Ubuntu as a framework for quality in doctoral programmes

Abstract

The systemic pressure within South African higher education to accelerate doctoral production risks favouring throughput over substance. This strain remains unaddressed by standard quality assurance (QA) frameworks, which tend to promote a rushed approach, narrowly focusing on quantifiable outcomes such as short completion times and independent research, while neglecting the psychosocial and holistic aspects of students’ lives. This paper argues that current QA standards largely adopt a Western-based “I think, therefore I am” orientation, placing a disproportionate emphasis on cognitive mastery, while downplaying the need to foster the holistic development of researchers whose knowledge and impact are deeply rooted in their social context. The study proposes that, to counter this, QA frameworks must integrate an Ubuntu-based “I am because you are” orientation if they are to recognise the critical influence of students’ social roles, responsibilities, and relationships as essential levers, and to infuse the transformation envisaged in the democratic dispensation into doctoral QA. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 19 past and present doctoral students who are parents and mostly employed, the study undertakes a discourse analysis to examine how their social roles and responsibilities shape their experience of quality learning, highlighting the essential dimensions of community engagement and situated knowledge that are currently neglected by existing QA models. The findings reveal a systemic quality trap arising from a mismatch between rigid institutional metrics and students’ lived realities, based on four themes: conflicting paradigms that penalise relational responsibilities; institutional cultural myopia regarding necessary support structures such as childcare; a cumulative burden resulting from intersecting identities; and a constriction of student agency.