Science&Technology on the impact of all human capital development initiatives and progress of human capital development

Science and Technology

30 May 2012
Chairperson: Mr N Ngcobo (ANC)
Share this page:

Meeting Summary

The Department of Science and Technology (DST) placed the Department’s work in context, emphasising that its mandate encompassed only the highest level of human capital.  Given its relatively low resources when compared with the Department of Basic Education and the Department of Higher Education and Training, the DST did not have the resources or the interface with the schools or universities to have an impact on the entire school system.

The DST National Research and Development Strategy emphasised five factors: human capital development, investment in science and technology infrastructure, knowledge generation, strategic management of the public science and technology system, and “centres and networks” of excellence.

The DST faced several challenges.  There were low progression ratios, as very few students moved through the system from Bachelors to Doctorate degrees.  There was a significant demographic drop-off from Honours to Masters to PhD degrees, with black and women students dropping significantly at each level.  Attrition rates were very high, with around 46% of PhD students never completing their degree, and 29% dropping out in the first two years.  The Department could afford only very low bursary values.  The system also suffered from low enrolment in higher-level degrees in engineering and natural sciences.  PhD graduation rates were very low when compared to other emerging economies in the world.  Additionally, very few university staff were qualified to lead research.

The DST had developed a Human Capital Development (HCD) framework that separated Next Generation Researchers (current students), Emerging Researchers (recent graduates), and Established Researchers.  To encourage Next Generation Researchers, the DST had established programmes to focus on post-graduate bursaries and workplace readiness.  The main thrust was to improve the level of support for Honours, Masters, and Doctoral students.  For Emerging Researchers, the DST was focusing on improving university staff qualifications as well as increasing the number of post-doctoral graduates. 

Established Researchers were the key input in HCD, as they were the ones training the Masters and Doctorate students.  The DST had three major initiatives.   Firstly, there was Funding for Rated Researchers, a programme that ran efficiently and effectively in the 1990s, but funding had decreased.  Secondly, the Centres of Excellence (CoE) were physical or virtual centres of research that enabled collaboration across disciplines and institutions.  Thirdly, the South Africa Research Chair Initiatives (SARChI) created research career pathways for mid-career researchers.

The key point was that the government had to encourage a new generation of researchers and support more post-graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.  There were enough university students to achieve this, but more funding was necessary to pull students into academic and research careers.  Since researchers were already very productive, the only way to increase research output was to increase the number of researchers.

Youth into Science Strategy (YiSS) focused on the promotion of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Innovation (STEMI) literacy.  The YiSS also intended to identify and nurture potential talent.  The DST’s efforts in promoting STEMI literacy had been very successful.  Since 2005, 1,3m people (86% learners) had participated in the National Science Week (NSW) led by the DST, which was an annual campaign to showcase the importance of STEMI in people’s daily lives. 

Regarding the internship programmes, the National Youth Service programme recruited unemployed people to do volunteer work.  The DST also supported the work readiness programme, aimed at responding to government priorities, such as skills development and reduction of unemployment. 

Members asked questions regarding the DST’s impact on rural area students and the Dinaledi schools, the demographic drop-off in students when progressing through the post-graduate levels, the drop-off in PhD students from enrolment to graduation, and the process for allocating bursaries for students.  The committee also requested further information on the Thuthuka programme.

Meeting report

 

In the absence of Mr N Ngcobo (ANC), Ms M Dunjwa (ANC) was elected to chair the meeting.

Professor Thomas Auf der Heyde, Deputy Director-General, DST, placed the DST’s work in context.  The Department of Basic Education was responsible for the basic education of 12,5m learners at 26 000 schools, with a budget of R130bn, while the Department of Higher Education and Training was responsible for 23 universities and 1m students, with a budget of over R21bn.  For its part, the DST was responsible only for research development, support, and innovation across the national system, with a budget of just around R4.5 billion and attending to 7 000 students.  These figures emphasised that the DST’s mandate encompassed the highest level of human capital.  The DST did not have the resources or the interface with the schools or universities to have an impact on the entire school system.

The DST National Research and Development Strategy emphasised five factors: human capital development, investment in science and technology infrastructure, knowledge generation, strategic management of the public science and technology system, and “centres and networks” of excellence.

The Department faced several challenges.  Firstly, there were low progression ratios, as very few students moved through the system from Bachelors to Doctorate degrees (i.e. from Bachelors to Honours to Masters to PhD).  Of 440 000 students enrolled in Bachelor programmes, 61 000 graduated each year.  Only 57 000 enrolled in an Honours programme, roughly one-eighth of the number of Bachelor enrolees.  Ultimately, only 11 600 enrolled in a Doctorate degree.  Therefore, there were a significant number of students who could enrol in higher levels, but chose not to for number of reasons. 

Secondly, there was also a significant demographic drop-off from Honours, to Masters, to PhD degrees.  At the level of Honours, 79% of students were black, dropping to 65% for Masters, and 58% for Doctorates.  The same trend was maintained for females, where 79% enrolled in Honours, 48% in Masters, and 42% in Doctorates.  This posed a significant problem for the sustainability of the research community.

A third challenge was the fact that attrition rates were very high.  Around 46% of PhD students never completed their degrees, and 29% dropped out in the first two years. 

Fourthly, the Department could afford only very low bursary values.  The average value of a National Research Foundation (NRF) bursary that students received was largely insufficient and inadequate to support and encourage students to progress to the higher levels of education.  For instance, a Masters student, on average, would receive a R40 000 bursary from the NRF.  Given that the starting, after-tax salary for an Honours graduate was R100 000, and that the vast majority of graduates were from poor backgrounds, it was understandable that Honours graduates would choose to work rather than to enrol in a Masters programme.

The system also suffered from low enrolment in higher-level degrees in engineering and natural sciences.  This posed a challenge because more than half of higher-level students were not enrolled in areas that would directly impact South Africa’s socio-economic development.  While these students were enrolled in other important areas, their contribution to the advancement of South Africa in socio-economic areas would be more marginal.

Further, PhD graduation rates were very low when compared to other emerging economies in the world, as South Africa produced fewer than 30 PhDs per million of population per year.  Developed,
and many emerging, economies produced three to five times more PhDs per million of population per year.

Very few university staff were qualified to lead research, as only 35% of academic staff had PhDs, and only PhDs could teach PhD students.

Lastly, the national scientific productivity was average.  This meant that South African researchers were very good and productive, as their per capita productivity was higher than the global average.  Therefore, the problem was that South Africa was producing too few researchers.

The DST had developed an HCD framework that separated Next Generation Researchers (current students), Emerging Researchers (recent graduates), and Established Researchers.  To encourage Next Generation Researchers, the DST had established programmes to focus on post-graduate bursaries and workplace readiness.  The main thrust was to improve the level of support for Honours, Masters, and Doctoral students.  Since the per capita bursaries the DST could afford was extremely low, the DST had introduced a bursary pilot programme in 2007 that produced very high retention rates.  The outstanding results proved that higher values of bursaries enabled students to consider and enrol in post-graduate degrees.  In 2011, the NRF funding was able to support 7 383 students at a total cost of R258m.  Funding needed to be tripled in order to make the programme competitive with salaries.

For Emerging Researchers, the DST was focusing on improving university staff qualifications as well as increasing the number of post-doctoral graduates.  The DST had post-doctoral fellowships and the flagship Thuthuka programme, which supported recent graduates as well as students who were employed by universities while doing their Masters and PhDs.  Established Researchers were the key input in HCD, as they were the ones training the Masters and Doctorate students. 

The DST had three major initiatives.   Firstly, there was Funding for Rated Researchers, a programme that ran efficiently and effectively in the 1990s, but funding had decreased.  Now, the DST was focusing on getting this programme working again.  Secondly, the Centres of Excellence (CoE) were physical or virtual centres of research that enabled collaboration across disciplines and institutions.  The number of Masters and Doctorate students graduating from CoEs had been growing in the last seven years.  The CoEs had been performing exceptionally well, so the plan was to extend the DST support of these programmes for another five-year period.  Thirdly, the South Africa Research Chair Initiatives created research career pathways for mid-career researchers.  The DST had funded the establishment of 152 new research positions in the university sector.  The average number of students per chair holder was considerably higher than the number supported by the average researcher.  Thus, the chair holders were very efficient in supervising a large number of Honours, Masters, Doctoral and Post-Doctoral students.  These chairs also contributed to South Africa’s scientific output (measured by published papers) three times more than the average researcher. 

The key point was that the government had to encourage a new generation of researchers and support more post-graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.  There were enough university students to achieve this, but more funding was necessary to pull students into academic and research careers.  Since researchers were already very productive, the only way to increase research output was to increase the number of researchers.

The DST was in the process of finalising an HCD strategy.  The Minister would release this strategy in the next couple of months for public consultation.  The DST had also developed a very precise financial model to engage with the National Treasury in discussions regarding the costs and affordability of a general plan to advance the post-graduate education sector.   The DST had also developed clear guidelines for the NRF to use when allocating funds to students in order to improve the demographic representation of students.

Dr Phethiwe Matutu, General Manager: Human Capital and Science Platforms, DST, briefed the committee on the DST’s current engagement with schools and internships.  The Youth into Science Strategy (YiSS) focused on the promotion of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Innovation (STEMI) literacy.  The YiSS also intended to identify and nurture potential talent.  For 2012/13, the budget for the Science and Youth Unit of the DST was R63m, but this amount would not be fluctuating from year to year.  This budget had been divided among the key thrusts of YiSS. 

The DST’s efforts in promoting STEMI literacy had been very successful.  Since 2005, 1,3m people (86% learners) had participated in the National Science Week (NSW) led by the DST, which was an annual campaign to showcase the importance of STEMI in people’s daily lives.  Also, the DST supported science festivals and expanded STEMI career awareness by distributing science, engineering and technology (SET) career booklets to learners, teachers and parents.  The DST also supported a network of science centres through annual development grants and capacity-building programmes for training and holding conferences.

In terms of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) promotion and awareness, the DST had supported annual IKS expos and workshops, distributed IKS policy booklets, and held annual spring lectures and biannual conferences.

As for identifying talent and potential, it was critical for the YiSS to select the best students, with demographic interests in mind.  The DST then chose students with high talent and potential.  The DST did not fully fund organisations, but it provided support in terms of promotion, some funding, coordination, etc.  For instance, the DST had supported organisations that ran the STEMI Olympiads and other competitions, which focused on development training for educators, and held learners’ coaching clinics.  The number of participants in the Olympiads had been increasing from year to year.  The DST had provided funding to enable learners at the 500 Dinaledi schools to participate in the Olympiads.

With regard to talent nurturing, a camp programme accommodated 300 students selected through stringent criteria.  The camp was held on a university campus and was designed to enhance curriculum content knowledge and equip learners with the skills necessary to cope with a life in higher education.

Regarding the internship programmes, the National Youth Service programme recruited unemployed people to do volunteer work.  The DST supported the NYS by identifying unemployed graduates in science and technology, and deploying them in science centres in other institutions that were assisting the DST to implement the strategy.  This helped to avoid having unemployed and inactive workers waste human capacity and output.

The DST also supported the work readiness programme, aimed at responding to government priorities, such as skills development and reduction of unemployment.  The numbers of participants had been growing from year to year.
 
The objective of these internships was to increase the pool of skilled human resources, provide work experience and increase graduate employability.  The efficiency of these programmes was outstanding when considering that by the internship’s end, 70% of the participants had either landed permanent employment or engaged in further studies.

Discussion
Mr M Nonkonyana (ANC) asked whether the DST had a strategy to accommodate and open up to rural and disadvantaged areas.

Ms S Plaatjie (COPE) asked what the reasons were for the drop-off in female students when progressing through the post-graduate levels.  She also asked what criteria the DST used to determine how much money to allocate for each student.

Ms J Kloppers-Lourens (DA) asked, regarding the DST’s work reaching 18 Dinaledi schools, how successful the DST was in helping the Dinaledi schools.  Also, why was the DST only targeting 18 Dinaledi schools? And how did the Department select the 18 schools?  She also asked whether, in the DST’s opinion, it was a shortcoming that curricular development was not part of the DST’s mandate. Further, why was there such a large drop in doctoral graduates (11 600 enrolled and only 1 400 graduates)?  And how did the DST plan to improve the dropout of PhD students?

She then expressed concern that the portfolio committee did not have enough information on the Thuthuka programme and requested further information.  Then, on DST’s request to triple the budget for bursaries, did the Department agree that there was not enough money to support this?

Lastly, regarding the funding period of six years, why only six years?  If the student failed to complete a degree in that time, what would happen to the budget and to the student’s funding?

Ms Z Ndlazi (ANC) asked how the government could improve science performance and studies in rural areas.

The Chairperson requested that when presenting statistics on females or blacks, the presenter should please categorise them.  When visiting universities, members wanted to see the demographics in terms of socio-economic status.

Also, during the science weeks, it seemed not many of the students came from rural areas.  Was it the responsibility of the DST or the Department of Education to identify schools that sent students to the science week?  She also asked how, if at all, the DST evaluated the performance of the NGOs or private entities that worked alongside the DST.

Lastly, she asked whether the DST was satisfied with the outcomes achieved from its support of the Dinaledi schools.

Mr Auf der Heyde emphasised again that it was critical to place the DST’s functions in the context of its resources and its reach into the school and university system.  The interface between the DST and these systems was very small.  The DST did not have the resources to make an impact on the school or university system.  The DST did not focus on teaching or pedagogic development.  They could only help through the production of technologies that improved the efficiency of instruction.  In part, this was what the DST was doing in the Dinaledi schools.  Thus, the DST supported small areas of the school and university systems, but the DST did not own these responsibilities within its mandate.  Similarly, with curriculum development, the DST supported curriculum development for research training, but did not own the actual curriculum development responsibility. 

In response to Ms Kloppers-Lourens, there were several reasons for the drop-off in students as they progressed through the post-graduation programmes.  Many students did not have the necessary funds to continue their education.  They had families to support and other demands to enter the workforce.  Women also faced challenges that more often prevented them from continuing education in comparison to men.  There were additional reasons for attrition rates which the DST was currently investigating. 

However, the solution remained clear: to increase the number and the value of the bursaries to support students.  That the NRF currently supported 8% of students also indicated that over 92% of students were not receiving any support from the NRF.  It was unsustainable for South Africa at its current level of development to not invest in its students at higher levels of education.

Further, the DST was working to ensure that senior researchers spent more time researching and training, as opposed to teaching undergraduates and grading papers.  There was also a range of interventions meant to increase the number of graduates each year.

In reply to Ms Ndlazi, the DST did not have the institutional mechanisms or resources to intervene in rural areas, plus the fact that this was not part of the DST’s mandate.  However, through its work with the NSWs, the Science Centres and the Dinaledi schools, the DST was helping to demonstrate how broader impact could be achieved with adequately developed institutions and increased funding.

Regarding the low number of PhD staff at universities, the DST did not have relationships with individual universities that would enable the Department to work on institutional development.  This would fall under the mandates of the Departments of Basic Education and Higher Education and Training.  The DST worked at the level of system, using system level indicators.  The DST only addressed issues at the institutional level through programmes that applied across the system. 

Mr Auf der Heyde then apologised for not providing the socio-economic breakdown on the presentation’s statistics regarding blacks and women.

Regarding the reach of the DST’s programmes into black universities, the DST did not classify data in this category anymore, but could respond in terms of rural universities.  Out of the five rural universities, four had science centres advancing science awareness and sending a significant number of participants to the STEMI Olympiads and competitions.  The only programme in which these universities were not participating was the talent-nurturing programme, because this required retaining established professors and academics working during the vacation period, as well as ensuring that schools were fully operating during the vacation period.  Overall, the challenge of students from rural universities to exposure to science and technology, was being addressed.

As for the DST’s oversight of the science centres, the DST provided support for the science centres.  The science centres’ annual progress reports to the DST indicated different levels of development among them.  The DST had created a strategy to share information so that centres at higher levels could mentor those at lower levels to achieve better results across the system.  This would enable the Department to conduct oversight and measure the progress of science centres.

Regarding the National Science Weeks, the NSW was not just focusing on urban schools.  The NSW had a very large footprint in remote rural areas, with a significant number of students.  Provinces were coming on board with additional funds to ensure their students participated in the science week.  The overall number of participants was not very large, but representation was spread out countrywide.

Data showed that the 56% of Dinaledi schools supported by the DST experienced an improvement in participation.  However, around 20% of the schools also experienced a decline in performance.  It was important to highlight that the DST’s involvement was limited to supporting the services already provided by the Department of Basic Education.  This data indicated that the DST’s input was positive to some extent.  One concern was the recent decline in the proportion of students performing well in mathematics and physical sciences.  These numbers would need to be analysed over time for a more accurate evaluation.  However, the overall performance was not bad at all when considering the types of intervention provided for the Dinaledi schools.

Dr Romilla Maharaj, Executive Director: Human and Institutional Capacity Development, NRF, said that only 35% of university staff had PhDs.  The Thuthuka programme had been implemented at a time when there were many young researchers that needed to advance their qualifications.  One current focus was to identify why black women in particular were not applying to universities. 

The NRF had revised this programme over two years ago and had refocused it at three levels.  Firstly, there were people who needed to get their PhDs.  Secondly, there were PhD graduates that needed to establish themselves as researchers.  Thirdly, there were researchers who had been in the system but had been unable to establish themselves.  Prior to this revision, the
numbers had grown.  While female representation was high, as over 70% of women where white.   The revised programme targeted a range of 50-60% women and 80% black grant holders.  However, only about 50-60% of the applications were from black applicants, so this was an area that the NRF was currently addressing with the universities.

As the NRF increased the number of grants with the available budget, it found that it was giving smaller grants to a greater number of people.  Thus, additional funds were needed to fund more students. 

Lastly, regarding the request for more information on the Thuthuka programme, the NRF would compile a brochure and make it available to the committee.

The meeting was adjourned.

Present

  • We don't have attendance info for this committee meeting

Download as PDF

You can download this page as a PDF using your browser's print functionality. Click on the "Print" button below and select the "PDF" option under destinations/printers.

See detailed instructions for your browser here.

Share this page: