At least 30 students in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences (EMS) of Stellenbosch University will graduate with PhD degrees in 2016 – the most PhDs this faculty has ever delivered in one academic year.

Three of these PhDs graduates, whose degrees were conferred on Wednesday (7 December), are part of the first cohort of students accepted into the Graduate School for Economic and Management Sciences (GEM), established in 2014 to enable prospective PhD students to study full-time and complete their degrees in three years with the support of generous bursaries.

The number of PhDs delivered by the Faculty has increased steadily over the past few years, with nine students receiving their PhDs in 2013, 17 in 2014, and 22 in 2015.

After the 2016 academic year, a total of 23 students will receive their PhD degrees in December, while at least another seven are expected to receive their PhD degrees in March 2017.

Prof Stan du Plessis, Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, is very proud of this achievement.

"It has been an important goal of the Faculty to significantly increase the total number of PhDs per year and it is wonderful to see that we are achieving this."

According to Prof Du Plessis, the Graduate School forms an integral part of the Faculty's plan to deliver more PhD graduates.

"We can see that this programme is working and that students in Economic and Management Sciences can make significant progress with their doctoral studies if they receive support and work on well-thought-out research projects. The success of this programme unlocks important research possibilities for the Faculty."

The first GEM cohort of 10 PhD students started their doctoral journeys in 2014, while a second cohort was welcomed in January 2015. With the 2016 intake, the Graduate School reached its target of 30 full-time PhD students. Nine students will join in 2017.

"Our aim is to remove all possible barriers to doctoral research and to streamline the process. It is very hard to combine doctoral studies with a full-time job. Thanks to the bursaries, the doctoral candidates can afford to focus on their studies," Dr Jaco Franken, Head of the Graduate School, explains.

"We are very proud of our PhD students who are graduating this year. They have made a valuable contribution towards the success of the Graduate School."

Anderson Gondwe from Malawi's PhD topic was "An empirical analysis of poverty, inequality and the labour market in Malawi". Prior to his PhD studies he was employed by CDH Investment Bank in Malawi, but he will now work for the International Food Policy Research Institute based in Lilongwe.

"Our main job is ending poverty and hunger in countries. This job is more academic in nature than the one I had before I enrolled for a PhD. Without this programme, I would still be working in the bank. I never thought of doing a PhD until this opportunity came along," he says.

Another member of the Graduate School, Elina Amadhila from Namibia, focused on "Financing Agricultural small-and-medium-scale enterprises in Namibia". Before embarking on her PhD studies she worked as a junior researcher and a human resource administrator at the University of Namibia.

"The support provided by the Graduate School played a big role in the completion of my PhD. I appreciate the fact that I did not have to search for an appropriate supervisor to supervise my work and I was also fortunate enough to get extra funding to attend conferences overseas where I could present my work. I now want to move into the area of development finance," she adds.

Qiaowen Zhang, a lecturer at Zhejiang Normal University in China, compared corporate governance, institutional investors and firm performance in South Africa and China.

"The Graduate School provided strong support for my PhD research. It offered a channel for communication and interaction between the Faculty and PhD students, as well as a platform for knowledge sharing and research collaboration."

CAPTION: From left to right are Drs Qiaowen Zhang, Anderson Gondwe and Elina Amadhila. Photo: Stefan Els