Session:The next generation of scientists and scholars in SA

South Africa a PhD Hub for Africa?

Nico CloeteLetabo

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 materials3. 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 slower5. 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, pastors7. Silicon valley – innovation8. 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 R5billion10. The PhD factories – is it time to stop? (Cyranoski in Nature, 2011)

Growth in PhD graduates in South Africa, 1920 - 2012

1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1957 1971 1975 1979 1986 1990 1996 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2011 2012

0 4 19 30 32 46 60 7888

267284

390

538606

685

834

969

11041100

1182

1576

1878

Average annual growth rate of PhD graduates, 1920 - 2012

1920-1957 1971-1995 1996-2000 2000-2004 2004-2008 2008-2012

10.1%

4.0%5.0%

7.3%

1.7%

12.3%

PhD production in SA vs a number of selected OECD countries, 2000 and 2011

5

CountryAverage 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

Source: OECD (2013) Graduates by field of study, data extracted on 4 July 2013.

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).

2. Produce more than 100 doctoral graduates per million by 2030 3. SA needs more than 5000 doctoral graduates per annum4. Most of these doctorates should be in SET 5. Over 25% of university enrolments should be postgraduate 6. Strengthen universities that have an embedded culture of research 7. Performance-based grants to develop centres or networks of excellence

(p318-320)

External/Policy pressures on doctorate production in SA

PhD enrolments and graduates (1996–2012)

8Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education

Doctoral graduates by race (1996–2012)

1996 2000 2004 2008 20120

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

58

154

298

384

821

17 36 50 56

100

23

53102 97 142

587 591

654 645

816

African Coloured Indian White

Doctoral graduates produced by universities in 2012

MangosuthuVaal

Walter SisuluVenda

CentralDurban

LimpopoCape Peninsula

ZululandFort Hare

Tshwane

RhodesWestern Cape

Nelson MandelaFree State

Johannesburg

WitwatersrandSouth AfricaNorth West

KwaZulu-NatalCape Town

PretoriaStellenbosch

0 50 100 150 200 250 300023456

1724

284344

6775

8694

109

150152154

177199200

240

Progress of 2006 intakes of new doctoral students after 7 years by cluster

Vaal MangosuthuSouth Africa

Walter SisuluVenda

LimpopoFort Hare

Cape PeninsulaCentral

WitwatersrandDurban

KwaZulu-NatalRhodes

TshwaneNorth West

PretoriaNelson Mandela

ZululandFree State

JohannesburgCape Town

Western CapeStellenbosch

0%

25%25%26%

33%34%34%35%

45%46%

50%51%51%52%52%52%52%

54%

55%56%

60%65%

100%0%

75%75%74%

67%66%66%65%

55%54%

50%49%49%48%48%48%48%

46%

45%44%

40%35%

Graduates as % of new doctoral intake of 2006 after 7 years % drop outs or incomplete after 7 years

12

PhD enrolments by nationality (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012)

Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education

PhD graduates by nationality (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012)

Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education

14

Average annual growth rates by nationality and gender (2000–2012)

Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education

Top 20 countries of origin of the 2012 international PhD graduates

Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Universities

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%

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. SA wants to triple its PhD output and has made considerable investment in

doctoral studies!2. SA does not have the student interest/availability or the staff capacity to

reach the targets (capacity exhaustion) 3. “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)

4. SA Emigration policy – loose control over lows kills (township conflict- xenophobia) but restrict high skills (academic xenophobia)

5. Knowledge economy hubs – Silicon Valley, EdHubs (San Francisco)6. 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 Datawww.chet.org.za/data/african-he-opendata