Geography PhDs and the changing environment in South Africa

Abstract

Experiences around the world show that education systems, and the learning, teaching and research environments they create, are never static; instead they are constantly changing to accommodate or reflect societal dynamics, government policies, the state and pathways of the economy, and changing epistemologies. In the early 2000s South Africa paid greater attention to the knowledge economy and the roles that institutions of higher learning, especially universities, could play in the production of that knowledge. This short paper focuses on the implications of the knowledge economy for PhD programmes in South Africa and questions the extent to which Geography PhD programmes have benefited from this emergent coupling.