Title: Rethinking progression of (black) South African doctoral graduates to professorship

Authors: Mavhungu Abel Mafukata

Addresses: Community Education and Research, Vhutali Management and Leadership Institute, Limpopo Province, P.O. Box 331, Louis Trichardt, 0920, South Africa

Abstract: It remains empirically inconclusive that fewer South African black doctoral graduates enter academia, and that fewer of those who enter progressed to professorship. This paper uses literature and document review, small-scale survey and key informant interviews (KIIs) to gather data. Twenty nine (n = 29) doctoral graduates were purposively sampled through snowballing to obtain primary data. This paper established that the majority of doctoral graduates would already be old at graduation, and already have had better paying formal employment away from academia and therefore never entered academia. Conditions and requirements for progression to professorship are difficult for the majority doctoral graduates. The South African university education has to be reformed and remodelled to reflect the Dutch and Turkish models in order to fast-track entry and completion of doctoral studies and progression to professorship.

Keywords: professors; academia; university transformation; faculty; doctoral graduates.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHES.2017.088010

International Journal of Higher Education and Sustainability, 2017 Vol.1 No.3, pp.220 - 243

Received: 16 Dec 2016
Accepted: 10 Feb 2017
Published online: 14 Nov 2017 *

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