Canadian Graduates with South African Doctorates...

I meant native English-speaking countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa and the United States.

 

I can't really say much about Canada specifically.

But regarding doctoral level hiring in general, my impression is that employers look for doctoral level talent beause they want top-level expertise in areas and problems of interest to them.

A biotech firm will want to expand its bench in some highly technical area of research. A university will want to strengthen a department's offerings in some specialty, hopefully with somebody who's productive enough to raise the department's scholarly profile.

So employers are going to be looking for very specific talents. Interviewers will be specialists themselves. They will already have a pretty good grasp of where the strong departments are and where significant work is coming from.

I don't think that a university's nationality is going to be a major variable, but its academic reputation will be. Not overall institutional reputation necessarily, but reputation in a specific academic subject and specialty.

It might be possible for a student at a relatively weak school to pump him or herself up with publications and presentations, but that's going to be hard if the student isn't getting support from the school. And that's a real problem with distance learning, especially with the dissertation-only "research degree" model. It's too easy for the school to say in effect, 'Go away and don't bother us again until you have your dissertation ready'. At stronger schools, graduate students are deeply embedded in ongoing research projects and work alongside their professors. There's kind of an apprenticeship aspect to it. Publications, presentations, introductions and recommendations flow naturally out of that.

 

I have never seen a UNISA PhD holder teaching full time at a Canadian School. It doesn't mean that is not possible but just haven't seen one.

However, I have seen few teaching at Australian and some few at American schools. Also bear in mind that UNISA doesn't grant hundreds of PhDs in a year but only a handful at least in the business department so you might not find as many out there.

For what I have seen, the UNISA PhD is very rigorous and most of the students are already faculty. The research doctorate is also very hard as you are on your own with little support of this school, you don't have any milestones and it is pretty much all or nothing.

The American model makes more sense for part time, it might be more expensive but less risky.

The UNISA PhD has been discussed many times before here but we haven't seen many students that actually graduated from there and this must be for a reason.

 

Ok...

Hi,

Thanks for the information. However, why are we focused on Unisa only. There are other SA univesities. I earned mine at Nelson Mandelan Metro Univ and I think there many SA universities that are rigorous in their academic expectations.

Nonetheless, I appreciate your viewpoint and do agree in other respects, as well.

K

 

India and the Philippines

Of course.

 

That's one of the problems I see with African doctorates as well. Which employer is really willing to put in the effort to find out if the degree is from a "good" African country/university or taken at the Royal Pirate Academy of Somalia. It's of cause a completly different story when someone can back it up with legit research publications or even lived over there for a while.

 

When they are hiring hiring africa's medical doctors and nurses and other professionals who are expensive to be trained in Canada

 

Wow, this is an amazing number of credentials, Why would you want to do a DBA/PhD? It looks to me like you can be making a lot of $$$ already. If teaching is your goal, I'm sure you wouldn't have any problems finding work as a teacher with so many credentials.

 

Why not go all the way? ;-)

 

Earning an accredited doctorate will be a great accomplishment. Universities in South Africa are great deals because their alumni are highly competent, be it accountants (reciprocal agreements with the CA and CPA); Doctors (being actively recruited by the (Province of Alberta and Canada in general).

As a high school drop out, I started perusing tertiary education late in my life. I realized I had to hyper-achieved especially in Canada to compete that the main reason for all the designations. Today, I dropped the CFP so I need to update my signature.

 

Why? Is not worth it? At some point I considered it but now I wonder if it is worth the trouble.

Good luck with your South African degree!

 

Outside of the USA and the UK, it may be interesting so see other country has the largest representation on Canadian faculties. My guess it will be South Africa, India then follow by China. I performed a brief search of SA degrees on Canadian faculties for a 3 SA Universities, the result was exhaustive, below is a small sample


http://fhs.mcmaster.ca/oncology/faculty/patelmaltibehn.html
http://www.usask.ca/medicine/imaging/People/people.html
http://www.med.uwo.ca/Dentistry/div_prosthodontics_faculty.html
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/nursing/srichter.cfm
http://www.fhs.mcmaster.ca/psychiatryneuroscience/faculty/belciug/index.htm

http://students.sfu.ca/calendar/businessadministration.htm
http://www.chem-eng.utoronto.ca/facultystaff/adjunct.htm

http://www.uoguelph.ca/phdlts/faculty/smith.html
http://www.grad.uwaterloo.ca/calendar/archived/Grad_Calendar00-01/Math/MMaminst.html
http://www.royalroads.ca/about-rru/the-university/staff-faculty-bios/r/Radford-John.htm
http://ugradcalendar.uwaterloo.ca/?pageID=10033
http://www.ufv.ca/visualarts/Art_History/Art_History_Faculty.htm
http://www.unbc.ca/geography/faculty.html
http://www.mun.ca/regoff/cal98_99/ArtsClassicsFacultyList.htm

http://prov.ca/profiles/profile.aspx?name=Mervin+Van+der+Spuy
http://www.law.ubc.ca/faculty/Pavlich/index.html

http://www.bcit.ca/facultystaff/bios/1071301
http://www.law.utoronto.ca/faculty_content.asp?profile=23&perpage=51&cType=facMembers&itemPath=1/3/4/0/0

http://ssu.ca/programs/faculty.htm
http://www.yorkvilleu.ca/faculty/david-teplin/

http://www.ed.brocku.ca/faculty/mkompf/
http://www2.english.ubc.ca/CF2/faculty01.cfm
http://www.ufv.ca/visualarts/Faculty_and_Staff/Faculty_Members.htm
http://www.msvu.ca/MediaCentre/NewsEvents/2005/Jan05/JA05-09.asp
http://www.utoronto.ca/dentistry/facultyresearch/facultyprofiles/leong.ht
http://www.twu.ca/academics/faculty/profiles/flint-peter.html
http://www.royalroads.ca/about-rru/the-university/staff-faculty-bios/t/templer-andrew.htm
http://www.mcgill.ca/civil/faculty/gehr/
http://www.kwantlen.ca/calendar/generalinfo/Faculty_List.html
http://law.queensu.ca/facultyAndStaff/facultyProfiles/donStuartProfile.html

 

Wow, thanks for doing this research - it is very inspiring! Cheers...

 

This is not surprising at all. Canadian universities have very international faculty. If I was to hazard a guess (and this is only a guess), I would think that about 75% of new-hires in Canadian universities hold graduate degrees outside Canada.

 

What about Australia???

 

Hi

There should not be a problem with the status of a degree from South Africa if it is from a recognized university. The easiest means is to look at the online version of the Association of Commonwealth Universities and see if the university is listed there. Then check with the organization you are interested in working for. If it is a university in Canada there should not be problem if you show them the degree and have a transcript of grades showing the completed degree. There should not be a problem even with a civic organization or private company as long as there is some means of demonstating the validity such as above.

When working towards the DEd I asked the Nova Scotia department of Education if my degree would permit me a higher teaching certificate. They replied yes, Unisa is a recognized Commonwealth university of long standing and forwarded the required papers to be submitted with the transcript of grades showing completion of the degree. Of course it priced me out of the teaching market.

I have since been admitted to the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, Faculty of Education, at McGill University in Monrtéal as a postdoctoral fellow for this year. I will complete the research this summer. There was no question about the validity of my degree from RSA.

Brad

 

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20071108145540742

SA universities are competing very well internationally. Also a reference to Canada in this article.

 

Thanks, Okydd!

I was happy to see Pretoria listed.

Roscoe