The impact of poor supervision on postgraduate students

Abstract

In recent years transformation has encouraged an increase in the number of postgraduate students. There is a growing concern worldwide and in South Africa about the quality of postgraduate supervision in higher education institutions and the length of time it takes postgraduate students to complete their studies. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact if poor supervision on postgraduate students in order to recommend necessary interventions and encourage quality supervision which benefit all stakeholders. The paper will answer the following question: What are causes and effects of poor supervision on postgraduate students in universities? Students experience different difficulties when they do their postgraduate studies. They experience traditional model of a single supervisor supervising a full-blown thesis. Some supervisors are inexperienced and others lack research method and technical skills. Students suffer silently as they fear victimisation from their so-called supervisor. Some supervisors only care about research outputs. They don’t supervise but demand that students should write articles and publish them. That benefits a supervisor than a student. All students want is to get a degree. These experiences cripple the progress of students and demotivate them. Hence, while there has been a growth in student numbers enrolling for postgraduate studies and research programmes but there has not been a substantial increase in the output of successful postgraduate students. In order to collect the required data for the study, the survey will be used. It is hoped that the data collected will enable the researcher to address the question raised. In this study, the relevant theory will be used to explain the phenomenon.