PhD Topics and Projects
The field of higher education is complex and includes a vast range of broad areas such as teaching and learning studies, policy studies, management studies, historical studies and so on. Applicants are invited to develop their own potential areas of study and are welcome to contact us for advice and support as they do so. The wide range of interests and areas of expertise of the supervisors ensures that students can be well matched to work with someone who has knowledge of and interest in the student’s chosen topic.
At present we have PhD scholars researching in the following areas:
- Quality Assurance in Higher Education
- Internationalization of Higher Education/ Globalization of Higher Education
- Reform in Higher Education in an era of neoliberalism
- Epistemological access to higher education
- Funding of higher education
We also have an NRF funded project which includes a number of PhD scholars investigating issues of social inclusion in higher education.
Social Inclusion is a relatively new area of study in Higher Education in South Africa. Higher education holds the promise of contributing to social equity, intellectual, cultural, social, economic and political development, and democracy and social justice. Institutions of higher learning potentially offer powerful opportunities for fostering the economic and social advancement of members of disadvantaged and marginalised social classes and groups, for promoting understanding of and respect for difference and diversity and forging social cohesion.
Although access to higher education has been granted to all people of our nation for some years, concerns are being raised about the extent to which such physical access is combined with access to ‘the goods’ of the university. This includes the knowledge constructed within the university and the social context of the university. Low retention rates and demographically skewed success rates indicate that for some the University is not the place of empowerment we would want it to be. The promise of higher education often remains unrealised and instead universities frequently continue to be a powerful mechanism of social exclusion and injustice, through both their own internal thinking, structures, cultures and practices and their external relations with wider society. Studies in social inclusion investigate the extent to which universities foster social inclusion and the mechanisms whereby and reasons why they might not do so.
