The Minister of Education, Prof Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, has called for an immediate end to the prevailing phenomenon of protocol in the admission of students to the country’s universities and second-cycle schools. She stated that the ministry would not comply with that practice any longer but would rather look at the competence of students in the admission process as part of measures to enhance the quality of education. 
“I will not comply. We will look at competence and that is how quality of education can be improved, as we know Ghanaians are capable of rising,” she stated. 
Prof Opoku-Agyemang stated this when she and other committee members of the Eastern Regional university paid a courtesy call on the two paramount chiefs of the Yilo Krobo and the Manya Krobo Traditional areas last Tuesday. The committee, chaired by Dr Raymond Bening, also visited the proposed site for the University of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation and other sites at Odumase-Krobo. The visit was to enable the members to familiarise themselves with the land for the proposed university and also collaborate with the traditional authorities towards the establishment of the institution. More...

The latest edition of the IAU Horizons (Vol. 19 No.2) is now available online.
The In Focus section of the magazine includes 14 papers focusing on Innovative Approaches to Doctoral Education in Africa.
By Chrissie Boughey and Sioux McKenna, Rhodes University, South Africa (C.Boughey@ru.ac.za). Since 1994, the focus in South African higher education has been on the need to transform the fractured, unequal system of apartheid into a single coherent system that would serve all South Africans equally. In spite of the enormous amount of work which has gone into developing and implementing policies since that time, many of the old divides still remain, one of which relates to the capacity to produce research.
A small number of universities continue to produce the great majority of research outputs. These universities (Cape Town, Stellenbosch, the Witwatersrand, Pretoria and KwaZulu-Natal) produce more than 60% of articles published in accredited journals. The three most productive universities on a per capita basis are Cape Town, Stellenbosch and Rhodes. These also happen to be the universities with the highest proportion of doctoral graduates on their staff. All these research productive universities are historically white and have benefitted from the resourcing and prestige afforded to them under apartheid.
A report produced in 2010 by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) makes a compelling case for increasing the number of doctoral graduates in the country if South Africa is to be able to compete meaningfully in a globalised economy. South Africa needs more doctoral graduates if it is to be able to compete yet, in a country striving for more equality, where are these graduates going to come from given that old divides of privilege appear to continue? Clearly the production of doctoral graduations needs to be increased and, importantly, evened out across the higher education system. The ASSAf report mentioned above, shows traditional universities (as opposed to universities of technology or ‘comprehensive’ universities – institutions offering a mix of vocational and disciplinary based programmes) as producing 80% of all doctoral graduates in the country.
Over the years, a number of alternative models of doctoral training have been developed in addition to the traditional oneon- one supervision of a piece of original research. These include doctorates by publication, taught doctoral programmes and the ‘professional’ doctorate which usually has specific outcomes. All require supervision of the doctoral candidate in some form, however, and it is here that the system often falls down.
Many supervisors supervise on the basis of their own experience of being supervised omitting to consider that the students they are now working with are very different to those who worked beside them in the past. In South Africa especially, the notion of ‘under preparedness’ continues right up to doctoral level and supervisors may be challenged by their students’ ability to work independently or even to write at an appropriate level. Students may also be more likely to pursue doctoral study on a part time basis and will need to juggle multiple demands in addition to those imposed by their research. What does all this mean for supervision and the supervisor who needs to guide her student?
It is not only ‘new’ students who have challenged supervision, however. New orientations to knowledge production along with an increased interest in interdisciplinarity may mean that supervisors are challenged at a methodological level by the projects their students want to pursue. Given these considerations, it is clear that an intervention with supervisors offers the promise of meeting many of the challenges involved in producing more doctoral graduates in South Africa. It is here that a recently developed course on doctoral supervision aims to play a role.
The course has been developed by a consortium of South African universities (Rhodes, Stellenbosch, Cape Town and Fort Hare) along with Dutch partners from the Vrije University of Amsterdam, the African Studies Centre in Leiden and the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. The development and roll out of the course has been funded by the Dutch government under the auspices of NUFFIC. Rhodes University is the lead partner in the project.
The course, which comprises three phases – an initial four day face to face workshop, a six week period of online engagement and a further three days of face to face teaching, has been piloted at three universities. Feedback from the pilots will be used to revise materials whereafter the roll out to other universities will commence. Dutch funding currently allows for the course to be offered free of charge to 18 of the 23 South African universities although attempts are now in progress to raise funding for all institutions to have the opportunity of the course being offered on their campus under the auspices of the project. Significantly, the course carries a Creative Commons license which means that any university will be able to use the materials on a non-profit basis to benefit its own staff in the future.
Response at the launch of the course at the National Research Foundation in Pretoria in November 2012 was extremely positive. Interest has also been indicated from universities beyond the borders of South Africa and, if funding becomes available, the consortium will be glad to respond.

The latest edition of the IAU Horizons (Vol. 19 No.2) is now available online.
The In Focus section of the magazine includes 14 papers focusing on Innovative Approaches to Doctoral Education in Africa.
By Hilligje van’t Land, IAU Director Membership and Programme Development (h.vantland@iau-aiu.net). Universities around the world are the “thought leaders and knowledge providers in the required structural transformation process for the economy” (Aryeetey). To live up to this assumption and expectation, higher education institutions need to constantly enhance their teaching and research in order to generate the kind of research required to trigger innovation around the world. The same obviously applies to institutions in Africa.
To contribute significantly to the global debates, to ensure that the African institutions generate the kind of “experts and leaders of solutions” the African continent needs (Lungren), Higher Education leaders in the continent are rethinking African doctoral programmes and their management. The rethinking and reform processes initiated over the last two decades are bearing fruits (Ambali, Malete, Lima Fortes), yet they need to be pursued and developed further.
In order to contribute and stimulate the process, the IAU initiated the www.ideaphd. net Portal on Innovative Approaches to Doctoral Education in Africa (IDEA). Developed in partnership with Association for Catalan Public Universities (ACUP), it provides examples on how to develop and manage a PhD; shares information on very diverse national and international Projects and Initiatives; presents HEI profiles and lists various Funding opportunities. It also lists events relating to the topic and will soon become an exchange platform for leaders, programme managers and researchers administrators.
This In Focus section follows the same ‘logic’ in that it presents a series of papers contributed by experts from around Africa and beyond, in which they share their views on how to foster Capacity building, institutional reform and innovation, address the key challenges institutions face, in particular with regards to supervision, and discusses funding needs.
Capacity Building
African HEIs strive to ensure quality teaching and research in order to deliver the number of quality students wishing and capable of undertaking and successfully completing a doctoral programmes in a set time that the continent needs to address the challenges it faces. Some African HEIs need to develop into ‘world class’ universities (Aryettey) to attract the right professors, researchers and students from the continent and abroad who will jointly generate the kind of research needed locally, regionally and globally. Papers published here stress the importance to further reform and restructure doctoral programmes claiming that they should be able to perform better. Papers draw attention to the research is being carried out at IAU, EUA, ACU and ACUP projects, and by Cross and Backhouse, to enable institutions to compare, revisit, reform and enhance their doctoral programmes and their management practices strategically (Lundgren, Aryeetey, Lima Fortes, Sy).
Supervision
For doctoral students to become true researchers, autonomous critical thinkers, decision makers and innovators, who are able to develop original research questions – and even good communicators and true research ambassadors - , they need to be accompanied, trained and supervised adequately throughout their doctoral studies (Boughey and McKenna, Wainaina Mwaura). This is a challenge in itself since, with the massification of higher education on the one hand and the limited capacity at many institutions and far as academic and administrative staff is concerned, there are not enough supervisors available (see: Wainaina Mwaura). In addition, in order for supervision to be of quality, the authors argue that much attention needs to be devoted to training the trainers and supervisors adequately (Boughey and McKenna, Wainaina Mwaura). E-supervision is one avenue being investigated (see: Gmelch and Vilalta). The further development of solid, open and ‘equitable’ institutional and inter-institutional partnerships locally, regionally and internationally is also being investigated (see: Lima Fortes, Malete, Jorgensen, Aryeetey).
The role of funding
Substantial financial support is obviously essential. But funding should not only be sourced from international donors, as was and is often the case. Aryeetey, Ambali and Malete make the case for national university systems and individual institutions to be strengthened by governments to ensure the relevance of teaching and research locally and to ensure financial sustainability and, as a consequence, sustainability of programmes and HE systems as a whole (see: Lima Fortes, Lundgren, Ajai Ajagbe, Matondi and Tibugari).
Studies
Examples of exchange platforms offered by international organisations, like the EUA, ACU, ACUP and IAU, to promote inter-institutional dialogue and understanding and help enhance the development the development of networks, innovative partnerships and new cooperation are being highlighted. The papers give examples of research carried out in close cooperation with local institutions and experts have triggered innovative reform process (Ambali, Wainaina Mwaura, ACUP, ACU for instance). A number of new projects are also also presented (ACU, IAU, ACUP, Cross and Backhouse).
To contribute to the discussions and to enhance the portal, please go to the following website www.iau-aiu.net/content/doctoralprogrammes or contact the IAU at: h.vantland@iau-aiu.net.

By Onwuka Nzeshi. A bill seeking to ban political office holders and senior public servants from sending their wards to schools overseas may soon be introduced in the House of Representatives. 
If the bill scales all the hurdles at the National Assembly and is passed into law, it would be a crime for the president, vice-president, governors, deputy governors, ministers, members of the National Assembly, state Houses of Assembly, commissioners, permanent secretaries and directors in the federal and state Civil Services to enroll their children in schools abroad except for post graduate degree programmes. Read more...