Decades of research shows how the higher education system has failed to give Australians a “fair go”. How can we move from good intentions to long-overdue change?
Completion rates for PhD courses are very low. Here are some things students, supervisors and universities can do to help support these students through to completion.
There is a very real risk that South Africa’s major research projects will stumble and the whole research machine will be shut down by ongoing student protests.
The sky is the limit for African science when universities work together.
Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters
Peter Ngure, African Population and Health Research Center
Many people are left floundering when they try to get working on their PhDs. In Africa, this is often because the skills they need haven’t been developed earlier in their academic careers.
Does it need to be so hard to be a mom and a professor?
Quinn Dombrowski
The limits of fertility and an elongated academic career path are currently at odds. If the choice to bear children contributes to the ‘leaky pipeline’ of women in STEM, what can be done?
Sometimes it’ll be tough going, but there’s great joy in working towards a PhD.
EPA
Completing a PhD is a process that takes years. There are several ways to make this a happy, productive time rather than a period of endless misery.
Africa’s doctoral graduates have a different role to play across the continent than they did in the years immediately after independence.
Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters
Doctoral studies are valued as an engine for development in Africa. If doctoral graduates are to meet this challenge, the very structure of the doctoral programme must change.
The big news here is the changes to culture and curriculum, not degree length.
Dylan's World/Flickr
The University of Sydney has announced an overhaul of its undergraduate teaching. If achieved, some of these reforms could be revolutionary, but much of the media attention has focused on the less important aspects.
Previous Vice President of the Academy of Science of South Africa and DSI-NRF SARChI chair in Fungal Genomics, Professor in Genetics, University of Pretoria, University of Pretoria
Director of Centre for Postgraduate Studies, Rhodes University & Visiting Research Professor in Center for International Higher Education, Boston College, Rhodes University