The disempowered supervisors

Abstract

Isuspect that C-rated researchers are being hit the hardest in this regard and that most no longer have access to sufficient funds to support research initiatives that could train PhD students. They comprise the majority of PhD trainers at the national level, yet they are no longer empowered to undertake the task of training PhD students. Glue funding does not provide enough money to C-rated researchers to support anything other than personal bucket-and-spade or desktop type research, so many of these researchers are not taking on students: why should they put a lot of effort into training new researchers when they could be using their time to increase personal research outputs? After all, publications count when trying to improve your ratings (thereby improving your chances of getting more money in the next application cycle), whereas students do not. These C-rated researchers are also being hit hardest by their own institutions, which no longer have the funds for wider disbursement owing to their commitments at both extremes of the research continuum: centres and chairs on the one hand, and institutional capacity development on the other. So, I would argue that without improving the funding base available to the majority of South Africa’s researchers, we will not be able to take on the increased numbers of graduate students that we require. In part, this relates to the inadequate level of funding being set aside for students, but providing the bursary funds for a student is only half of the solution. Unless more C-rated scientists have access to research funds, South Africa will not be in a position to provide the research initiatives into which postgraduate students can meaningfully slot their own research project. And this applies as equally to the PhD student as it does to the honours student.