Posted on by ScientistSim

Fees must fall to a number Zuma can read

This week (19th September) has marked horrible protesting at Wits. In fact the Great Hall in which I have graduated three times was defaced. I did not take kindly to this. Nor did I take kindly to the fact that chairs built by Wits architectural students were set alight. I was also not impressed by the finding of three petrol bombs on campus. The situation is dire, and what is the government’s solution – passing the buck to the Universities. Good luck Wits- you find a solution to the war on your doorstep.

I am from a privileged background; however I do not think that this negates my opinion. I feel silenced and unwelcome in my own university and so does a large majority of students.  In a poll last week, 70% of students voted to reopen the university. The SRC is acting largely on behalf of a section of students that feel it is less important to come up with a viable solution (a process that will take years) and more important to protest the injustice (because, yes, the system is unjust). But let’s face it: whether the system is fair or not, we still all want to graduate. Can’t we work on a solution while still building on our individual futures?

I have had many debates about this topic in the last month. My go-to story is one I will now relay here:  in my third and final year of undergrad I could not secure any kind of funding to pay the university. The banks were treating me as if I was Richie Rich and my parents too rich to fit into the NSFAS scheme. I was also in the top 5 of undergrads in my course. How can it be that no help can be given and no scholarships were readily available to a top student? The system is intensely flawed. However the radical solution of free education is just not a desirable one with the economy as it is. Books, machinery and lecturers are getting more and more expensive and quite frankly, the universities can’t cope anyway. We don’t go into Exclusive Books, see a book we’ve wanted for ages, and demand that it should be free because the price has gone up too much for our liking. Tertiary education is not a right, it is a privilege, and that is the case in all third world countries.

Yes, our country still faces huge racial inequalities, but the challenge of funding higher education is not primarily a race-biased issue. In fact, here is a disturbing statistic: South Africa only spends 0.71% of its GDP on education, compared to 3% that China spends. But even worse: what good is free tertiary education if the majority of students are not equipped to handle the work load?

I was horrified by this graph from the CHET and DET cohort studies showing students that started university in 2008 (the year I started): only 30% of students actually finish a 3-year Bachelor’s degree within 3 years.

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Source: CHET

This already tells us something – our basic and secondary education is not reaching the people it needs to. The entire issue can be summarised as a “…highly unequal schooling system where access to high-quality schooling largely depends on a family’s ability to pay school fees,” eloquently put by Nic Spaull in his fantastic blog. This class divide happens to be along racial lines as well, thanks to that constant burden, Apartheid. 60% of White matric students achieved 60% or more in matric; only 5% of Black African matrics score at or above 60%. Good secondary education is still not accessible to most people: of the 1 million kids who enter Grade 1, only 100 000 will enter university, and 53 000 will graduate after 6 years (Van den Berg, 2015).oecd

This government has to start feeding money into making the best schools into practical models for the rest of the country. Teaching is not an easy job and should not be the easiest degree to get into (requiring only E’s) and these human heroes need to be paid adequately. Being a teacher needs to be a high-status job, and paid as such: our country’s future depends on the motivation levels and quality of our educators.

For now, a potential solution may be to make correspondence schools like UNISA free, where there are no additional living costs attached to the student. Basic education is a right. Why is no one fighting for that??? We can put plasters on gaping wounds but at some point it will need surgery. Maybe soon, we will have a president that can read the budget, and things will improve. But then again, he also suffered from a lack of basic education.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on by Odi · 4 Comments

Making the most of your time as a PhD student

Throughout my academic career I have been told that once I complete my studies the doors of opportunity would fly open for me. I have not found that to be true. Getting a secure job, or even accessing the funds to create your own job, is not guaranteed. A study undertaken by Dr Amaleya Goneos-Malka found that a PhD may actually decrease your employability as this qualification is not necessarily valued outside of academia. More than once, I have had to climb laboriously through narrow windows because those proverbial doors never just sprung open. With this experience it is strange that I haven’t been more intentional or strategic about preparing for the world of work and life post-PhD.

I recently started a process of finding out which skills I have that can be transferred to industry outside of academia – just in case my original plan does not pan out.

septemberblogGetting an academic job is no mean feat. A short while ago I read a book called the ‘Professor is in’ by Professor Karen Kelsky. Actually, I received the book as a present a long while ago, but I was too afraid to read it. In a nutshell, Kelsky lays out the skills and techniques that doctoral candidates need in order to secure a tenured position at a university. And yes, the South African market is not the American market, but we’re heading straight there. I found Kelsky’s book simultaneously comforting and frightening. Comforting, as she lays out a roadmap to follow in making yourself marketable for an academic job; frightening, because she also paints a very bleak picture for those who wish to follow the tenure track. The crux of what I got out of the book is that: to be competitive, you need to be intentional about the additional skills you acquire over the course of your degree, and you also need to package yourself appropriately; YOU are the product.

If I had the opportunity to go back in time, I would have done things a bit differently from the start of my PhD, which includes being mindful about opportunities in the private sector. Below is a list of four things that I would have done differently (and I am working on correcting):

  1. Develop three different aspirational resumes: one for the corporate world, one for the NGO sector and, one for academia. These resumes would be modelled on the skills and expertise that I need for each sector. The idea is that by the time that I am done with building up my skills, I have three different areas that I have the capacity to enter based on my initial skillset and area of interest.
  2. Learn how to network better. I do not understand how networking really works although I know it is important. I am never sure what I am supposed to say to strangers and how to cultivate professional relationships outside of my area of expertise. I have made it my mission for the rest of the year to get better at building relationships.
  3. Be more adaptable and always have a willingness to learn. The reality is – the world has problems that need to be fixed. I need to adapt my skillset to meet the ever-changing challenges ahead and never say NO to learning something new. I am kicking myself for somehow Unlearning how to be adaptable:While studying towards my undergraduate degree, I worked part-time as an outbound insurance telemarketer. I was forced to learn about various insurance products, but I also had to learn how to “sell”. I earned a pretty decent commission on top of my basic salary. What I learned in that call centre is that your primary job is to figure out what your customer needs and give it them. Somewhere along the line I lost that person, who was always ready to think out of the box to meet society’s needs.
  4. Make better use of free university workshops while I can. I have come to realise that many of the capacity building workshops that are offered for free at university, such as journal writing or learning how to use the latest software, are worth a premium outside the ivory towers. All that it costs me is time and a few weeks of commitment but the rewards are immeasurable.

My list is not in anyway complete, as I am working out the details. I plan to book a few sessions with a career coach in the near future to help figure out how to navigate my post-doctoral life. I would appreciate any tips that you may have in the comments section below.