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'Why do so few postgraduate students rise to the top?' - Prof Jonathan Jansen
Author: Florence de Vries
Published: 23/02/2018

“Anyone can get a degree. But not everyone can get to the top."

Addressing postgraduate students and staff at Stellenbosch University's (SU) Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (Tygerberg Campus), Prof Jonathan Jansen, who holds the position of distinguished professor in the SU's Faculty of Education and also serves as a mentor to postgraduate students, posed a pertinent question: 'Why do so few postgraduate students rise to the top?'

The talk meandered between a lecture and a conversation, giving rise to some food for thought about what constitutes proper and persistent critical thinking in a time when South Africa's decolonisation project had gained what some would say constitutes 'considerable' momentum.

Jansen ventured that often, postgraduate students don't rise to the top of their fields because they haven't learned how to employ the tools necessary to engage critically with literature or thought leadership of the day. “Take for example, the notion of decolonisation. People seem to be going along with this – recognising that its origins go way back to the anti-colonial movement – but trying to bring it over into the context of a democratic state."

While his talk did not specifically address aspects of existing pedagogical limitations around teaching strategies, Jansen did argue that many a postgraduate student tends to engage in 'tribal thinking' because they are 'so dependent on and respectful of authority'. This, he said, leads to an inability to develop own (critical) thoughts.

Jansen further emphasised that successful postgraduate students are those who can project their thinking beyond their native country: “I hope you're ambitious. In my books, you have to leave a place in order to really achieve things and be at the top of your game."  He said that studying abroad allows one to stretch your imagination beyond where you are at any given moment, as it involves getting used to a different way of being taught and studying.

He further emphasised the importance of developing the capacity to doubt. “Don't just go with the flow.

Jansen said critical thinking and empathy is often hampered by the fear of engaging in difficult discourse, especially in the medical arena. “Graduate students who have the capacity to think empathetically … especially in the medical and health sciences fields, will be especially successful because they recognise a type of commitment to a patient that does not care whether that person is rich or poor or from their 'tribe' or not," he said.

He challenged postgraduate medical and health sciences students to think past set perimeters. “South Africa is a country of 'now'. We are obsessed with learning the rules of the assessment game … that distorts the purpose of what a university is about. Instead we should be thinking: How do I break through it? How will what I do now, make a big difference in a few years' time?"