Caught between work and study: Exploring boundary zones as an employed postgraduate student

Abstract

Centuries of colonial and apartheid domination divided higher education institutions between world-class universities to institutions of little repute. Staff members have seen their professional identities change from expert practitioner to academic when specialist colleges and technikons were transformed or amalgamated into universities of technology. Since the publication of White Paper 3 (RSA 1997), technikons have become universities of technology and the variety of colleges, including nursing colleges, agricultural colleges and colleges of education have closed down and were incorporated into multi-campus universities. This post-apartheid higher education landscape was envisioned as a transformed space that would redress past inequalities, serve a new social order and, in doing so, meet pressing national needs that would respond to new realities and opportunities. The processes of restructuring and institutional incorporation left a number of academic staff members unemployed. Those who were employed by the incorporating institutions faced qualification requirements for which they had not been prepared and lacked the skills universities require for employment, notably research skills. A variety of funding mechanisms and, in some cases, recognition of prior learning procedures provided assistance to newly incorporated staff. Differential workload models, social pressures and a lack of research readiness, however, often undermined synchronisation of individual transformation with the planned social and implemented institutional transformation.