Drop in PhDs: Lack of jobs, funding and facilities blamed

The number of doctoral students at universities and higher education institutions in Tunisia is dropping – a trend that could affect the appointment of professors and other researchers in future and undermine the development of a scientific workforce to achieve sustainable development.

The problem has been highlighted in a booklet, Key Figures of Scientific Research in Tunisia 2023, published early in March and compiled by the General Directorate of Scientific Research in the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research.

According to the publication, the number of Tunisian PhD students declined by 4% from 13,125 in the academic year 2016-17 to 10,559 in the academic year 2022-23. The total number of students enrolled in higher education institutions was about 260,000 in the 2022-23 academic year. It also showed that the number of PhD theses presented in 2022 dropped by 14% to 1,865.

In addition, the booklet notes that the number of research units established at higher education institutions and research centres fell sharply, with only 21 research units in 2023 against 92 in 2022.

Reasons for the decline

Professor Sami Hammami, the former vice-president of the University of Sfax in Tunisia, told University World News the reasons for the drop in numbers include the unemployment of PhD graduates, because public universities did not recruit them due to budgetary constraints, a lack of funding and a lack of resources such as research laboratories.

Another reason, said Hammami, is linked to the job market as students opted for professional masters degrees over two years rather than long-term PhD studies.

“They [those opting for masters studies] will have a better chance of finding a job in a company or an institution,” Hammami pointed out.

Only 53% of PhD students were offered university contracts in the 2021-22 academic year, according to a 2022 study, ‘The PhD Situation in Tunisia’ which called for putting in place an employability strategy for PhD holders to prevent “the loss of a huge knowledge” and “to take advantage of a valuable product in which the Tunisian government has invested for more than 20 years [and which is] capable of advancing the economy and the state of the nation”.

Echoing Hammami’s views, Dr Abdennasser Naji, president of the Amaquen Institute, an education think tank in Morocco, told University World News the decline in doctoral students in developing countries, including in Tunisia and Morocco, is a reflection of the relatively low demand for doctoral studies in the job market which has a limited absorption capacity for PhD holders. “Also, the poor quality of the higher education system does not help with selecting enough qualified students to continue studying until doctorate level,” Naji said.

“The size of the scholarship allocated to doctoral students forces them to leave to look for a job, and Morocco is trying to remedy this matter by increasing the value of the scholarships,” he said.

“The weak budgets allocated for scientific research do not help in equipping laboratories with the necessary equipment and instruments, which leads to the reluctance of students to continue studying at postgraduate levels,” Naji pointed out.

Postgraduate education interventions

To improve the efficiency of the graduate education system, Hammami said those who have above-average intellectual and scientific abilities could opt for PhDs. However, when these criteria are not respected, mediocre PhDs, which have harmed the system, follow.

“Tunisian professors are now opting for the substitution of Tunisian students by foreign students because doctoral studies for foreigners at Tunisian universities constitute a source of income for higher education institutions and doctoral schools,” Hammami noted.

However, several malpractices and the abuse of the postgraduate supervision system were observed, including professors who supervise more than 20 foreign students a year. They are of different Iraqi, Libyan and Algerian nationalities. As a result, the ministry of higher education is investigating whether international PhD students negatively affect the quality of PhD studies, said Hammami.

Expanding further, Professor Abdelkader Djeflat, the former dean of the faculty of economics at the University of Oran in Algeria, told University World News that there “is a need to make the PhD path attractive to young graduates by increasing the chances of finding employment in one of the five spheres, including teaching, research, industry, administration and consulting”.

“This diversity of markets for PhD holders will do away with the traditional vision that the only path for doctoral students after graduation is the classical academic path, usually at universities,” said Djeflat who is also the founding president of the International Network on Science and Technology for Maghreb Development (Maghtech).

“There is also a need to increase the knowledge intensity of economic activities with more knowledge content in goods and services supplied by firms to the market, and more innovative activities which require adequate policies to accelerate the path towards knowledge economies and knowledge societies,” he said.

A 2024 study, ‘A systematic review of key success factors in postgraduate studies’, stated that “good research capacity, effective supervision mechanisms, funding opportunities, library services, teaching and learning strategies, workshops offered by the Postgraduate Student Office, and individual characteristics of postgraduate students are key success factors more frequently associated with postgraduate studies”.