The challenges involving doctoral non-completion and a lack of academic or scholarly quality are not restricted to putting the blame on doctoral candidates themselves, their supervisors or the institutions where they enrol. As candidates carry huge responsibilities when entering doctoral studies, success can be associated with an array of factors…

Publications about postgraduate studies and the supervision address issues and concerns such as supervisory orientations and strategies, ways to handle postgraduate students, challenging postgraduate education practices, factors related to success in postgraduate studies, the benefits of advanced studies, transition to independent research and…

Increased demands on academics due to the changing work and higher educational environments challenge traditional approaches to postgraduate supervision. Supervisors often tend to follow the apprenticeship approach uncritically. Supervisors therefore need to be aware of alternative approaches to supervision and of the need for structured planning…

Professional development of generic black academic staff in South African higher education is viewed against the background of increased emphasis on open dialogue and concern for upward mobility in academe. Open dialogue and liberation create new expectations and challenges for staff. This article describes professional development of academics…

Wenger (2000, 229) describes communities of practice as the "basic building blocks of a social learning system" since they are the "social containers" that make up such a system. By practising in academic communities, academics define with one another what constitutes academic competence and, for that matter, what constitutes quality. Departments…

This paper is not a direct response to any particular contribution in the debate on the race-based affirmative action policy at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Rather, while I try to understand the essential line of argumentation of each of the UCT authors, my article points to the importance of equity and access as crucial factors in higher…

Being appointed or promoted to the position of "professor" resonates with notions of a relatively high academic standing in the realms of higher education. Or does it? This article poses the question: Is it not true that some South African universities suffer from professorial status inflation on the basis that professorial positions have been,…

Transitions in an era of globalisation and universal change impact on postgraduate training of students at higher education institutions. This study aimed to determine completion rates for postgraduate programmes in Education at one higher education institution, to identify the students' needs and to investigate their experiences of postgraduate…

Universities find it difficult to judge the teaching of academics and are reluctant to reward them on the basis of the scholarship of teaching. Continuing tension between teaching and research, in which research-based criteria usually take precedence, compounds this reluctance. Boyer's four-tiered scholarship model assisted the understanding of…

A South African study of 29 college and university faculty in varying disciplines investigated differences and commonalities of two teaching strategies, collaborative and cooperative learning. Seven common problem areas emerged, and solutions are examined, including faculty development within the discipline, curriculum development, and…