Demystifying the Blame Game in the Delays of Graduation of Research Students in Universities in Ghana: The Case of University for Development Studies (Published)
Research students` thesis is a fundamental component of the University life after completion of their course work. Post graduate research students of the University for Development Studies (UDS) are expected to complete their programme within two years and three years for masters and PhD regular respectively but are mostly not able to do so due to delays in thesis write-up. Since its inception, the University has made strides in graduate studies. Regrettably however, graduate students have consistently complained of not graduating on record time. This has been a source of worry with the resultant blame games as to who actually contributes to the delays in thesis completion and graduation. The foregoing debate is the underlying motivation for this article as it tries to bring to the fore the reasons behind the delays of research students in not graduating on record time in UDS. This study adopted qualitative case study methods to collect and analyze data. Post graduate research students; delayed from graduation, continuing students, supervisors/administrators and graduated research students constituted respondents for this paper. Primary and secondary sources of data were employed for the study. Purposive sampling was adopted to sample 25 participants spread across gender, type of programme and mode of study. Findings revealed that successful completion of the thesis work had a direct bearing on a harmonious relationship built on trust, cooperation and hard work between the student and supervisor. Also, it was found out that supervisors were assigned more students to be supervised than they could have sufficient time and attention for. On the other hand, research students were found to combine work with their studies that limited the time they spent on their thesis thereby leading to the delay completion and graduation. The study therefore concluded that both students and supervisors contributed to the delay in graduation of research students in the university. The researchers recommended that enrolment into post-graduate programmes in the university should be reduced to match the number of qualified and experienced lecturers/supervisors available for graduate studies so as to make supervision of research work more manageable and that management of the university should sanction students who by their own making fail to graduate on record time from their programmes.
Keywords: Demystify, Students, University, blame, delays, game, graduation, thesis
INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL AND RESEARCH PERFORMANCE OF UNIVERSITIES IN SOUTHERN PUNJAB-PAKISTAN (Published)
The main purpose of this study is to examine the concept of Intellectual capital in higher education institutions/universities, justify its importance and its impact on their research output and performance. This study analyzes the impact of Intellectual Capital on university research performance in Pakistani universities and also compares the intellectual capital of two selected universities. This is an important study of the intellectual research area because the growing interest in intellectual capital has been extended from the firms to higher education institutions during the last decade. The major function of a university is exploring and transmitting knowledge which is acquired through research and education. Therefore assessing university research performance and its intellectual capital is a complex and critical issue. Furthermore intellectual capital has become a major driver for sustainable competitive advantage in all the organizations. A literature review is used to describe the intellectual capital, its components and research performance of the universities; it also highlighted the researchers’ contributions in this area of study. The study uses exploratory approach to develop the conceptual model and raised these research questions with respect to it; Is there a significant impact of intellectual capital and its components on research performance of the university?, which university BZU or IUB has the greater intellectual capital. These research questions were investigated through empirical research using a case study approach on two large general public sectors universities of Southern Punjab, Pakistan i.e. IUB and BZU. Secondary data was used and collected for the study. Descriptive, Ratio and correlation analysis were used to study the intellectual capital of the universities and its impact on their research performance. Our descriptive and Ratio analysis found that BZU has higher and positive values in the all indicators of human, structural and relational capital, which shows that BZU has greater intellectual capital then the IUB. The results of these techniques also showed that intellectual capital has a significant impact on research performance of the university in general. According to the findings all the components of intellectual capital also has a significant impact on research performance of the university, although human capital was ranked first and most important, followed by structural capital while relational capital ranked last among the components. Additionally the effect of human capital was most influential whereas relational capital did not have a significant impact. The results of this study are useful for the Universities to understand the value of their intellectual capital and exploit them for innovations and efficiency augmentation.
Keywords: : Human Capital, Intellectual Capital, Relational capital, Research performance, Structural capital, University