Africa experiences PhD shortage

By Wachira Kigotho

The time is near when all permanent academic teaching and research staff in universities globally will be required to have doctorates degrees in their fields of specialisation.

However, the situation could be delayed in Kenya and elsewhere in academe in Sub-Saharan Africa where there is a shortage, but the writing is on the wall since worldwide there is a glut of PhD degrees. Statistics recently released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development indicate already there is competition among leading universities in Europe, United States, Singapore, Japan and Australia to hire only PhD degree holders.

The issue is that there are too many doctoral programmes, producing far too many PhDs and other doctorates for the job market. According to Dr Mark Taylor, Head of Department of Religion at Colombia University in New York, PhD crisis has been caused by refusal by universities to severely scrutinise admissions to doctorate studies.

"Even after slowing of the academic job market over the years, PhD programmes in many countries still conform to models defined in the middle ages," says Dr Taylor.

Consistent growth

According to OECD statistics, doctorates handed out in member states between 1998 and 2006 grew by 40 per cent, while in the United States, the number of PhDs rose by 22 per cent during the same period. Significant production of doctorates was also recorded in Mexico, Slovakia, Poland, China, Japan and India, among other countries globally.

In those countries, production of PhDs has outstripped demand for university academic cadres. For instance, in the United States figures of students graduating with doctorate degrees has almost hit 50,000 mark annually. "So far, there are no signs of slowing and the problem is that most PhD graduates may never get the chance of taking advantage of their qualifications," says OECD position report on the status of higher education. But while the developed countries are worried about what to do with all the PhDs they produce each year, Sub-Saharan Africa is concerned about massive deficits in doctorates.

According to the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, the continent’s largest factory for PhDs is Egypt, where last year over 35,000 students were enrolled in doctoral programmes. But pursuing a doctoral programme in Egypt is almost worthless, except for those already working in universities and research centres. Critics of the Egyptian trained PhD graduates say many of them find it hard to transfer their skills into the job- market.

The PhD student in Egypt suffers from shortage of highly qualified teaching staff, equipment and poor compensation for researchers, says Prof Mounir Hana, a leading food scientist at Minia University, Egypt.

Subsequently, most PhDs awarded are of poor quality and most graduates lack skills in proposal writing and project management.

But elsewhere in Africa, it is absence of PhDs in universities that is most worrying. "Leaders of African universities acknowledge the devastating impact of lack of qualified lecturers at doctoral level and warn that if something is not done very soon, African academy will collapse or lose its ability to produce the countries’ personnel needs," says Dr Wisdom Tettey of University of Calgary and a researcher with PHEA.

In a study on doctoral deficits in African universities, Dr Tettey says low graduation and completion rates in most postgraduate programmes are discouraging bright students from registering for master’s and PhD degrees.

High dropout rates

"There are high drop-out rates in most postgraduate programmes and the trend does not bode well for developing an adequate pool of high quality future academics in Sub-Saharan Africa," says Tettey.

Such sentiments were recently graphically explained by the Commission of Higher Education in a report that showed the number of professors in each of Kenya’s public universities. By the time the report was released in November last year, Kenya had only 352 professors in Kenya’s public and private universities.

University of Nairobi had 110 professors, Moi University 49, Kenyatta University 29 and Maseno University 17. Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Egerton University and Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology had 11 professors each, while the KCA University had 15 and the United States International University had 14.

Basically the number of professors in a university is significant as it reflects the ability of the institution to offer high quality education and leadership in research.

Although CHE’s report did not provide the number of lecturers holding PhDs or equivalent doctorates teaching in Kenya’s universities, statistics gleaned elsewhere indicate the number is too small in comparison to 181,000 students registered in universities last year. Furthermore, the heavy enrolments recorded in the local universities can be deceptive because when students are grouped by type of degree programmes, the emerging picture is that on average only a small fraction of students are in doctoral programmes.

Low graduation rate

For instance, at the University of Nairobi, only 26 PhDs were awarded out of 4,473 students who were awarded degrees and diplomas in September last year. Similarly, a year before, only 13 PhDs were awarded out of a cohort of 3,947 graduands.

The situation is replicated at Kenyatta University where only 22 students were awarded PhDs last year. Taking into account that Nairobi and Kenyatta universities are among the oldest universities in the country and possibly with some of the advanced facilities, it is evident the situation might be at par or worse in the rest of the local universities

Besides, a comparative analysis of academic staff in various African universities carried by Dr Tettey showed only one third of lecturers had PhD degrees. But the situation was heavily skewed because in the university’s schools of business and economics, an overwhelming 90 per cent and 80 per cent of lecturers respectively had no PhDs.

However, as the local universities try to deal with the issue of low academic qualifications among lecturers and researchers, there is needed to take into account the issue of the aging professors.

Available evidence show that most of professors in the local universities will be retiring in the next ten years, a factor that calls for aggressive staff development, not merely by the universities themselves but also by the Government.