Programme Director;
Dr Gansen Pillay, NRF Vice President;
Dr Romilla Maharaj, NRF Executive Director Human and Institutional Capacity Development;
Dr Tembeka Mpako-Ntusi;
Prof. Laetitia Rispel;
Mentors;
Distinguished guests; and
All our dear interns
Let me thank you for inviting me to come and speak to you on this important occasion.
I have had the privilege of attending and speaking at these internship graduation events since 2007, and I have seen this event grows from a certificate ceremony to the research day we are witnessing today.
I also remember addressing a group of 169 Interns, who were exiting the programme in 2007. While it feels like it was just yesterday, so much has changed in this programme since that time. I am reliably informed that since then, the programme has enrolled 742 Interns and is now called the ‘Research Day’.
I am also informed that the number of host institutions has increased from 16 in 2007 to 49 in 2010. This is a great milestone and it is critical in our efforts to make our graduates more employable.
With that background, allow me to take this opportunity and thank the institutions that made it their business to host our Interns. In the same spirit, we are indebted to the Programme Mentors like Dr Thembeka Mpako-Ntusi, the Director of Research at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology; and Prof Laetitia Rispel of the University of Witwatersrand. Both our Mentors are members of the Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association and the National Research Foundation.
Ladies and gentlemen my approach to today’s address will be a little different. I am quite aware that during days like this, we all expect to be commended for a job well done, which is what I have done already. However, today I would like to challenge you.
While I am quite pleased with the participation of higher education Institutions (HEIs) as host institutions, with 16 already participating out of the 23, industry participation requires our serious attention. Participation of only 4 industry partners challenges us to work even harder if we are to realise enhanced employment opportunities for our young people. Participation of 5 science councils and 5 national facilities is not bad at all, but we must strive to have all of them involved, because they are well poised to enhance our interns’ research and innovation skills, thus contributing to our overarching goal of producing a critical mass of Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) knowledge workers.
The White Paper on Science and Technology and the National Research Development Strategy (NR&DS) of 2002 put emphasis on the need for South Africa to transform its SET workforce. Other policy and strategies of Government, including the Human Resource Development Strategy (HRDS) and the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) note the shortage of high-level skills as a significant constraint in the development of the economy and society. Our Ten Year Innovation Plan (TYIP) challenges us to produce 6 000 PhD graduates by 2018, of which 3 000 of those should be in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) fields.
The Government has adopted 12 outcomes that articulate its delivery objectives by 2014. Based on the assumed correlation between research and development (R&D) intensity and economic competitiveness, the President has provided the Minister of Science and Technology with well defined outputs emanating from these 12 outcomes. While the Minister, and thus the Department, is expected to contribute to all outcomes, output 5 of outcome 5 being “a skilled and capable workforce to support an inclusive growth path” is very relevant for our context today, that is, increased output of honours, masters and doctoral students.
You will also recall that even before these outcomes and their outputs were put in place, we had already agreed as stakeholders in our National System of Innovation that a ‘PhD is a driver of innovation and global competitiveness’.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is against this background that I want to challenge all of us to begin to think of a bigger picture when it comes to skills development initiatives. We need to start by being clear of what we want to achieve with our programmes along the lines of our country’s skills development imperatives and how our initiatives fit-in, link up and complement other skills development efforts.
The Human Resource Development Strategy for South Africa highlights the notable unemployment for the 20 to 24-year age group. It also notes that the level of qualifications is a consistent predictor of employment status within this age group. For example, in the 20 to 24-year age group, over 50% of young people who have less than a grade 12 are unemployed and the level of unemployment for those with grade 12 is lower than 50%. While the unemployment figures for those with a diploma or degree are still high, they are considerably better than the rates for those whose highest qualification is a grade 12 or less. It would therefore follow; that the higher the qualifications one possesses, the higher the employment possibilities.
One of the points that is made clear in the declaration signed at the National Skills Summit in September 2010, is that, ‘effective skills development requires a holistic approach, which among others, encompasses the development of higher level skills; professional, technical and human resource skills to capitalise on or create opportunities for high-quality or high-wage jobs’. High-level skills are therefore an essential factor for achieving the objective of ‘decent work’.
I have noted that the internship programme has more than 50% interns with bachelor degrees and that about 60% of interns get absorbed by their host institutions as permanent employees. This is excellent achievement if one looks at curbing unemployment as a short-term goal. In the long-term, this is a challenge if one looks at the scenario I have outlined above, that is, our long-term objectives. I fully understand that our people’s social and economic backgrounds compel them to seek employment after completing their first degrees. However, if we want our young people to be able to contribute in our research and development endeavours and achieve global competitiveness as a country, we need to encourage our young people to study up to PhD level.
The challenge I would like to pose for all of us is; how can the internship programme be utilised to serve our bigger vision, as indicated above. The internship programme should by its very nature motivate our interns to seek more knowledge as they may have discovered both the intellectual and skills demands of the work place. We do not want to create perpetual interns; people who year after year move from one internship programme to the other. How do we ensure that the programme’s outcomes have some academic merit, such that it possibly enables those who would not have qualified for further study to qualify through the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)? To achieve this requires involvement and determination of all stakeholders; our institutions of higher learning and host institutions among others. It would also mean our interns have the opportunity to reflect on the integrated nature of their learning experience from both the theoretical and applied perspectives.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are not alone in the mode of rethinking internship programmes. Other countries are grappling with the idea of a credit-bearing internship programme.
I have been informed that the emphasis of the internship programme is to develop specialist research skills that will render those who have been in the programme employable in a research environment, and I strongly believe that this would require a minimum of a masters degree.
As Government we have committed ourselves to achieving the outcome of a skilled and capable workforce to support an inclusive growth path. That is why I would like to emphasise education and life long learning to acquire high-level skills as some of the central pillars of employability.
With these words ladies and gentlemen I would like to encourage all the interns in possession of bachelor degrees to register for honours and those with honours to register for masters. I would have liked to see the awards that will be given to some of you today being bursaries and scholarships for further study.
I thank you.
