Many areas of the higher education sector, indeed virtually all sectors, are showing evidence of globalization. Massification, declining government funding, benchmarking, corporatization, knowledge production for non-university partners, and rising numbers of temporary academic staff members are just a few of the common trends in higher education systems across the globe. As many countries share a history of past or present racial, ethnic and gender discrimination, they are increasingly learning and borrowing from other countries regarding ways to counteract this legacy. In the employment sector, affirmative action or employment equity policies and legislation have been enacted in several countries.
South Africa's 1998 Employment Equity Act (EEA) requires that employers create Employment Equity Plans aimed at seeking and training employees from three "designated" groups--Black people, women, and people with disabilities. However, due in part to the legacy of apartheid and the resulting lack of skill capacity, it is often challenging to reach employment equity goals, particularly in the university context.
This study sought to examine postgraduate students' career choices, particularly students from the designated groups at the master's and Ph.D. levels, in relation to the employment equity goals of the higher education sector in South Africa. The study comprises parallel case studies of two South African institutions--the University of the Western Cape and the University of Cape Town. Although career decisions are complex and individual, one of the central findings is that postgraduate students generally do not seek to enter the academic profession. Four main factors were associated with the decision not to pursue a career in academia: a desire to conduct research rather than to teach; a preference to work in the "real" world as opposed to the "plastic" environment of academia; issues of social status, prestige and finance; and a lack of role models and knowledge about the academic profession. It was found that socialization into the academic profession is a vital link toward improving the postgraduate students' experiences and cultivating emerging academics to fill academic positions for an equitable workplace environment in the higher education system.
