Assessment of Higher Education Programmes for Enhancing the Postgraduate Community

A Case of Increasing Research Capacity and Scholarly Publishing

Abstract

This article assesses the higher education research capacity building programmes designed to enhance the postgraduate community and scholarly publishing. Post-graduate studies are potential components for promoting knowledge, increasing institutional outputs.  Post-graduate studies are likely to create research profile for students who seek future academic appointments. In spite of that higher institutions in low-income countries face serious challenges in building research capacity. This is compounded by local institutional competition for rankings and ratings. To some extent, investments in research usually take a long time before leading to demonstrable results. Yet again postgraduate students across disciplines feel pressure to publish their scholarship and remain unsure partly due to a lack of explicit training. Once more part of academic written output remains unpublished resulting to grey literature. Publishing requires a cocktail of skills in practical activities, and a broad awareness of theoretical/academic developments and trends. A large number of agencies evolved to offer programmes with the aim to expand research capacity in certain kinds of institutions. Institutions hold opposing mechanisms for supporting and sustaining research capacity among postgraduate students. A desk study approach is considered to collect data. Desktop study reviewed the key strategies, models for building postgraduate research capacity and programmes designed for increasing postgraduate scholarly publishing among the South African universities. The research reveals that the Cooke’s framework potentially offers a mechanism to contribute to the realisation of the research capacity building goals. A set of recommendations are offered for programme improvement.