Towards developing a collaborative PhD program across ARUA member universities: experiences from South African universities

Abstract

The South African higher education system has been recognised as the leading producer of knowledge on the continent, contributing to 73% of total publications from all ARUA universities in 2018 (Van Shalkwyk et al., 2021). Furthermore, a recent study by ARUA shows that South African universities had higher doctoral enrolments and graduates than their alliance counterparts (ARUA, 2021). What is less obvious is the nature of collaboration, and how this can be enhanced. This report highlights the status of doctoral training in South Africa using evidence from the six South African ARUA member universities. The study explores the nature of the doctoral programme within the member universities as a sample of the system to make recommendations towards the development of collaborative doctoral programmes across the alliance. The report first provides a brief overview of the country's socio-economic status, which has a bearing on the higher education system and how universities and doctoral programmes are organised, and which may influence the direction of the design of collaborative programmes as envisaged by ARUA. It further details the national and institutional policy and operational frameworks, identifying institutional and systemic challenges. The report uses institutional data to explore the doctoral life cycle in South Africa along three main themes: access, structure of the programmes, and experience through the programme; thereafter making recommendations towards designing collaborative arrangements, and challenges that need to be addressed. The report is divided into five sections. The next section provides an overview of South Africa's socio-economic and political context, including a brief description of the higher education landscape. Section three delves into the case study of the university and the two selected programmes. Section four presents the findings from the data collected from the two case study programmes. Section five provides some recommendations and conclusions.