Water Wheel July/August 2022: Capacity Building

Abstract

South Africa completes comprehensive tracer study on the country’s PhD graduates For those of us with a biological or environmental science background, some of the findings of South Africa’s first comprehensive National Tracer Study of Doctoral Graduates may come as a surprise. We’ve seen how students in these fields typically progress straight from undergraduate to postgraduate degrees, perhaps taking a gap year for overseas travel (prepandemic) before they embark on an MSc, but also often upgrading the MSc to a PhD to have earned the title ‘Doctor’ by their late twenties. Their studies have generally been funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) bursary scheme, sometimes with top-up from supervisors’ research grants, generous parents, or piecemeal work on-or off-campus.

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