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 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 % of PhDs got tenure track position, by % ( new PhDs, only 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,

Average annual growth rate of PhD graduates,

PhD production in SA vs a number of selected OECD countries, 2000 and Country Average annual growth rate in total PhDs Population SET PhD graduates per 100,000 of 2011 population 2011 total PhD graduates per 100,000 of 2011 population Australia4.7% Canada3.3% Czech Republic9.6% Finland-0.2% Germany0.5% Hungary5.1% Ireland10.1% Italy11.1% Korea6.0% Norway6.4% Portugal3.5% Slovak Republic12.8% Switzerland2.2% Turkey7.4% United Kingdom5.1% United States4.5% South Africa4.5% 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 SA needs more than 5000 doctoral graduates per annum 4.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 (p )

External/Policy pressures on doctorate production in SA

PhD enrolments and graduates (1996–2012) 8 Source: Cloete et al. (2015) Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education

Doctoral graduates by race (1996–2012)

Doctoral graduates produced by universities in 2012

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

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.Country2012Accumulative % 1Zimbabwe % 2Nigeria % 3Kenya % 4Uganda % 5Ethiopia % 6USA % 7Cameroon % 8Ghana % 9Tanzania % 10Zambia % 11DRC % 12Lesotho % 13Malawi % 14Sudan % 15India % 16Mozambique % 17Namibia % 18Germany % 19Botswana % 20Rwanda %

New South African Realities 1.SA has 5 Universities in Shanghai top SA a PhD bargain! Full-time research PhD Costs UK (Bath)– $ fees (foreigners) + $ living = $ US (Berkeley) - $ fees + $ living = $ US (NYU ) - $ fees + $ living = $ SA (US) - $2000 +$1000 (foreigners) + $ living = $ 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 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