Methodological preparation of Public Administration Scholars in South Africa

Abstract

Universities’ methodological preparation of students is blamed for the poor state of South African Public Administration research. This article reports on an investigation on the kind of research preparation provided by the three South African universities, which publish the most Public Administration peer-reviewed articles. The assessment of the research preparation of future Public Administration scholars focused on the purpose, content and nature of the tuition material used at the selected universities. As such, this article is an original contribution to the limited scholarship in South African Public Administration literature on this topic. The assessment revealed that tuition aims to prepare future scholars in the use of mainly quantitative research methods through separate modules on a predominantly conceptual level. This methodological emphasis has shown to be not related to the methodological preferences of the scholars affiliated to these institutions as evident when reporting research in published articles. This article shows that scholars do not necessarily prefer the same methods and techniques which are emphasised in their university training. The article provides suggestions on how the preparation of students can be improved.