Obadiah, thank you for your intervention. As far as I know from my experience, technically speaking, the first 2 years of a PhD programme in the US - i.e. the coursework part - is equivalent to a Masters degree. As such, students who enter the programme with a Bachelors only tend to apply for - and get awarded - a Masters degree after completing their coursework. Those of us who had/have a Masters already do not have to do so unless it is a new field/discipline.
In my understanding, the argument in favour of a PhD by coursework in African universities is based on the assertion that both the Bachelors and Masters are weak (as well as the A-Levels). But the question, then, is don't we then focus on strengthening the Masters so that those who opt to do PhDs are strong enough? Why spend 5 years of training a PhD if he or she already spent 2 years doing a Masters programme? Perhaps Mamdani will (still) respond this way:
"Translated into a curricular perspective, the objective is for an individual student's course of study to be driven forward by debates and not by orthodoxy. This approach would give primacy to the importance of reading key texts in related disciplines. In practical terms, students would spend the first two years building a bibliography and coming to grips with the literature that constituted it. In the third year they would write a critical essay on the bibliography, embark on their own research in the fourth year, and finally write it up in the fifth" - Mahmood Mamdani http://www.pambazuka.net/en/category.php/features/72782/print
Cf.
Third, Mamdani argues, and rightly so, that to raise the quality of undergraduate training, Makerere should reinstate the system of combining lectures with tutorials. His suggested solution, in addition to scaling down undergraduate admissions, is to tap into MISR's PhD students. But as noted above, the different academic departments have PhD programs. They also have Master's programs. Strictly speaking Teaching Assistants do not have to be PhD students/candidates.Mamdani knows you do not need a separate PhD program (based at MISR) to supply tutorial assistants to different departments. The idea is actually practically problematic if not untenable. How will the few students at MISR meet all the required TAs for all departments in CHUSS? The best arrangement is for departments to draw TAs from their Master's and PhD students. The MISR PhD students would supplement where departments are short of TAs" - Moses Khisa http://www.independent.co.ug/column/70-comment/6368-response-to-prof-mamdani?format=pdf
'The solution, which assumed that "staff training" must take place overseas, had become part of the problem. By calling for Makerere "to grow our own timber," I am asking that this assumption be turned upside down, not only formally but substantially. Khisa mistakes it – I do not know whether innocently or deliberately – as "a not so veiled call to in-breeding." He then assumes that what I had discussed as an example, our own experience at MISR, must be our solution to the problem: "To this problem, Mamdani's solution at least for the CHUSS (Makerere's College of humanities and Social Science), is an interdisciplinary PhD program – based at MISR (Makerere Institute of Social Research). Ten students and a teaching team of seven; a teacher-student ratio of almost one-to-one – quite remarkable!" The remark is not as much uncharitable as wrong, on two counts at least. One, the MISR PhD program began in January, 2012, with 9 students and 5 teachers. It will admit 10 students a year and so will have 50 students and hopefully more than 5 teachers in 2016. Second, I cite the MISR program as an example to learn from, not a stand-alone solution. - Mahmood Mamdani http://www.independent.co.ug/column/comment/6489-critiquing-makerere-research-without-fear#sthash.AGeiWvMJ.dpuf
Last but not least, one of the examples you gave is more or less the same as what used to happen to Tanzanian students who went to study in South African universities for their undergraduates when I was there (maybe things have changed now). In the first year things were so simple because it was a repetition of what they/we had already done in our A-levels. So, I don't know this applies here given that the crux of the matter is why a 'doubly Masters'?
From: Obadiah Mailafia <obmailafia@gmail.com>
To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 6, 2015 10:41 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - When and Why did MAKERERE and UDSM started offering PhDs by Coursework?
Let science and the market flourish together -- no wahala!Interestingly, it has been shown that the British thesis-only dissertation has produced more innovative discoveries than the coursework oriented American doctorate. Lest we forget, the greatest discoveries of the last 10o years have been made largely in Britain and Europe: quantum physics, breakthroughs in astronomy, the computer, the Internet, antibiotics, decoding of the human DNA -- these are proud British/European discoveries. What the Americans are great at is in turning these discoveries into "marketable goods".So, the American coursework system is neither here no there. The British system is however changing. At Oxbridge these days they do introduce some basic coursework, especially if students need to be acquainted with new methodologies in research, econometrics etc. But a lot of the professors only have first degrees. And some of them are Nobel laureates. Achebe and Soyinka and JP Clark -- of that generation -- were confident enough that they could be professors without having even a Master's degree. They were world renowned figures in their thirties, to prove the point.Up until the fifties, Oxbridge graduates who had a First became researchers. The crown belonged to the Prize Fellowship at All Souls which is agreeably the toughest system of examinations in the Western world. The only African known to have passed the Prize Fellowship by examination was the Ghanaian philosopher William E. Abraham, who, as an undergraduate used to publish academic papers in Mind. Majority of the Oxbridge dons never had a PhD, which was largely a Germanic invention following the academic reforms made by Alexander von Humboldt. The idea of a research university in that sense was of German origin. You had doctorate and then you had to do another doctorate known as "habilitation". Hence such pompous German titles as "Herr Prof. Dr. Dr. Habil XXX". The Americans simply copied a bit of that into their doctoral coursework system. Until recently, the French system had something similar to the German model, in the sense that you had a simple Doctorat de Troisieme Cycle, equivalent to your normal PhD. To become an academic you also had to have another doctorate, Doctorat d'Etat. It's considered the height of high academic achievement. It entitles to speak as if you are God!So, they gave him a First so as not to lose him to industry. The rest is history!His tutor confided to the panel that this boy's intellect is at par with Einstein's, just that he would not bother to apply him to that extent."If I got a First I would pursue a career in science, anything lower, I would go into industry and make a fortune".When these kids graduate with something more than what they call a "Desmond" then they feel confident to move on to academic research. By the way, a "Desmond" by Oxbridge undergraduate lingo refers to a gentleman/gentlewoman 2nd lower class degree. When Stephen Hawking was on the borderline between a First and a 2:1 he had to face a panel:etc etc."Do dogs have a sense of humour?""Space""Time""What does it feel like to be a bird?""How many steps did you climb to this room?""Is this a question?"Now, consider when these kids move on to Oxford and Cambridge where competition for undergraduate places is horrendous. Having solid 5 "As" is no guarantee of admission. You must pass an interview which does not test rote learning but how you can think on your fit in response to such questions as:Friends,Are we not comparing oranges with apples? The British tradition has largely been that of thesis research only for doctoral studies. This is because the British undergraduate system has some qualitative difference with the U.S. system. An American high school diploma is slightly lower than the British A'Level. Some of the British old public schools (as private boarding schools are quixotically known) would pass for colleges in the American system. Eton has an endowment of about $700 million. They encourage their A'Level students to do research and even publish papers in academic journals before they even go to undergraduate university studies. Schools such as Eton, St. Paul's, Harrow, Winchester, Radley and Tonbridge have formidable academic standing that is the envy of the entire world. When I was teaching at the American University in London an old Etonian boy got so bored to tears because the first year curriculum was a rude throw-back by two years as far as he was concerned!
"Hawking what are your career plans?"--On Sun, Sep 6, 2015 at 1:27 AM, Segun Ogungbemi <seguno2013@gmail.com> wrote:In my view, a Ph.D program should be by course-work and research. It is very rigorous but it worths it if one is able to scale through.
Prof. Segun Ogungbemi
On Sep 6, 2015, at 7:19 AM, "'Chambi Chachage' via USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:--It is a question that has been bothered me since I overhead a professor at UDSM's IDS complaining about the shift into PhDs by coursework instead of research. Now I have realized I do not have an answer after the ongoing debate with Sabatho Nyamsenda who (seems) to be defending it vigorously and arguing that even UDSM's PSPA does so.If my memory is correct, Professor Chachage, was against it - as well as the introduction of the semester system at UDSM, which (again if my memory is correct) he viewed as a shift to 'Americanization' but I cannot (yet) track any of his specific writings on the subject. For those who have been (up) there perhaps you can refresh my/our memories.In relation to all the above, there something else I recently overhead at UDSM, that is, the introduction of the ('Harvard Business School') 'Case Methodology' even in 'Social Sciences' and 'Humanities'. What is the 'rationale' of doing so? Where is the inspiration coming from - and why (now)? Below are some observations on 'courses' and 'programmes':"As a result of this process the University of Dar es Salaam has reached a point where the production of 'marketable goods' – works, courses and graduates – is given priority over academic excellence, and where academic excellence is defined, in the narrow terms of policy makers, as marketability of courses and 'outputs'. With these corporate strategic goals in place until at least 2013 it would seem that the University of Dar es Salaam is behaving like Rip Van Winkle. For example the University of Cape Town, which introduced similar institutional transformations in the mid-1990s, abandoned them in 2001 after recognising the dangers they posed as far as knowledge production and dissemination are concerned" - Prof. Chachage on The University as a Site of Knowledge:The Role of Basic Research"This takes me to the second issue; that Makerere is not a research university because it conducts research but does not produce researchers. To this problem, Mamdani's solution at least for the CHUSS, is an interdisciplinary PhD program – based at MISR. Ten students and a teaching team of seven; a teacher-student ratio of almost one-to-one – quite remarkable! But is it true that Makerere does not produce researchers? Or it is that Makerere's Masters and PhD graduates are incapable of doing the kind of research expected of a research university? I think that neither is the case" - Moses Khisa's 'Response to Mamdani'"Though PhD programs were introduced in CHUSS in the era of neoliberal reform, they constitute only a half measure. On the positive side, they were backed by donors who came to realise that "staff training" overseas was not working because few of its beneficiaries were returning. On the negative side, CHUSS is to my knowledge the only college at Makerere which does not have a coursework-based PhD program; at the same time, the coursework-based Masters programs are by and large professionally, and not academically, oriented" - Prof. Mamdani on 'Critiquing Makerere Research without Fear'"Second, I also noted that to say that Makerere is not a research university because it has never produced researchers is a total misrepresentation. Makerere's different departments in fact have PhD programs. Mamdani grudgingly concedes to this point in his response article. But because he's wary of eating his words, Mamdani hastens to note that the College of Humanities and Social Science at Makerere is the only one without a course-work PhD program. Needless to say, this is hardly peculiar to Makerere as it is born of the British education system. The course-work PhD is a uniquely North American style of doctoral training. If we simplistically employed the yardstick of course-work PhD programs, then universities in South Africa, India, Europe, etc., would hardly pass the test of being research universities" - Moses Khisa on 'What is Makerere's Problem?---Kwa Nia Njema - In Good Faith
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