Welcome
The week of 16-20 March 2011 is an auspicious milestone in the academic transformation of the University of the Free State. During this week the University’s Postgraduate School will be launched with a series of academic events. We welcome you to the School and to our site, and hope that you will return as it will be updated regularly.
Some background notes
Postgraduate schools are becoming a prominent feature of the international higher education landscape. In general such schools provide a nodal point for the standardization and management of postgraduate education within a university, and they sometimes host programmes that do not fit comfortably within conventional Faculties or departments. This type of supra-Faculty arrangement seems to be quite an important consideration globally as universities seek to expand their capacity to provide high-level research-based education to large numbers of students.
Such pressures are manifest in local higher education by a policy context that demands universities generate greater numbers of masters and doctoral graduates, and that they direct postgraduate education towards applied sciences and cross-disciplinary knowledge.
Yet despite the potential advantages that postgraduate schools offer by way of academic and administrative support for postgraduates, the notion of the institution-wide postgraduate school has not gained much purchase in South Africa. The University of the Free State’s 2010 Academic Turnaround Strategy was thus innovative when it recognized that the establishment of the UFS Postgraduate School was a central development, not only for the University’s academic transformation and commitment to excellence, but also for its capacity to meet policy demands for more and better equipped research graduates.
While the Academic Turnaround Strategy represented an in-principle agreement to establish a Postgraduate School, both its form and function remain contingent on comprehensive consultation across the University and beyond, and we have also drawn on comparative insight from the Australia, Germany the UK and USA.
What we hope to achieve
The Postgraduate School is founded primarily as an academic project, although it will also undertake advocacy for postgraduate issues across a range of administrative units in the University. In line with national priorities for research-based postgraduate education and the focus of the UFS Academic Turnaround Strategy, the aims of the Postgraduate School are to:
- Improve the quality of postgraduate student research;
- Through carefully-considered pedagogies and consideration of the kind of research undertaken, produce graduates who are global citizens, research literate and able to reflect ethically on the purpose, process and product of research;
- Improve throughput rates of postgraduate students;
- Make the experience of being a postgraduate at UFS one which is stimulating, enjoyable and which contributes to the development of the person beyond the limits of her or his discipline/s.
The attainment of these goals will entail, among other things, close liaison with the University’s professoriate, as well as identifying measures to increase the number of full –time postgraduates, diversify the student body; and foster the development of a postgraduate student culture at UFS.
We have identified interdisciplinarity as the major intellectual thrust of the Postgraduate School. At UFS the strategic academic clusters represent an exciting commitment to interdisciplinarity. Although modalities of co-operation must still be articulated and negotiated, it would appear that there are many productive synergies between the academic clusters and the Postgraduate School –by way of teaching, providing a base for seminars and conferences, and interdisciplinary degrees that draw on academic staff members from various departments.
In the interests of interdisciplinarity the Postgraduate School will also dd value to Fre State intellectual culture by, for instance, supporting and sponsoring the interdisciplinary Critical Studies Group. It is likely that over time, the School will assist other interdisciplinary initiatives.
We expect that the School, situated across Faculties and Departments, will be a catalyst to combine ‘apprentice’ and ‘cohort’ models of education for postgraduate research students. In particular, it is envisaged that through participation in activities organized by the School, postgraduate students will also be drawn into bigger, broader cohorts. To name but a few, activities will include research methodology and (for the humanities and social science disciplines) social theory; seminars by visiting scholars; an annual postgraduate research conference; and writing retreats. Collectively these activities should help to nurture a sense of postgraduate identity and purpose.
Another area of academic involvement within the Postgraduate School’s scope of engagement will be the training and support of research supervisors. This represents a major expectation of the School, and we will be looking to models developed within Australian universities to develop a curriculum and prospectus for the training of supervisors.
The Postgraduate School will locate to its new premises on the Bloemfontein campus in the third quarter of 2011. Despite the rise of web-based scholarship and the dispersal of academic work, we remain convinced that the physical space of the Postgraduate School must play a role in fostering an ambience of scholarship, and a postgraduate community at UFS. We hope that the School will be a pleasant place to pursue research scholarship, discuss ideas and relax, and we look forward to welcoming postgraduates and other scholars to the School.
And it is worth reiterating that if the School is to serve the multiple postgraduate constituencies at UFS and simultaneously advance the quality and style of postgraduate education at this University, it is quite essential that it remains a work-in-progress, an experiment.
Neil Roos, PhD
Director, Postgraduate School |