Setting Standards and Measuring the Unmeasurable: The Doctorate in South Africa

• In Event: Doctoral Education in the Global South: A Critical Analysis From Chile and South Africa

Abstract

The doctoral standard in South Africa (CHE, 2019) sets threshold levels for doctoral education. In a national review of the doctorate in 2021 and 2022, institutions had to account for their processes of doctoral student selection, supervisor appointment, proposal approval, ethical clearance, progress management, examination, and so on. They also had to demonstrate how it is that institutions ensure that doctoral candidates develop the prescribed set of attributes.

In this reflection on the national review, I present concerns about whether meaningful aspects of quality in doctoral education can be measured across disciplines and institutional contexts, given the very specialized nature of the doctorate. I argue that the quality assurance process failed to offer a space for engagement with the normative values of doctoral education. Instead, the focus of the review was on generic processes and attributes, which positions doctoral education in performative rather than critical ways.

Perspectives or theoretical framework
Using Sayer’s (2015) conceptualisation of neoliberalism and Vally and Motala’s (2014) critique of Human Capital Theory, I interrogate the underpinning assumptions of South Africa’s doctoral standard and its use during the national review. Sayer suggests that neoliberalism comprises three key characteristics:
The belief that markets, rather than communities, are the best form of social organisation
The reconceptualising of the public as consumers and commodities
Power is accorded along lines of wealth
Vally and Motala look at how the idea that people are ‘human capital’ has skewed the focus of our education systems.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
This presentation comprises a realist critical discourse analysis which reflects on the extent to which concepts from neoliberalism and human capital theory have come to shape understandings of the form and function of the doctorate in South Africa.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
This desk-top analysis includes an analysis of the following South African documents:
The national doctoral standard
The Higher Education Qualifications Sub-Framework
The framework for the 2021 review of all doctoral-offering institutions
The national report on the review.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
As doctoral student enrollment explodes in the Global South, the need for quality assurance is increasingly clear. However, if such QA processes are focused on metrics which are some distance from issues of meaningful knowledge creation, unintended consequences can emerge. The extent to which such processes assume neoliberal understandings constrains the possibilities of QA acting as quality enhancement.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
This paper contributes to a growing body of literature suggesting that QA processes which rely on a number of proxy metrics often fail to engage with deliberations of what the purpose of the qualification is. The analysis presented here shows how many aspects of the doctoral standard and national review in South Africa assume that the doctorate is about skills training and negates the extent to which it is a normative project. This allows the doctorate to be captured by neoliberal forces.

Author

• Sioux McKenna, Rhodes University
  Presenting Author