may not be too far off the mark. The international qualification norm for future cohorts of researchers’ output continues to be the doctorate and recent studies indicate that the local system is not producing these in sufficient numbers — across all disciplines. Consider this comparison: 0,1% of India’s population has a PhD; in South Africa this figure is 0,01%.

Of course, it is not easy to play catch-up. It isn’t simply about recruiting a few more bright students into postgraduate work. What is needed — and urgently, too — is a four-fold increase in PhD registrations across all disciplines.

How is the sector to do this?

A call to a kind of national service might well help. This would say to young South Africans that the long-term success of this society will depend on the production of new knowledge — that the wellbeing of this multi-layered democracy, not to mention sustainable economic growth, depends on the ability to produce sufficient numbers of high-level researchers.

Sadly, however, this kind of appeal rings hollow in a society which for the past decade has been focused on an ideology of the market and the accumulation of personal wealth.

So, how will it become possible to keep the best and the brightest in the universities when they can walk into jobs that pay more than their supervisers earn? How are we to tell them that for the next five years — the time it takes to complete postgraduate work — they will have to live on scholarships (if they are lucky) of about R3 000 to R5 000 a month? How are we to persuade them to build a 35-year career in a profession in which salaries have fallen catastrophically in comparative terms over the past two decades?

Interestingly, other societies have done this and it is to these rather than the faltering logic of global competitiveness and league tables that the bureaucrats who preside over research might direct their ideas.

With much imagination, and not a little risk, Brazilian research bureaucrats addressed this challenge three to four decades ago. The first step was to recognise that postgraduate education was central to the everyday health of the nation and its future.

Secondly, eliciting the assistance of politicians they encouraged Brazilian higher education to see itself as bridge between that country’s present and its future ­– simply put, intellectual labour is central to the shaping of nationhood. At the same time the system is quintessentially international. In several postgraduate programmes, for example, competence in at least three international languages is a requirement for admission.

Thirdly, and turning towards policy implementation, the national education ministry directed significant resources to the most established universities for new programmes that would enhance postgraduate education. This was done through the Fundação Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível (the Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel — Capes).

Not unlike the mandate of the old Foundation for Research Development, the forerunner of the National Research Foundation (NRF), Capes aims at the development of high-level human resources through the performance of high-quality research. This is somewhat more focused than the more diffuse mandate of the NRF, which, for many researchers, has somewhat lost traction.

The Brazilian imagination was bold. Through Capes about 3 600 graduate courses at the country’s best public universities have been established and financially supported in the certain knowledge that it is only through globally competitive programmes, which are subjected to regular evaluation, that researchers can grow in confidence.

To achieve this, Capes has put in place a substantial peer-review based system to assure research quality. This draws on the most experienced academics in that country and has enabled Capes to be seen to be legitimate both within and without the academic sector. This, too, may have very important lessons for the NRF where processes (and sometimes even legitimacy) are called into question.

But Capes has achieved something more besides — establishing its own legitimacy as well as legitimacy for the research project.

It has created one of the world’s leading research databases, which provides online access to more than 11 000 titles, 42% of which are in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

It also supports the frequent interchange between postgraduate researchers within the country. Nearly 2 000 professors and their postgraduate students gather once every year to present their research and engage on one or more of the burning questions that face Brazil. In 2005 the issue was race and identity — a question that seems never far from South Africa’s agenda, too.

Given this energy, it is really not surprising that in the past decade the output of the Brazilian higher education system has grown exponentially: in 1996 about 10 500 master’s and 3 000 doctoral students graduated. In 2006 these numbers grew to 35 000 and 9 500 respectively. In 2006 Capes funded more than 4 000 postgraduate students in other countries. As importantly, figures suggest that the qualifications of the teaching and supervision cohort were improving. In 1996, the number of faculty with PhDs was at the level of 19 600 and by 2004 this figure had soared to 32 364.

There was an unexpected, but understandable, bonus to this activity: research output has exploded. Between 1981 and 2005 the global output of scientific research doubled. For Brazil, this figure has increased seven-fold. The evidence is irrefutable: research output grows with the number of students who are registered in doctoral work.

So what can South Africa do to emulate Brazil’s turnaround? Here are some pointers:

  • Don’t make research an add-on to every political agenda, but put it at the very centre of any and every growth strategy. Let’s all understand (and accept) that the well-being of our democracy depends on this.
  • Focus on the future — this means the postgraduate student. Given social circumstances, this attention must extend beyond the classroom. As in Brazil, pay South African students who are accepted into high-quality doctoral programmes a monthly ‘salary” with access to health care insurance and so on.
  • And, like our colleagues in Brazil, focus on quality, quality, quality.

The Brazilian Constitution guarantees that all postgraduate study is tuition free. An amendment in this direction is unlikely in contemporary South Africa, but unless we are able to see that science and research build the future, our much cherished Constitution might not be worth the paper it is printed on.

Ahmed Cassim Bawa was deputy vice-chancellor for research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal between 2005 and 2007 and Peter Vale was vice-rector for academic affairs at the University of the Western Cape between 1999 and 2001. Both have returned to teaching and research