The PhD Experience in African Higher Education, edited by Ruth Murambadoro, John Mashayamombe, and uMbuso weNkosi, addresses the growing call to invest in the humanities and social sciences by exploring the nature of doctoral training in select institutions of higher learning in South Africa. In the past two decades, South Africa has become a key player in the global higher education landscape and dubbed the hub for doctoral training in Africa because of its developed educational infrastructure and highly ranked universities. Given South Africa’s positioning, the contributors in this volume argue that the government, donors, universities, and faculty have a socio-legal duty to ensure that doctoral programs in the humanities and social sciences are not offered to amass numbers of African graduates but are grounded on equipping students with both hard and soft skills necessary to succeed. This is achieved by offering skills training and research apprenticeships fostered in communities of practice because, as the contributors show, the humanities and social sciences are the backbone of society. Furthermore, they argue that treating doctoral candidates as equal partners is emancipatory because intellectual projects are best nurtured through collaborative learning.

The treasure of the Black experience at a Historically Black College/University (HBCU) is that it offers a personal and intimate experience rooted in Black heritage that cannot be found at other institutions. On campus, face-to-face instruction and activities focused on addressing issues that plague the Black community are paramount. This provides students with small classroom environments and the personal support from administrators, faculty, and staff. In March 2020, the Black experience was interrupted when a global pandemic forced governors to declare states of emergencies and mandate stay-at-home orders. The stay-at-home orders forced universities to transition into fully remote environments. Doing so heightened an array of emotions compounded by the reality of previously recognized disparities in resources and funding amongst higher education institutions. As a result of this abrupt transformation, the HBCU experience was impacted by positive and negative implications for Black people at the campus, local, state, and national levels. The Black Experience and Navigating Higher Education Through a Virtual World explores the reality of the Black experience from various perspectives involving higher education institutions with a focus on HBCUs. The book provides an overview and analysis of a virtual experience that goes beyond the day-to-day technological implications and exposes innovative ideas and ways of navigating students and faculty through a remote world. It focuses on heightening the awareness of disparities through the Black experience in a virtual environment, provides guidance on transitioning to fully remote environments, examines leadership dynamics in virtual environments, analyzes mental health balance, and examines implications on the digital divide. Covering topics such as online course delivery, self-health, and social justice, this book is essential for graduate students, academicians, diversity officers in the academy, professors, and researchers.

Cross-cultural experiences in university settings have a significant impact on students’ lives by enriching the learning process and promoting cultural awareness and tolerance. While studying abroad offers students unique learning opportunities, educators must be able to effectively address the specific social and academic needs of multicultural learners. Exploring the Social and Academic Experiences of International Students in Higher Education Institutions is a pivotal reference source for the latest research on the issues surrounding study abroad students in culturally diverse educational environments. Featuring various perspectives from a global context on ensuring the educational, structural, and social needs of international students are met, this book is ideally designed for university faculty, researchers, graduate students, policy makers, and academicians working with transnational students.

The dominant global discourse in higher education now focuses on world-class universities inevitably located predominantly in North America, Europe and, increasingly, East Asia. The rest of the world, including Africa, is left to play catch-up. But that discourse should focus rather on the tensions, even contradictions, between excellence and engagement with which all universities must grapple. Here the African experience has much to offer the high-participation and generously resourced systems of the so-called developed world. This book offers a critical review of that experience, and so makes a major contribution to our understanding of higher education.

Higher education has recently been recognized as a key driver for societal growth in the Global South and capacity building of African universities is now widely included in donor policies. The question is; how do capacity building projects affect African universities, researchers and students? Universities and their scientific knowledges are often seen to have universal qualities; therefore, capacity building may appear straight forward. Higher Education and Capacity Building in Africa contests such universalistic notions. Inspired by ideas about the ‘geography of scientific knowledge’ it explores what role specific places and relationships have in knowledge production, and analyses how cultural experiences are included and excluded in teaching and research. Thus, the different chapters show how what constitutes legitimate scientific knowledge is negotiated and contested. In doing so, the chapters draw on discussions about the hegemony of Western thought in education and knowledge production. The authors’ own experiences with higher education capacity building and knowledge production are discussed and used to contribute to the reflexive turn and rise of auto-ethnography. This book is a valuable resource for researchers and postgraduate students in education, development studies, African studies and human geography, as well as anthropology and history.

With the knowledge economy playing such a critical role in global economic development, increasing the number of Doctor of Philosophy degree (PhD) graduates in higher education institutions worldwide has been imperative. The knowledge economy emphasises the importance of critical thinkers and researchers, as 'doctoral education cultivates thinkers and researchers’ and equips them to participate in development. African-identifying females account for 30% of doctoral graduates in sub-Saharan African countries, even when PhD education is viewed as an entry into academia and a gateway to careers in research and other disciplines. There is a paucity of research regarding PhD graduates who are specifically women in Africa; as a result, there is little information about their attributes to success in PhD studies, what opportunities and freedoms they have, and what challenges they face during their PhD journey, along with their motivation to overcome these challenges so that they can achieve their goals. It is essential for women in Africa to complete their PhD education to contribute to the development of their countries as some scholars believe no nation can grow without women’s participation. Thus, modern civilisation is the result of males and females cooperating in modern society. Even though some women complete their PhD studies, there is scant research on what strategies enabled their success. Instead, the reasons for their attrition are known. This book aims to contribute to PhD education scholarship, specifically for women in Africa. It allows women in Africa to narrate their PhD experiences through resilience theory and the capabilities approach lenses..

The book is a must read for policy makers, academics, university administrators and post graduate research students in the broad field of education and in higher education studies in particular. The book brings together a wealth of information regarding the imperatives of transformation in Africa’s higher education systems. Not only do some of the chapters provide critical discussion about the conceptualisation of transformation, the majority of the chapters reflect on empirical evidence for transformation in diverse fields of mathematics, science, gender, the training of doctoral students and the governance and management of universities. This central theme of sustainable change and reform runs across the chapters of the book. For students, the book provides exemplars of practical research in higher education. For scholars in higher education and policy makers, specific issues for reform are identified and discussed.