Abstract:
South Africa is at the cross-roads with the knowledge production economy. The DST target is 6000
PhD graduates per million by 2018. The knowledge economy is important for South Africa as it is the engine
for economic growth. There is a link between knowledge production and economic growth of a country by
comparing the citation intensity and the economic wealth of the country. In addition to the knowledge production
other factors such as political and macro-economic factors, infrastructure investments, providing
clean water and sanitation, roads must be in place for sustainable economic development. This can only
be sustained through the ‛production of highly trained people’ the PhD students. But the trick is which PhD
model should I take? On the PhD model, the ASSAF study showed that South Africa produced most of the
PhDs through the traditional model. However, for South Africa to produce more PhDs in a shorter time period
there is a need to move away from the traditional model and embrace other forms of PhD production. The
alternative model is the PhD by publication. This is able to produce PhD graduates in shorter pace of time
with high quality impact publications.
