Doctoral education has come under scrutiny both worldwide and in South Africa.
Stakeholders and policymakers are constantly debating issues such as: are we producing enough doctoral graduates? Are we producing quality doctorates? What knowledge is produced, by whom and for whom? How is doctoral research funded and could it be better supported? And, most importantly, what is a doctorate for?
In March this year 60 international experts gathered in Kassel, Germany, with an ambitious agenda to explore how doctoral education could become a greater resource in educating future leaders who can help solve the world’s great challenges.
Policymakers, educational leaders, corporate donors and researchers representing 23 countries from six continents took part in the discussions. South Africa was the only country representing Africa.
The workshop was developed and organised by the Centre for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education (Cirge) at the University of Washington in Seattle.
On the agenda — in the third such workshop since 2005 — were three main topics: internationalisation and inequality in the distribution of intellectual capital, diversity in all its forms relating to doctoral study and intellectual risk-taking, such as conducting research outside the mainstream.
The goal of the workshop was to move from analysis to action. For this purpose the workshop participants crafted policy recommendations to stimulate action in these three areas.
The first topic, equity in the distribution of intellectual capital, dealt with the issues of internationalisation and inequality, for example, brain drain and brain gain.
In 2006 nearly three million students were enrolled in higher education institutions outside their home countries. Among these, doctoral students came mostly from poorer nations to study in richer nations with comprehensive research and university systems.
Yet questions were asked about whether the opportunities for sharing knowledge, for enhancing the crosscultural skills of both international and domestic students, and for building scientific capacity in less-developed countries, had been realised.
Statistics show that, instead of returning home, many international graduates end up working in countries that already have well-developed research and education centres. In the past international students became important to the institution only when it became clear that they intended to stay at the institution.
With the unequal distribution of intellectual capital worldwide, this needs to be changed. Universities must ask why they are attracting international students. The right answer should be that they want them to gain expertise and knowledge, which they give to their own countries when they return.This topic has a particular relevance to South Africa, where nearly 30% of doctoral students are international, mostly from the Southern African Development Community and other African countries.
In fact, some doctoral programmes in South African universities can fill their equity quota of black graduates only by recruiting international students. Furthermore, host institutions do
little or nothing to bring international and domestic students together in ways that enhance students’ cross-cultural skills. This is despite the fact that doctoral graduates everywhere increasingly need to function in an international context.
For these reasons, the Kassel conference recommended that international organisations, national governments, universities and individual doctoral programmes should examine their international policies through the lens of global inequality and look for ways to mitigate the negative consequences of brain drain.
More specifically, the group recommended that governments, institutions and doctoral programmes:
The second conference topic was diversity in doctoral education in an international perspective. There is no global picture of existing diversity in PhD programmes.
In fact, a major challenge for the participants was the definition of diversity. Categories of diversity are fluid. For example, various countries define differently what ethnicity is, who the international or domestic students are and, regarding gender, some countries have a third category of indeterminate gender.
There are also barriers to the collection of data, such as the legality of collecting certain data in some countries (race, for example).
In South Africa when we speak about increasing diversity in doctoral education, we usually refer to race/ethnicity and, to a lesser extent, gender. Yet diversity and inclusivity are about more than that.
They are also about socio-economic status, age, people with disabilities, immigrants, language background, religion, international students and those who are the first generation of their family to enter higher education. Each of the participating countries brought to the Kassel gathering a unique set of data representing what constitutes diversity in its country.
It was evident that to better understand how diversity and inequality are reflected in PhD programmes worldwide, it was necessary to have the context and the history of the specific countries and to look at patterns of inclusion and exclusion in the broader population. Only with this understanding could the data make a valuable contribution to knowledge.
Subsequently, the participants of the Kassel conference called on international organisations, national-level ministries and associations of universities to create a basis for an international system of diversity indicators. More specifically, they recommended:
Despite this emphasis on quantitative data, the participants recommended that to promote greater diversity among doctoral students it is necessary to discourage sole reliance on quantitative criteria for selection of candidates and, where applicable, to move towards use of non-quantitative selection criteria.
The third topic was intellectual risk-taking and interdisciplinarity in doctoral research.
The ultimate goal of doctoral research is the creation of new knowledge and innovation. This requires intellectual risk-taking.
Researchers today must cross disciplinary, national, institutional and cultural boundaries. This point was emphasised by Professor Reinhard Jahn, from the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, who maintained that ‘risk-taking is a mandatory prerequisite for transformative research”.
At the same time he warned that institutions need to take care to distinguish between risky doctoral research and bad science. Yet in some cases existing academic reward structures and funding agencies discourage both the crossing of boundaries and risky research projects.
As relative newcomers to research, doctoral researchers may be ill-advised to address interdisciplinary questions or to undertake risky research. Risk goes together with trust. To take risks, doctoral students need a supportive environment.
They need to trust their supervisors and institutions and they need a safety net. It is easier to take a risk when working in a group than pursuing a doctorate alone. And, most importantly, it is necessary to have experienced and confident supervisors who encourage students to think creatively and to challenge beliefs.
The issue of risk-taking was contentious, with participants’ views ranging from ‘you cannot allow students to fail” to ‘good doctoral programmes should be judged by their level of failure rather than their level of success”.
The consensus was that if risk is taken in the early stage of the doctorate in a relatively safe environment, it could be a growing experience for the doctoral students. It was argued that if the aim of the doctorate is to produce graduates who are creative, innovative and imaginative, doctoral education needs to find ways to equip graduates to consider risky research projects, to work effectively in interdisciplinary and cross-institutional contexts and assess risks in research careers.
Therefore the Kassel participants recommended that:
Although coursework has become an integral part of doctoral programmes in many countries worldwide, doctoral education in South Africa is mostly based on the apprenticeship model of one student to one supervisor. This model is far less open to risk-taking initiatives.
There are some doctoral programmes in South Africa that are well funded, have dedicated and experienced supervisors, strong institutional support, top students and resources. For doctoral education to become a greater resource in solving future challenges, we need more of those.
Dr Chaya Herman is a senior lecturer in the department of education, University of Pretoria, and a senior researcher for the PhD project at the Academy of Science of South Africa. She writes in her personal capacity. Summaries and videos from the Kassel conference can be viewed on the Cirge website: www.cirge.washington.edu