Postgraduate student retention and success docx

Charlton Koen Postgraduate student retention and success: A South African case study Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Published by HSRC Press Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa www.hsrcpress.ac.za First published 2007 ISBN 978-0-7969-2192-5 © 2007 Human Sciences Research Council Copyedited by Laurie Rose-Innes Typeset by Robin Taylor Cover design by comPress Print management by comPress Distributed in Africa by Blue Weaver Tel: +27 (0) 21 701 4477; Fax: +27 (0) 21 701 7302 www.oneworldbooks.com Distributed in Europe and the United Kingdom by Eurospan Distribution Services (EDS) Tel: +44 (0) 20 7240 0856; Fax: +44 (0) 20 7379 0609 www.eurospangroup.com/bookstore Distributed in North America by Independent Publishers Group (IPG) Call toll-free: (800) 888 4741; Fax: +1 (312) 337 5985 www.ipgbook.com Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Tables and figures v Preface vi Abbreviations and acronyms xv 1฀ The฀study’s฀origins฀and฀motivations฀ 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 The background 1 1.3 Personal motivation for the study 6 1.4 The scope of the retention problem in South Africa 8 1.5 The scope of the retention problem at UWC 9 1.6 General explanations for retention difficulties in South Africa 14 1.7 Explanations in research on master’s students 16 1.8 Explanation gaps 17 1.9 Conclusion 19 2฀ The฀analytical฀framework฀ 21 2.1 Introduction 21 2.2 General theoretical approaches 22 2.3 Tinto’s theoretical approach 25 2.4 Criticisms of Tinto’s views, and retention characteristics identified in other theories 26 2.5 The theoretical model of this study 28 2.6 Data and method: why a case study? 34 2.7 Research techniques 35 2.8 Data analysis 39 2.9 Limitations of the research 39 2.10 Conclusion 40 3฀ ฀Review฀of฀literature฀on฀master’s฀students฀in฀ South฀Africa฀ 41 3.1 Introduction 41 3.2 Factors affecting student performance 43 3.3 The quality problem 46 3.4 Routinising conduct 48 3.5 Research evidence and academic anecdotes 49 3.6 Research themes and findings from institutional research 51 3.7 Findings on policy-related objectives 52 3.8 The natural sciences model as a proposed solution 54 3.9 What can we learn from this? 56  Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za iv ©HSRC 2007 4฀ ฀International฀literature฀review฀of฀theoretical฀ models฀ 59 4.1 Focus of the chapter 59 4.2 Tinto’s model of social and academic integration 60 4.3 Baird’s institutional integration perspective 65 4.4 Bean’s person-fit model 67 4.5 Research findings on retention 68 4.6 Conclusion 75 5฀ ฀Academic฀organisation฀and฀institutional฀ features฀at฀UWC฀ 77 5.1 Introduction 77 5.2 Institutional type and key features 77 5.3 The adequacy of institutional resources at UWC 80 5.4 Academic goal-setting at UWC 84 5.5 Change, ‘integration’ and student-staff growth patterns 88 5.6 The influence of financial variables at UWC 96 5.7 Adaptations and improvements at UWC 96 5.8 Conclusion 97 Appendix฀ 99 References฀ 105 Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za v ©HSRC 2007 Tables Table 2.1 NRF scholarships for master’s dissertation students at UWC, 1986/87– 1999/2000 32 Table 4.1 Baird’s perspective on institutional integration 66 Table 4.2 Organisational and individual factors promoting retention and success 71 Table 4.3 Organisational, academic and psychological obstacles to retention 73 Table 5.1 Enrolment patterns, 1960–2003 89 Table 5.2 Student enrolment change by race, 1965–2003 89 Table 5.3 Permanent academic staff and student numbers, 1979–2000 95 Figures Figure 2.1 Institutional and socialisation interactions 24 Figure 3.1 Master’s and doctoral enrolments 45 Figure 3.2 Master’s and doctoral graduations 45 Figure 4.1 Tinto’s person-fit model 63 Figure 4.2 Bean’s person-fit model 68  Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za vi ©HSRC 2007 David Cooper Charlton Delano Koen, 40 years of age and having completed about two-thirds of his PhD thesis, was struck down unexpectedly with a stroke at the end of June 2005. A few days later, on 4 July, to the shock of family, friends and colleagues, this leading South African researcher in the field of higher education studies (HES) passed away. At the time, he was Chief Researcher in the Education, Science and Skills Development (ESSD) Research Programme of the HSRC, working specifically in the area of human resources development and publishing prolifically. Ironically, during the month of June he had taken leave to attempt to complete some of the final chapters of his PhD, for which he had been registered in the Faculty of Education at the University of the Western Cape since 2002. His thesis was entitled ‘Factors influencing the retention and success of South African postgraduate students, a case study of master’s students at the University of the Western Cape’. I was his supervisor. 1 The five chapters of this monograph comprise Part 1 of Charlton Koen’s PhD thesis. After the Introduction (Chapter 1), they cover the theoretical perspectives underpinning his PhD study (Chapter 2) and literature reviews of HE studies on student retention by South African writers (Chapter 3) and international writers (Chapter 4), concluding with a case study of the University of the Western Cape (Chapter 5). Part 1 provided a background and context for the data analysis chapters (Chapters 6–9) in Part 2, focusing on master’s student retention and success at UWC during the period 1996–2002. Part 2 of his PhD was incomplete and, thus, is not included here. It must be stressed that all five chapters of Part 1 had been written up in near- complete form at the time of his death. 2 Moreover, it might be noted that it is unusual for the first part of a PhD to be in such complete form before the data analysis chapters of the second part have been well constructed. Here it must be borne in mind that Charlton had already written up some of his core quantitative findings on UWC master’s and doctoral student retention and success, as well as having undertaken a qualitative analysis of some of the student experiences, based on his data collection (a survey and a series of in-depth interviews) as part of a UWC  1 Although I have always been based at the University of Cape Town, in the Department of Sociology, I worked for nearly a decade in the 1990s on research in the field of HES, and was linked to the UWC Education Policy Unit (EPU), now the Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE), initiated and directed by Harold Wolpe until his death in 1996. During 2001–04, I was seconded part-time to UWC to direct a coursework master’s programme in HES based in the Faculty of Education and linked to the EPU. Charlton Koen moved from the Department of Sociology at UWC to join the EPU as a researcher in 1999, and in 2002 he registered for his PhD at UWC under my supervision. In 2004, he left the EPU for a position as a senior researcher at the HSRC in Cape Town. 2 Since these chapters were virtually complete, I have only undertaken very minor editing, which has mainly involved: inserting occasional academic points or phrases of clarification; adding some bibliographical references, which were incomplete or omitted; and very occasionally filling in some cells within data tables, which were empty or unfinished. I deliberately did not attempt to edit his arguments or his frequent sharp or critical commentaries (some of these were posed in a starker way than I would have put them, but I decided to leave Charlton’s work to ‘speak’ in the way he had left it within the nearly complete chapters). I am also extremely grateful to Laurie Rose-Innes, who had previously undertaken a style/language edit of one or two pieces Charlton had written while at the HSRC, and who agreed here to undertake a similar edit of the five chapters (both Charlton’s and my own styles are sometimes overly ‘academic’ and convoluted, so it was valuable to attain the excellent services of someone like Laurie to streamline the style of text across the chapters). Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za vii ©HSRC 2007 study led by himself as researcher in the Education Policy Unit (EPU) during 1999– 2001 (see Koen 2001a, discussed below). Thus, the order of his work was in effect: firstly, UWC data collection and initial data analysis during 1999–2001 (leading to the publication of Koen 2001a, also Koen 1999 and 2000, and later 2003a); thereafter, the theoretical and literature review/analysis in 2002–04 (resulting in Part 1 of the PhD, the five chapters of this monograph); then, more extensive data analysis and final writing up of Part 2, scheduled for 2005–6. Although Chapters 6–9 were never completed, some core data analysis can be found in Koen 2001a. 3 It must be stressed, too, that I have assisted in this publication of Part 1 of his PhD thesis not merely in memory of a colleague and doctoral supervisee. The most important reason for publication is that I believe the chapters of this monograph comprise the best theoretical work thus far by a South African researcher in the emergent field of HES. Not only is this work very good in conceptual terms (theoretical frameworks and reviews of international perspectives and findings), but it is also extremely well rooted in empirical data (the unfinished work of Part 2). Thus, it ‘obeys’ Charlton Koen’s own injunction to South African researchers in HES that they should ‘stop writing based largely on anecdotal evidence and their personal experiences of universities’, and rather ‘get down to some serious empirical research’ before putting out academic articles about issues on which they have undertaken very little serious empirical investigation (see my brief discussion below, and Koen’s extended argument, especially in Chapter 3 of this monograph). To conclude this point, the real value in the publication of the monograph, therefore, is not primarily to honour and remember him in relation to his research work, but to enable the quality of his analyses in the field of HES, with particular reference to his PhD study, to reach a South African and international audience. In the light of the above, it is also important to summarise how the five chapters published here might be viewed and read. This part of the PhD can be read as a unity, and stands alone as a significant contribution. Nonetheless, while reading these chapters, it is important to bear in mind that Koen saw them as providing the scaffolding for the later analysis of the UWC master’s student data, which were to follow in Part 2 of his thesis. Thus, it is important to consider carefully the outline Koen does provide, in Part 1, of his research methodologies underpinning the UWC data to be analysed in Part 2. This outline includes: • his own personal motivation for the study, and perceived gaps in existing South African HES (Chapter 1.3 and 1.8, respectively); and • his use of the following data-collection methods: – a self-completion questionnaire sent to over 1 000 UWC master’s and doctoral students, – in-depth interviews of nearly 100 UWC academic staff and postgraduates, – in-depth case studies of postgraduate programmes in two UWC academic departments, and – extensive collection of documents, as well as informal participant observation, while he was at UWC for several years (all described in Chapter 2.7, followed by sections on data analysis and limitations of the data in Chapter 2.8 and 2.9, respectively). 3 See also the appendix at the end of this monograph, where a short document, ‘Overview and structure of the PhD thesis’, written by Charlton Koen shortly before his death is included. This document provides a useful guide to how Chapters 1–5 of Part 1 relate to the chapters that were to follow in Part 2. Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za viii ©HSRC 2007 Since Part 2 of the PhD was never completed, the interested reader may wish to refer to Charlton Koen’s earlier research report on some of this UWC data on master’s and doctoral retention and success, by consulting Koen (2001a). 4 In addition, at occasional points in this monograph, I have added, in brackets, references to either Koen (2001a) or to the unfinished data analysis of Part 2, in order to clarify the place of the latter work in relation to the chapters included here (see also the appendix to this monograph). 5 I hope this locates his arguments in the broader analytical context, which was always his intention. It is must be emphasised that there is a conceptual thread running right through Charlton’s PhD thesis, including the five chapters of the monograph, which is well captured in its essentials in a draft of the ‘Abstract’ that he was writing for his thesis (as found on his computer): This study examines postgraduate academic practice and interactions within the academic community at UWC that promote or impede student success from 1996 to 2002. The purpose is to provide a social science analysis of the academic organisation, the experience of master’s and doctoral students, and of organised activities to promote retention and success… International research studies on retention and success of masters and doctoral students emphasise that retention and success are dependent on the knowledge creation opportunities at universities and how well students adjust to the knowledge environment. Important characteristics of retention further involve economic security, psychological motivations to succeed, organisational interaction between students and academics, the organisation of academic activity and the way in which students fit into an institution. In studying these issues, this research builds on the work of Vincent Tinto and other Parsonian functionalists. Despite the abstract being incomplete, all the core components of the conceptual thread of his PhD thesis are contained in these lines: • that the academic practices and interactions within an academic community like UWC are essential to the success and retention of master’s (and doctoral) students; • that how a university and the departments within it actually organise their postgraduate activities is vital for the well-being and satisfaction of the institution’s postgraduates; • that the specific experiences of master’s students need to be carefully investigated and analysed, in order to grasp the problems of student retention and success; 4 Koen (2001a) ‘Improving time-to-degree among master’s and doctoral students at the University of the Western Cape’, available in the library of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education, UWC, where copies of most other publications by Charlton Koen are held. Note also, those of Charlton Koen’s publications that have been directly cited in Chapters 1–5 here have been included in the references at the end of this monograph. A much more extensive listing of his work during 1999–2005 (research reports, journal articles, conference papers and seminar papers) was compiled shortly after his death by his colleagues in the ESSD Research Programme of the HSRC and may be consulted at the end of the publication of his two final research papers, assembled in memory of Charlton (see Koen 2006). 5 For this appendix and a listing of references, as well as Chapters 1–5 in their latest form before Charlton died, I am very grateful to his wife Eleanor and sister Karin who, despite the pain of their loss, undertook to find this PhD thesis work on Charlton’s home computer. I am also indebted to his colleagues at the ESSD, particularly Andre Kraak, Glenda Kruss and Sharon Flemmit, and to Allison Fullard of the CSHE library, who all assisted me in numerous ways. I should also add that in a short ‘Acknowledgements’ found on his computer as draft for his PhD thesis, he specifically stated: ‘I wish to thank: my family, colleagues at the Centre for the Study of Higher Education, particularly the former chief librarian Renee Reagan and current assistant librarian Mymoena Adriaanse, research participants.’  Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za ix ©HSRC 2007 • that a postgraduate culture (embedded in the organisation of postgraduate systems and activities), which a university is meant to nurture, needs to be understood as a vital internal factor that facilitates the retention and success of master’s students – a factor as important as (if not more important than) the external factors of economic security (e.g. financial support) and broader socio- political (e.g. apartheid) and socio-economic (e.g. social class) forces; • that the specific contribution of his PhD study, unlike previous South African studies of postgraduate students, is to make transparent, via detailed empirical work, the important role of these knowledge environment factors within UWC itself (or rather, to reveal the absence of many such postgraduate support factors internal to this institution); moreover, these internal university factors have been pointed to by a range of international research studies over the past few decades, with the work of Vincent Tinto, based on a Parsonian functionalist approach to institutional culture, having laid a foundation for theoretical analyses of postgraduate practices within HE institutions, including Koen’s own analysis. The short discussion of the various chapters of the monograph, below, shows how this conceptual thread and its core components are weaved through each of the five chapters, in an interesting and novel sequence by Charlton Koen in Part 1 of his thesis. Charlton Koen the researcher: the impact of UWC on his work Before tracing this thread through the chapters, it is relevant to outline very briefly some aspects of Charlton Koen the researcher, including his close and intense experiences over two decades (from the mid-1980s until 2004) of UWC and its institutional academic culture. This is important, firstly because, as he outlines in the initial chapter, his PhD thesis can only be understood in relation to his ‘personal motivation for the study’ (Chapter 1.3). Secondly, as it becomes clear across the monograph and, in particular, with reference to the case study of UWC in Chapter 5 (‘Academic organisation and institutional features at UWC’), the historical shape and culture of this university provide the institutional context/framework within which all his data analysis (the missing Part 2) of master’s student retention and success needs to be located. Therefore, although some information is provided by Charlton of his own history at UWC (especially in Chapter 1.3, and with comments elsewhere in the monograph), it is pertinent here to provide a summary of some of his experience within the institution. His analysis of UWC during the period of his PhD work (2002–2005) is shaped by his earlier experiences as a student and later as a lecturer within the institution. After completing high school, he began as an undergraduate in 1984, attaining his BA with a major in sociology in 1986 at UWC. He completed an honours degree in the Sociology Department during 1988–89, 6 and subsequently completed a master’s degree in sociology, while employed as a lecturer in the same department, during 1996–97, before registering for his PhD in 2002. All these years as a student at undergraduate and especially at postgraduate level provided him with deep insights (and potential biases, I would suggest), in relation to theorising the central issues 6 I served as an external examiner for this sociology honours class, and recall recommending to Professor Jeff Lever as convenor of the UWC sociology postgraduate programme that Charlton Koen was clearly an ‘excellent scholar in the making’.  Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za x ©HSRC 2007 of his PhD thesis around the retention and success of master’s students at UWC. Probably even more important than his student experiences, in shaping his ideas about UWC, was his employment there as a lecturer in the Department of Sociology: he was employed as a lecturer, initially on a part-time basis and then full-time, throughout the period 1989–99, after which he moved to the EPU (within the Faculty of Education) as a full-time research officer from 1999–2004. In fact, he clearly ‘served’ as a ‘participant observer’ or ‘semi-researcher’ of UWC itself over the period 1984–2004. Undoubtedly, as he notes (perhaps not strongly enough) in Chapter 1, this shaped his interpretations of the data he collected for his PhD study. He undertook some formal research fieldwork in relation to his honours and master’s dissertations while a lecturer (e.g. Koen & Roux 1992a and b). However, like many lecturers at UWC, his heavy teaching loads limited the amount of serious research possible. Hence, his real research career began on joining the EPU. This can be observed in terms of his research publications, which grew and expanded greatly during the years 1999–2005 at the EPU (see the steady increase in his research publications, in the bibliography provided by his colleagues in Koen 2006). Indeed, it needs to be recognised that during this period, this quiet and unassuming researcher was becoming one of the most productive research workers, especially in terms of high-quality publications, in HES in South Africa. He continued this trend as a senior researcher at the HSRC from around mid-2004 until his death. His move to the HSRC was based on a decision to locate himself in an environment that might further enhance his research development. It is pertinent here that while conducting research within the EPU/CSHE of UWC, he again was a de facto ‘participant observer’ of this university with respect to all its strengths and weaknesses, especially now in relation to its institutional practices and culture around research activities (within the EPU and Faculty of Education, in particular). Moreover, as a registered PhD student at this university, he experienced direct personal contact with its ‘PhD culture’ and issues around this. Thus, the point of the above is not only to provide some additional biographical elements; it is also to stress that any reader of this monograph needs to appreciate Charlton Koen’s long involvement, over two decades, as student, lecturer and researcher within the very ‘veins and capillaries’ of UWC as an institution. Undoubtedly, this deep insertion into UWC shaped the research of his PhD during the period up to 2005 in significant and complex ways. Chapters 1 and 2: setting the framework As suggested above, there is a thread of core components in Charlton Koen’s analysis, which runs through the five chapters (and also the chapters of the incomplete Part 2). Essentially, the purpose of the first two chapters of the monograph is to set the overall framework of the analysis. In Chapter 1, Koen confronts the reader with statistical data and some qualitative material indicating serious problems with respect to throughput rates and ‘drop-out’ of students, especially at postgraduate levels, at South African universities, including UWC. He does this, in part, with illustrations of findings from his own investigation of master’s and doctoral students during 1999–2001 (Koen 2001a), which formed the baseline for his PhD work. He shows also how the thrust of the recommendations (in Koen 2001a) derived from his research data is around improvements needed at UWC,  Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za [...]... microstructures and practices and their associated postgraduate culture’ Thus, he orients many of his own research questions around factors such as: the interaction between supervisors and master’s students, and interactions within a department between staff and students and among students themselves; the rules and systems in place in an academic department to develop and enhance the internal organisation and. .. master’s and doctoral students.1 The context of the research included figures for postgraduate students that showed low retention and throughput rates For example: • between 1996 and 1998, the pass rate for honours students was about 40 per cent; and • between 1995 and 1998, the throughput rate was 17 per cent for master’s students One leg of the improved support involved establishing a project called Postgraduate. .. facilitate student success? Does institutional culture contribute to retention difficulties? Do institutions provide adequate student services and are student and academic services sufficiently integrated to promote retention success? Put differently, what limits on retention arise from the way in which academic culture is organised and distributed? What is the relationship between the provision and distribution... on academic practice, the operation of communities of practice, and student- student and academic -student interactions are necessary to understand the actions of individuals in HE That is, understanding the impact on retention of the institutional context in which academics and students operate is itself a source of conceptual, empirical and analytical interest in this study Explanations that do not... experiences on student drop-out; • explaining why students in good academic and financial standing leave institutions; • determining the relational effects of domestic and work pressures on retention and drop-out; and • accounting for the impact of psychological factors on student drop-out For example, the schooling deficit and adjustment models in South Africa do not explicitly address how new students... aims and objectives, the specific tasks involved and the timescale for completion of the tasks • Encourage faculties to compile and provide annual faculty-based feedback on the progress and performance of master’s and doctoral students and their supervisors To facilitate such feedback, faculties should construct standard data sets that link student records to supervisor names, student topics and individual... between HWUs and HBTs with respect to admission selectivity, financial and socio-economic background and race of students, and the research and academic quality of staff at universities and technikons The scope of the retention problem at UWC Calculations by Bunting (1999a) indicate that drop-out rates at UWC improved considerably between 1988, when 39 per cent of students were excluded, and 1998 when... the sub-area of retention and success is a real feat, and deserves to be read by anyone interested in what international scholars are writing about on questions of student retention and especially on issues of postgraduate organisational systems and culture at the level of academic microstructures Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Chapter 5: problematising academic culture and institutional... systems, practices and culture of postgraduate studies within departments Anticipating arguments in the chapters to follow, he briefly opens the debate about: the lack of serious empirical research in the field of HES on master’s and • doctoral students in South Africa and the problems they face; and • the quite prolific expansion of empirical research on postgraduate retention and success in the field... to support students and the expectations they have regarding faculty support Encourage departments to improve the general academic and research environment by supporting seminar programme activities, actively engaging in team research that draws in students and establishing journal and other forums in which staff and students can engage around developments in their disciplines Departments and faculties . master’s and doctoral students, and of organised activities to promote retention and success International research studies on retention and success of. supervisors and master’s students, and interactions within a department between staff and students and among students themselves; the rules and systems