Background and Aim: South Africa is currently experiencing serious challenges relating to youth and graduate unemployment. Some of the reasons cited for t his problem are the inability of Higher Education to produce graduates that meet employer needs. As a result there is a great need for higher education institutions (HEIs) to develop approaches to address the issue of graduate employability skills. The main aim of this study is to investigate the perceptions of desirable graduate workplace skills for commerce graduates. Method: A cross-sectional research design was followed with data collected by means of surveys. The survey drew responses regarding the topic from a broad cross-section of respondents at one point in time, making the approach practical and reasonable for pursuing the exploratory and descriptive aims of the study. A sample of 244 final year students, 94 postgraduates and 21 academics participated in this study. Results: The research findings indicated that graduate employability is significantly dependent on the soft and technical skills required in the workplace and that the university does provide some of the skills as part of its commerce programmes. The following specific results were obtained: • The results showed that in general all three groups of respondents perceived that the higher education institutions equipped them to a large extent with the soft skills needed in the workplace. The findings indicated that the skills which final year students perceive to be the most important are not as the same at the one rated most important by academics and postgraduates. • The findings reflected a significant gap between current soft skills training and the desirable soft skills • Based on the study findings, the three stakeholders mentioned one common technical skill (computer literacy) which they gained throughout their studies • Generally, results showed that undergraduates, postgraduates and academics perceive that students have gained some technical skills during their studies which will prepare them to a large extend for employability • The respondent's results from chapter 5 indicated that there is a great need for HEis to provide technical skills training relevant to one's career that will help graduates to be prepared for the workplace • Based on the study find ings from chapter 5, the results showed a high need for WIL programme to be part of the undergraduate student's curriculum Practice Relevance: Studies in the related field of graduate employability skills have been previously conducted by different researchers globally. Despite the previous studies, the topic "perceptions of desirable graduate workplace skills for commerce graduates" have not been researched before. The study attempts to identify if Higher Education Institutions provide graduates with the necessary soft and technical skills required to enhance their employability. This study contributes to the literature where the benefits of conducting it can be experienced by students, HEis, employers and the country in general through determining what skills are required for being employable. / Thesis (M. Com (HRM) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2012

LD2668 .T4 1941 W41 / Master of Science

Not available / text

Thesis submitted In fulfillment of the requirements for a PhD Faculty of Humanities University of the Witwatersrand April 2016 / Over the last decade there has been a considerable increase in research which centres on postgraduate supervision and research supervision has recently changed significantly (Grant, 2010; Walker, 2010; McCallin and Nayar, 2012). For some time postgraduate pedagogy has taken a lesser role in supervision practice compared with the role of supervisor as researcher. More recently supervision pedagogy has taken a more central role in the supervision debates and there is recognition of research teaching as a necessary and sophisticated skill (Grant, 2010; Walker, 2010; McAlpine and Amundsen, 2011). This shift in doctoral training away from viewing the thesis as a product to a pedagogy of training has resulted in a growing field of interest in postgraduate research writing. The emphasis on the research supervision role is beginning to acknowledge the work on postgraduate academic writing (Caffarella and Barnett, 2000; Kumar and Stracke, 2007; Aitchison and Lee, 2010; Catterall et al., 2011; McCallin and Nayar, 2012; Lee and Murray, 2015). However, for many supervisors writing is still seen as ‘marginal or ancillary’ to the real work of research and consequently there is very little research that ‘opens out the complexity of PhD writing practice’ (Kamler and Thomson, 2001, 6). This research, located in two disciplines in a Science faculty in a research-intensive university in South Africa, provides a local perspective on supervision pedagogy and research writing in a Science Faculty. In this thesis, research writing is seen as contextualized social practice in that supervision and writing practices have implications for the development of individual research writers. Within the institution there is little discussion between supervisors or between supervisors and their postgraduate students around research writing. There needs to be sensitivity to the disparate needs of individual students in the context of their research writing. Historically in the context of this thesis, this related to opening up academic literacy practices to historically disadvantaged undergraduate students, but more recently has widened to include all students, including postgraduate students. It has become increasingly important to find out what the writing challenges and practices are for postgraduate students and their supervisors, not only by focusing on their research texts but also by critically engaging with written feedback given to these students as they struggle to engage with the academic discourse of the institution. This research employs a qualitative approach to investigate the flow of events and processes related to the writing aspect of supervision and the perceptions and reported experiences of both postgraduate students and their supervisors. The thesis considers how participants understand these using a case study approach, consisting of eleven pairs of supervisors their Masters and doctoral students. A variety of data sources are employed including interviews with the participants, and drafts of student writing with written feedback from supervisors. Some aspects of supervision and postgraduate research writing remain hidden from view as these practices are intensely personal, revolving around the identities of those taking part and power relations which centre on both the relationship between co-supervisors and the supervisor-student relationship. This thesis puts forward a new model of co-supervision i.e. a writing-centred co-supervision model with a content supervisor and a writing supervisor both located within the discipline. This co-supervision model allows the writing co-supervisor to provide a ‘safe space’ in the writing process for the student. Significantly issues of power between the co-supervisors remain inherent in this model of co-supervision and thus research writing remains to a large extent on the margins of academic work. A further finding relates to the research writing issues identified by supervisors and/or postgraduate students mainly linked to positioning viz. structure; coherence; argument and flow; voice; and audience. There is little pre-thinking about the process of assisting postgraduate students to write. Despite the identification of some writing issues (either by supervisors and /or students), these are not always linked to strategies to enable students to overcome their writing difficulties. The analysis shows that the majority of these relate to the process of research writing and positioning issues (argument, voice, and audience). Furthermore these strategies are not always made explicit when supervisors work with students and surprisingly there is little match between those suggested by supervisors and those utilised by their students. Central to this research is the nature of written feedback given to postgraduate students. Supervisors’ knowledge of their written feedback practices is critical. The diverse feedback practices of the supervisors are uncovered using a new analytic feedback framework illustrating a continuum of feedback practices varying from big picture feedback; superficial surface-level feedback; and a combination of the two – mixed feedback. An analysis of the findings show that the majority of the supervisors use mixed feedback as their modus operandi. It is suggested that a shared meta-language regarding feedback would allow supervisors to open a space for an improved feedback dialogue both with their colleagues and with their postgraduate research students.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

This study is an economic analysis of enrollment demand for graduate education at Oregon State University as well as in the United States. For the analysis of Oregon State University data on new graduate enrollment, data were obtained for 27 academic departments with 10 observations per department. The most important objective of this study was to determine the reasons for variation in demand for graduate education at Oregon State University and in the United States. Monetary gains associated with graduate education and the quality of the graduate program offered by the institution were hypothesized to have a significant, positive effect on graduate enrollment demand. The size of the tuition was hypothesized to be inversely related to the number of new enrollments demanded. The level of admission requirements was hypothesized to have a significant, negative effect on graduate enrollment demand. It was also hypothesized that the demand for graduate enrollment varies significantly among disciplines. Along with a "size of tuition" variable, shown by other investigators to be related to college enrollment, the institutional model incorporated the monetary gains associated with graduate education, minimum grade point average for admission and binary variables representing the academic department variables hypothesized here also to be associated with graduate enrollment demand. From the estimated coefficients of the institutional model, it was concluded that the demand for new graduate enrollment varies significantly among most of the disciplines. Also, it was concluded that, for Oregon State University, a proportional increase in the graduate tuition level will be associated with a less than proportional decrease in the number of enrollments demanded. The positive sign and the statistical significance of the estimated coefficient associated with the monetary gains variable support the human capital view of the demand for graduate education. For the national model only 12 observations on first year graduate enrollment were available. The unemployment rate for master's and doctoral degree holders and family income were hypothesized to have negative and positive effects, respectively, on enrollment demand for graduate education. For the ordinary least square estimation, the Durbin-Watson test was inconclusive. A generalized least square procedure was used to correct for the presence of a first order auto-regressive error term structure. The results supported the hypothesis of an inverse relationship between the unemployment rate and graduate enrollment demand. Results with respect to the role of income, however, were mixed. An important implication of the institutional estimation is that, for an institution faced with graduate enrollment ceilings, any attempt by the administration to increase the grade point average for admission will place additional pressure on that institution to live within the enrollment ceilings. On the other hand, data limitations precluded examining the possibility that, for some disciplines and for some institutions, the demand-rationing aspect of the minimum grade point average requirement will overwhelm the "quality of the program" component. For such cases an increase in the grade point average requirement may, in fact, reduce enrollment demand. An important implication of the national estimation is that one should be very cautious in recommending some kind of income enhancing program as a vehicle for increasing the demand for graduate enrollment. However, because it was not possible to measure the effect of direct financial assistance on enrollment demand, one cannot infer that increasing the availability of financial assistance for graduate study would not increase the enrollment demand. / Graduation date: 1978

The purpose of this study was to determine the correlation (r) between the criterion variable of cognitive flexibility and each of the selection criteria variables used by the Ball State University Graduate Studies Committee in screening applicants into a doctoral program in Counseling and Guidance. The differential effect of these selection criteria variables on various multiple correlations (R) was also examined.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / In South Africa, there has been recognition of the need for increasing research capacity at South African universities and within the national science system. Furthermore there has been a need to address imbalances in the racial and gender profile of researchers. There has been a growth of application-oriented, multidisciplinary research centres at South African universities in response to changing national and international knowledge contexts. Many research centres have a research capacity development component and run postgraduate programmes in collaboration with academic departments. This it was relevant to investigate what types of contexts these centres provide for research capacity development and postgraduate education. In this study, individual research capacity development was examined as a process of identity formation and socialisation through social, organisational and epistemological lenses. / South Africa

Significant research efforts have addressed the need for pursuing graduate teacher education to improve in-service teachers’ teaching practices. On contrary, empirical knowledge about the impacts of structural and process features of graduate teacher education on in-service teachers’ teaching practices is underdeveloped. This proposed study was designed to contribute to an empirically driven knowledge about the degree to which graduate teacher education programs support in-service teachers’ classroom needs and guide them diligently to deal with professional challenges. Mixed methodology approach including survey questionnaire (quantitative) and interview (qualitative) was used, and 34 in-service from 15 different teacher education programs of five different Upper Midwest states responded to the survey questionnaire. However, only two teachers participated in the interview process. Quantitative data from survey questionnaire revealed that most teacher participants perceived that graduate teacher education program had positive impact on their teaching practices.

"Being a member of an embryonic graduate school of social work, the author became well acquainted with the difficulties of selection of students of Florida State University. As a result of the relatively undefined method of selection, the author became aware of the factors which caused students to withdraw from school. The faculty agreed with the author that there is much need for work in the relatively unexplored area of methods of selection"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "May, 1950." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Master of Science under Plan II." / Advisor: Margaret B. Bailey, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-56).