In the drive for more researchers, do we neglect teaching?

With the current focus on the need for more early-career researchers, has South African academia lost sight of the importance of teaching?

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at the University of Johannesburg, Professor Angina Parekh, threw a curve ball to her heavyweight collection of peers at the Universities South Africa-Association of Commonwealth Universities early-career researcher symposium last week when she bemoaned the strong emphasis at the two-day indaba on the development of young researchers without any focus on teaching.

“From the little I’ve heard [in discussions about early career research], there has been no emphasis on teaching, which to me is an oversight… there has been no connection with teaching. Certainly, what’s missing in the conversation is the teaching-research nexus,” she said.

“We can’t be talking about research without talking about teaching,” she said.

Delegates at the symposium, held at the University of Johannesburg, included vice-chancellors Professor Tshilidzi Marwala (University of Johannesburg), Professor Adam Habib (University of the Witwatersrand or Wits), Professor Sizwe Mabizela (Rhodes University), and Professor Francis Petersen (University of the Free State). Twenty of South Africa’s 26 public universities, including academics from Nigeria and Zimbabwe, took part in the indaba.

Discussions focused on ongoing efforts at several South African universities, including Stellenbosch, Pretoria and Cape Town, to develop early-career researcher capacity.

Teaching-research nexus

Raising concerns about inadequate resources invested in teaching at the undergraduate level, Parekh said: “How do we focus on it [the teaching-research nexus] at undergraduate research level and ensure that the curriculum prepares young students for research and teaching from the first year?

“We should be engaging them from day one but there’s no money from government to support undergraduates, with the bulk of the money going to support the development of senior academics. We should start there [with undergraduates] and not at postgraduate level,” she said.

Turning her attention to the recipients of the South African Research Chairs Initiative established in 2006 by the Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation to attract and retain excellence in research and innovation at South African public universities, she said: “I understand fully and support the need for such a system but find problematic the requirement for professors not to teach. As a result, many students will not be exposed to the country’s top academics.”

Increasingly, Parekh said, the emphasis at universities was on producing researchers who want to become professors, who end up not teaching, thus placing the burden of teaching on the same cohort “we are trying to develop”.

Workloads

“How do we expect them to balance their workload between teaching and research when professors are abdicating their responsibilities?” she asked.

In response, Wits Vice-chancellor Adam Habib conceded there was a need for a conversation on the education system and whether there was any merit in going back to a traditional model in which teaching and research are linked.

Rhodes University head Sizwe Mabizela said there was no need to create an “unnecessary binary between teaching and research” since teaching practices must be informed by research.

Speaking at the opening of the meeting the day before, Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s Minister of Higher Education and Training, described the South African university system as having a rich research tradition and producing significant research in comparison to its size.

“We punch above our weight … We have seen a steady growth in the research output of our universities. However, we must pay closer attention to building on the foundation of the existing research capacity in our universities.”

Government initiatives

Pandor highlighted several issues to be addressed. “Increasing the number of PhD graduates is crucial not only for future development but also for equity and diversity. On the part of government, the DHET [Department of Higher Education and Training] and the DST [Department of Science and Technology] are responsible for a range of interventions to increase the number of postgraduates,” she said.

One of these was the linking of government funding subsidies to the number of masters and PhD graduates at a university. Another was the DST’s research chair initiative that currently supports over 200 research professors and 1,600 postgraduate students.

But there are still gaps, she said.

“It is difficult for graduates from a low-income home to pursue a postgraduate qualification, and so begin a research or scientific career. Our approach may not be radical enough, but it is as follows: First, we support South African PhD students to study abroad. With the support of programmes like the UK's Newton Fund, we are increasing the numbers of PhDs trained abroad,” she said.

“Second, we are attracting to South Africa a large number of young international researchers, who have recently completed their PhDs and who are looking for a post-doctoral project, so as to expand our PhD supervisory capacity.

“And third, we promote split-time PhD programmes, where the student will spend a third of his or her doctoral programme outside the country. We aim to fund the people who supervise good-quality PhDs to a considerably higher level, and dispense considerably larger PhD and post-doctoral bursaries for longer. This approach would be good for senior scientists, good for their junior colleagues, good for students, good for science – and good for South Africa.”

A major obstacle to creating a sustainable pipeline of post-doctoral researchers is that most postgraduate students have to work while they study in order to support families. Furthermore bursaries are often inadequate to make full-time study possible.

More honours students

Habib said that one way to grow the pipeline was to increase the number of young students going on to postgraduate studies.

“We need a bigger generation of PhDs and masters students. In order to achieve that, we have to ensure a greater pipeline of honours students because that is the bridge between undergraduate and postgraduate studies,” said Habib.

According to Professor André Strydom, vice dean in the faculty of science at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa’s lack of funding for post-doctoral students was part of the reason the country struggled to attract overseas researchers.

“In Germany and Austria, a typical post-doc costs around ZAR750,000 [US$52,000] and that’s got nothing to do with the exchange rate. It is because, in those countries, the employer is obligated to contribute towards medical aid, social security and to also start a pension fund for a post-doc fellow. So they are indeed treated more like career researchers as opposed to students,” he said.