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B06
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Strengthening postgraduate environments in African academia [initiated by ISS]
Long Abstract:
This panel invites papers dealing with experiences of supporting and improving PhD supervision in Africa, or broader, the ‘postgraduate environment’. The panel will discuss issues around calls for the Africanization of higher education and the implications for the content and nature of the PhD at African universities, as well as for the process of PhD supervision. Core papers will be based on the recent SPS-EPE-CPC experiences, programmes supported by NUFFIC and by the European Union (The SPS project (2010-2015) was focused on strengthening supervision in South Africa, while the EPE project (2016-2018) focused on broader issues related to the postgraduate and research environment of universities in South Africa. The CPC project will start in 2020 and will focus on South Africa and Kenya and will again focus on postgraduate supervision and strengthening the postgraduate environment). Other papers are invited about experiences on strengthening postgraduate environments in other African countries and elsewhere [initiated by ISS; together with VU University, Rhodes University and possibly one or more Kenyan university partners – under review].
Accepted papers:
Session 1
Developing institutions as important as developing indviduals
Sioux McKenna
(Rhodes University)
Chrissie Boughey
(Rhodes University)
Paper long abstract:
Over the last seven years, a course entitled 'Strengthening Postgraduate Supervision' (http://postgradsupervision.com) has been offered more than 60 times to academic staff across 22 public universities in South Africa. The course aims to develop supervision capacity amid calls for increased doctoral education (National Development Plan 2011). The course is underpinned by a focus on the public good benefits of postgraduate education, beyond private good benefits. This presentation discusses some of the lessons about doctoral education that have been learned. The objective of this paper is to consider the major findings related to institutional structures and cultures that may be of relevance across national contexts. Participant evaluations, facilitator reports, and facilitator observations are analysed using Archer's analytical dualism to make sense of the role of structures, cultures and agency in doctoral education. The key findings presented here relate to the need for institutional support for novice advisors, the ways in which institutional hierarchies can constrain graduate education, and the need for flexibility to engage with 'alternative' models of doctoral education. The findings emerge amidst policy demands for growth in doctoral output, but will have relevance for other national contexts.
Strengthening postgraduate environments in African academia: the Nigerian Humanities doctoral supervision example
Paul Onanuga
(Federal University Oye Ekiti)
Rotimi Olowojaiye
(Bowen University)
Paper long abstract:
Globally, postgraduate programmes constitute avenues to deepen scholarship and progress the possibilities of providing solutions to the challenges in the immediate environment, and by extension, the human society. While Nigeria has a rich history of postgraduate education, it has progressively witnessed a downturn in fortunes, and this has been occasioned by a multiplicity of factors. In this article, we explore the history of postgraduate education in Nigeria; identify the contemporary realities of PG supervision in the Humanities; and, recommend possible ways through which solutions - home-grown especially - can be devised to resolve these challenges. The myriad of inhibiting factors include the bureaucratic administrative structures, heavy workload for academic staff, absence of domestic research grants, poor supervisor-supervisee relations, quality and professionalism of doctoral candidates, infrastructural and technological deficit, and deficient research culture. In our discussions, we rely on personal and institutional experiences in recounting the realities. It is hoped that through systemic reorganisation, sustained in-house trainings and collective call-to-action of stakeholders, the Humanities supervision system and the Nigerian postgraduate system as a whole can be reinvented to become more practical-oriented and more attuned to the constantly evolving global realities.
Capacity building in higher education: lessons from Erasmus+ projects
Henk van den Heuvel
(Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Wil Hout
(Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Paper long abstract:
Capacity building projects in higher education in the 'Global South' have been financed by a succession of financial instruments managed by governmental organisations and international institutions. This paper discusses our experience with two such financing instruments, focusing on the way in which relationships are framed in donor documents and applications forms used in the EU's Erasmus+ programme. The paper reflects on how reciprocity in collaboration, which is rhetorically one of the objectives of the programme, can be operationalised in reality given the structure of financing and reporting required under Erasmus+. We discuss the pitfalls of the programme structure for 'knowledge transfer' to and 'capacity building' of so-called 'beneficiary institutions' in Africa, particularly in view of the reproduction of dependency relations in knowledge production and ownership produced by that structure, as well as for reciprocal effects on education and research at the European universities. We reflect on the way in which attempts at more equal knowledge production have been successful and on the conditions under which those attempts have been realised in the capacity building projects both in Africa and in Europe.