Normally, a candidate qualifies for a doctorate after satisfying a set of conditions. Chief among these is to have a competent supervisor and at least one co-supervisor as specified in the statutes.
The candidate must identify a problem and solve it in the area of study. They must demonstrate generation of additional knowledge with reference to an undertaken extensive literature review and documented as a major contribution in the thesis.
The novelty of the research is evidenced by acceptance of generated papers for publication in peer-reviewed journals. Two to three papers often qualify one to write and present a thesis.
The undeserving cases the CS referred to fail the locus of this process and the subsequent academic integrity test.
In a number of instances in Kenya, a supervisor is overloaded with as many as 10 candidates in addition to the normal teaching load.
That leaves limited room for personal contact. Some candidates take advantage of that and engage hirelings to prepare for them interim reports for submission.
During the presentations, it becomes a ritual of numbers as the cases overwhelm the assessors due to sheer magnitude.
In 2016/2017, a faculty at one of our universities graduated 47 PhDs yet it had only three professors, yielding a ratio of 1:16 instead of the internationally recommended 1:3. In the recent case, a faculty has produced 89 degrees with even more outrageous ratios, eliciting official concerns.
In such scenarios a 30-minute presentation in a colloquium would require many days sitting for six hours daily for such a class, which is unrealistic.
Often, candidates are non-academics attracted by the high premium attached to the PhD qualification. This includes it being a stepping stone to promotions in employment and a passport to politics, which drowns and dilutes the primary purpose of a PhD — generation of new knowledge.
Journal publication as a measure of novelty is optional and includes backstreet journals in which same-day publication is procured at a cost of Sh5,000.
Such candidates are hardly on the campus during the registration. Some are serving full-time in sensitive areas such as security or highly involving duties like international sales and marketing.
In South Africa, the admission procedures in most universities are in tandem with the Kenyan system. However, the universities load at most three candidates at a time to a supervisor, who is assisted by at least a co-supervisor per candidate. Moreover, only candidates with identified supervisors are admitted.
This ensures personalised contact over the study period and quality presentations during the colloquium, which are scheduled such that the candidate spends most of the time on the campus.
For quality control, the Department of Higher Education has drawn a list of recommended journals in the ISI series spanning the academic sphere in which credits are earned for publishing in them for two to three papers.
The input leading to a PhD under this system is so demanding that speculators for promotion and politics are unheard of, offloading excess baggage to maintain a credible academic tradition that presides over Africa’s largest economy.
Kenya must rid itself of academic cons and charlatans by sealing loopholes through which money and power are traded for academic credentials. Academic traditions and practices embedded in honesty and hard work must be upheld.
It is particularly dangerous in professional fields when somebody wearing a white apron and a stethoscope in a public hospital is not a doctor — as recently witnessed in Kapsabet — courtesy of academic dishonesty.
Dr Nyongesa is a lecturer at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology. [email protected]
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