Understanding African Postgraduate Student Experience

• Project Team: Cristina SantosKevin DeaneFrangton Chiyemura Maureen Mackintosh
• Subject Discipline: Social Sciences and Global Studies
• Theme: Equality, diversity and inclusionMental health & wellbeing
• Project Aim: Enables more students to achieve their study goalsImproves and enhance the learning experience of studentsPromotes equality diversity and inclusion including reduction of degree awarding gap
• Status: Live
• Date: May 2022 to October 2022

The higher education sector has recognised and aims to address recruitment, retention, and award gaps of BAME students. A recent report by the Centre for Global Higher Education, University of Oxford, highlights the many challenges faced by African students who study in the UK, including direct experiences of racism, ‘othering’ and exclusion from social spaces, compounded by financial difficulties, loneliness and isolation (Zewolde, 2021). The OU is no exception, and several projects (Marino et al, (2022), Deane et al. (2022), Hagan et al. (2022)), some of which have been funded by FASSTEST, have aimed at understanding and bringing an effective change in international student experience and outcomes. 

Specifically regarding the profiles and needs of postgraduate OU students, much less is known and much less work has been carried out at the OU. And this is even more so when looking specifically at African postgraduate students, to whom Economics and DPP, and FASS in general, have a longstanding commitment, and who are a key asset of the International Development and Inclusive Innovation (IDII) Strategic Research Area the OU has (fruitfully) invested in. An informal tally of African doctoral students supervised in DPP and Economics over the last ten years includes more than 20 completed or current doctorates. There will be others across the university. The SSGS has a number of externally funded ongoing and past research projects with African colleagues; long term valued research networks within Sub-Saharan Africa and with African colleagues now in the UK; and linked studentships, alongside a continuing commitment to contribute to research capacity building in African partner institutions. Ensuring a positive experience for African students therefore contributes to the university’s internationalisation and equality agendas. 

Research on postgraduate students in light of a decolonisation or internationalisation agenda often underrepresents African students. The response rate to the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey 2021 from OU students, and in particular, from African students, was alarmingly low. National results instead suggest that PGRs suffer from several challenges from mental health to resource related challenges, and their wellbeing remains a top priority in the higher education sector (Pitkin, 2021). The experience of project team members, and in their current and previous roles as Postgraduate coordinators, IKD directors, and as supervisors and mentors, has also demonstrated, that African PhD students have particular challenges which are not explicitly embedded in strategic research decisions and institutional culture at the OU. In discussion with supervisors and alumni, issues raised included: that African students are quite often mature students who have made considerable financial and personal sacrifices to study for a doctorate; that the university’s institutional rules and systems can disadvantage African students whose limited personal and family resources and particular visa and other travel issues affecting African nationals can create vulnerabilities; that African students’ coping strategies include quite heavy reliance on mutual networking that “fills in” institutional support gaps in ways that would merit study; and that students experience racism as African and as Black students.  

This project aims to collect information specifically on the experience of African current and past doctoral students. The key research questions the project aims to address are as follows: 

1. How do African PhD students evaluate their experience at the OU? 
2. Are there areas identified as in need of improvement? Or areas which have enhanced their experience? How can such findings be built on to enhance support and performance of African doctoral students? 
3. Are there ways in which they did not feel represented and included within institutional culture? Or ways in which they did? What are the implications for the university?