Transcript Africa Needs Research Universities

Session:
The next generation of scientists and scholars in SA
South Africa a PhD Hub for Africa?
Nico Cloete
Letabo
12 May 2015
More PhD’s
1.
Castells – the university as engine of development in the knowledge
economy (1991 Kuala Lumpur, World Bank; UWC 2001)
2. Knowledge more important than capital or materials
3. Talent, not capital is the primary source of competitive advantage
4. Unprecedented growth – China 50 000 pa, University Sao Paulo more than
the whole SA system – traditional systems US, UK much slower
5. Number of doctorates far exceed number of places in US in 1970
50% of PhDs got tenure track position, by 2006 15% (100 000 new PhDs,
only 15000 new academic jobs). In Germany only 6% aim for academic
position
6. What do they do – finance, research organisations, pastors
7. Silicon valley – innovation
8. Ms Zuma (AU commissioner, 2013) – Africa must produce ten’s of thousands
of PhDs – as long as they stay in SA.
9. Naledi Pandor DST Budget speech, July 2014 – SA must produce 6000 per
year and will ask government for R5billion
10. The PhD factories – is it time to stop? (Cyranoski in Nature, 2011)
Growth in PhD graduates in South Africa, 1920 - 2012
1878
1576
1182
1104 1100
96
83
68
60
53
39
26
0
4
19
30
32
46
60
78
28
88
1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1957
1971 1975 1979
1986 1990 1996 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2011 2012
Average annual growth rate of PhD graduates, 1920 - 2012
12.3%
10.1%
7.3%
5.0%
4.0%
1.7%
1920-1957
1971-1995
1996-2000
2000-2004
2004-2008
2008-2012
PhD production in SA vs a number of selected OECD countries, 2000 and 2011
Average annual
growth rate in total
PhDs 2000 - 2011
Population
2011
2011 SET PhD
graduates per
100,000 of 2011
population
2011 total PhD
graduates per
100,000 of 2011
population
Australia
4.7%
22 324 000
15.9
27.2
Canada
3.3%
34 483 980
10.3
16.5
Czech Republic
9.6%
10 496 670
14.5
23.5
Finland
-0.2%
5 388 272
21.1
34.4
Germany
0.5%
81 797 670
24.2
33.4
Hungary
5.1%
9 971 726
6.5
12.4
Ireland
10.1%
4 576 748
20.3
31.6
Italy
11.1%
60 723 570
11.8
18.6
Korea
6.0%
49 779 440
14.0
23.4
Norway
6.4%
4 953 000
16.7
26.2
Portugal
3.5%
10 557 560
11.4
21.9
Slovak Republic
12.8%
5 398 384
16.1
31.0
Switzerland
2.2%
7 912 398
30.1
44.0
Turkey
7.4%
73 950 000
3.5
6.3
United Kingdom
5.1%
61 761 000
19.5
32.5
United States
4.5%
311 591 900
13.0
23.4
South Africa
4.5%
51 770 560
1.6
3.0
Country
Source: OECD (2013) Graduates by field of study, data extracted on 4 July 2013.
5
Policy Goals: Differentiation
•
From 1997 WP to DHET WP 2013 differentiation is accepted in principle and
fudged in practice in terms of diversity vs differentiation and overt vs covert.
•
NDP: South Africa has a differentiated system of university education, but the
system does not have the capacity to meet the needs of the country
•
NDP Recommends:
1.
Improve the percentage of academic staff with PhD from 34% to 75%
(this is the number one recommendation).
Produce more than 100 doctoral graduates per million by 2030
SA needs more than 5000 doctoral graduates per annum
Most of these doctorates should be in SET
Over 25% of university enrolments should be postgraduate
Strengthen universities that have an embedded culture of research
Performance-based grants to develop centres or networks of excellence
(p318-320)
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
External/Policy pressures on doctorate production in SA
PhD enrolments and graduates (1996–2012)
Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education
8
Doctoral graduates by race (1996–2012)
African
Coloured
Indian
White
900
821
816
800
700
600
654
645
591
587
500
400
384
300
298
200
154
100
0
23
58
17
1996
102
142
100
97
53
36
2000
50
2004
56
2008
2012
Doctoral graduates produced by universities in 2012
Stellenbosch
Pretoria
Cape Town
KwaZulu-Natal
North West
South Africa
Witwatersrand
240
200
199
177
154
152
150
Johannesburg
Free State
Nelson Mandela
Western Cape
Rhodes
109
94
86
75
67
Tshwane
Fort Hare
Zululand
Cape Peninsula
Limpopo
44
43
28
24
17
Durban
Central
Venda
Walter Sisulu
Vaal
Mangosuthu
6
5
4
3
2
0
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
Progress of 2006 intakes of new doctoral students after 7 years by cluster
Graduates as % of new doctoral intake of 2006 after 7 years
Stellenbosch
Western Cape
Cape Town
Johannesburg
65%
60%
56%
55%
Free State
Zululand
Nelson Mandela
Pretoria
North West
Tshwane
Rhodes
KwaZulu-Natal
35%
40%
44%
45%
54%
52%
52%
52%
52%
51%
51%
50%
Durban
Witwatersrand
46%
48%
48%
48%
48%
49%
49%
50%
46%
45%
Central
Cape Peninsula
Fort Hare
Limpopo
Venda
Walter Sisulu
South Africa
Mangosuthu
Vaal
% drop outs or incomplete after 7 years
54%
55%
35%
34%
34%
33%
65%
66%
66%
67%
26%
25%
25%
0%
0%
74%
75%
75%
100%
PhD enrolments by nationality (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012)
Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education
12
PhD graduates by nationality (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012)
Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education
Average annual growth rates by nationality and gender (2000–2012)
Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education
14
Top 20 countries of origin of the 2012 international PhD graduates
No.
Country
2012
Accumulative %
1
Zimbabwe
142
22.50%
2
Nigeria
76
34.60%
3
Kenya
43
41.40%
4
Uganda
29
46.00%
5
Ethiopia
23
49.70%
6
USA
23
53.30%
7
Cameroon
19
56.30%
8
Ghana
19
59.40%
9
Tanzania
18
62.20%
10
Zambia
17
64.90%
11
DRC
15
67.30%
12
Lesotho
15
69.70%
13
Malawi
15
72.10%
14
Sudan
15
74.40%
15
India
13
76.50%
16
Mozambique
13
78.60%
17
Namibia
13
80.60%
18
Germany
11
82.40%
19
Botswana
10
84.00%
20
Rwanda
10
85.60%
Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Universities
New South African Realities
1.
SA has 5 Universities in Shanghai top 500
2.
•
•
•
•
SA a PhD bargain!
Full-time research PhD Costs
UK (Bath)– $21 450 fees (foreigners) + $18 000 living = $46 050
US (Berkeley) - $31 900 fees + $23 000 living = $54 900
US (NYU ) - $41 300 fees + $26 000 living = $67 300
SA (US) - $2000 +$1000 (foreigners) + $10 000 living = $13 000
SA three times cheaper than Bath, four times cheaper than Berkeley and five
times cheaper than NYU
3.
Golden triangle – Efficiency, Transformation, Quality (perceived)
4.
But the Africans from the rest of Africa are not SA Africans, not black, not
disadvantaged or not “ours” (nationalism or middle class xenophobia?)
5.
Too few doctorates at African flagship universities
Too few doctoral graduates (2001, 2007, 2011)
Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Universities
Policy Choices – SA a PhD hub for Africa?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
SA wants to triple its PhD output and has made considerable investment in
doctoral studies!
SA does not have the student interest/availability or the staff capacity to
reach the targets (capacity exhaustion)
“As we are all acutely aware, we do not have the supervisory capacity in
South Africa to produce the number of PhDs the government has set as a
target. I suspect that we also don’t actually have the local candidature either.
It thus seems logical that given our skills shortages and capacity challenges
that where skilled workers wish to remain, they ought to be welcomed.
(Cloete et al 2015 Knowledge Production)
SA Emigration policy – loose control over lows kills (township conflictxenophobia) but restrict high skills (academic xenophobia)
Knowledge economy hubs – Silicon Valley, EdHubs (San Francisco)
Currently Government, and Universities on a Nationalistic path
Email 6 May from a established scholar from the rest of Africa:
Nico, In retrospect, the odds were stacked against me, as the order of
preference the selection committee had agreed upon beforehand was first a
black South African, then coloured SA, then Indian and then a non-national.
Brain Drain or Brain Circulation?
Jamil Salmi, former head of World Bank higher education, wrote a book called
the Road to Academic Excellence. Relevant for SA is his case study comparing
the universities of Singapore and the National University of
Malaysia. Singapore was initially a branch of NUM. He asks what got
Singapore into the top 100 in Shanghai ranking while NUM remained off the
chart? His main conclusion was that the key factor was affirmative action
– at NUM the preferential employment of Malays from Malaysia. Singapore
in contrast, had a reverse affirmative action policy, a minimum of 30% of
staff must come for outside of Singapore. This was linked to not just
“anybody from outside Singapore”, but an aggressive, but flexible
recruitment policy of identifying the universities priorities and then targeting
the top academics in the world in that field and recruiting them with non standard packages.
Anna Lee Saxenian: Brain Circulation: How high skill-immigration makes everyone
better off. (Silicon Valley, Boston, Helsinki)
Nico Cloete
Ian Bunting
Charles Sheppard &
François van Schalkwyk
Data from CHET, CREST
& African HE Open Data
www.chet.org.za/data/african-he-opendata