Complex legacies and future prospects: Conceptualising changes in South African doctoral education

ABSTRACT

A number of key drivers are responsible for the major shifts taking place in doctoral education globally, including massification, globalisation, digitalisation and the knowledge economy. While each of these drivers permeates the South African higher education context to some extent, we argue that the country’s complex historical legacies provide a unique background and lens through which key drivers of doctoral education can be framed. Thus, our focus is first to outline the complex legacy of apartheid and its implications for the country’s transformation agenda and resulting shifts taking place in the South African higher and doctoral education landscape. Secondly, to account for some future prospects, we draw on the outcomes of the recent (2020/21) national review of doctoral programmes in South Africa. We highlight some recommendations that universities need to attend to via their respective doctoral improvement plans as a possible future agenda for driving and improving doctoral education.

KEYWORDS:

• South Africa
• doctoral education
• apartheid legacy
• transformation
• national review

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The number of private higher education institutions (HEIs) has been included here in order to give a snapshot of the country’s HE landscape – otherwise we focus on just public HE in this paper. These private HEI numbers are as of the 12th of June 2023 (https://www.dhet.gov.za/SitePages/DocRegisters.aspx).

2. The CHE is a statutory body enacted through the Higher Education Act 1997. It plays an advisory role to the Minister of Higher Education, monitors quality assurance, promotes student access to higher education and publishes reports on the state of, and developments in, higher education.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nompilo Tshuma

Nompilo Tshuma is a lecturer in the Centre for Higher and Adult Education at Stellenbosch University. She is currently the coordinator of the Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education and the MPhil in Higher Education. She also supervises a number of Master’s and Doctoral students, including cohort and dual award programmes with UK and European university partners.

Eli Bitzer

Eli Bitzer is Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Higher and Adult Education, Stellenbosch University. He has guided 92 senior graduates to completion, contributed over 90 articles and book chapters, has chaired four international conferences on postgraduate supervision, and has a keen interest in promoting the quality of postgraduate research.