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conclusion 11
C O N C L U S I O N
at the CSIR, the South African Astronomical Town, which now encompasses the African
Observatory (SAAO), the Hartebeesthoek component of the International Centre for
Radio Observatory (HartRAO), and the Her- Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology
manus Magnetic Observatory. In addition, (ICGEB) and a Wellcome Trust-funded Cen-
the report laid the foundation for state tre for infectious disease research.
support of many flagship projects in phys-
ics and astronomy, such as the Southern Finally, a theme underpinning much of
African Large Telescope (SALT), the Meer- what has been written by specialists when
KAT radio telescope as a pathfinder for the reflecting on the state of science in each of
planned huge international project, the their disciplines, is that of a concern about
Square Kilometer Array (SKA), and the Peb- the quality and quantity of school-leavers
ble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) to gener- entering tertiary education, and a concern
ate nuclear energy. The coordinated vision about the limited capacity of the country to
has also resulted in a unique, geographi- produce PhD graduates. The poor state of
cally distributed model for the teaching of science and mathematics teaching in many
theoretical physics in the form of the Na- secondary schools, leading to too few qual-
tional Institute for Theoretical Physics that ified entrants at the tertiary level, continues
serves the needs and interests of the phys- to threaten the long-term sustainability
ics community as a whole. of the basic sciences. This is a long-stand-
ing view that despite science community,
In contrast, with 23 universities competing government and private sector investment
for scarce human and financial resources, it and intervention, hampers the ability of the
is not surprising that without a coordinated tertiary education sector of the country to
disciplinary vision, some disciplines have make a more meaningful and long-lasting
failed to generate critical mass and as such contribution to science. Coupled with this
have had relatively less impact globally, or is the widespread concern about the ef-
even nationally, and have failed to stake ficiency of the postgraduate ‘pipeline’, and
their claim or their share of DST investment the failure of the system to produce a suf-
in science. ficient number of Doctoral graduates so
urgently needed to drive the economy and
The value of large national facilities was un- innovation. This is perhaps most critical in
derscored in the physics and biology chap- engineering, where less than 5% of current
ters. For a small country in the global sense, students are engaged in Doctoral studies.
South Africa has with government leader-
ship built a large and well-established sci- Two pertinent studies of these challenges
ence infrastructure, by far the largest on the are underway under the auspices of the
African continent. A good recent example Academy of Science of South Africa (AS-
of the additional bottom-up possibilities SAf); the first on science, technology, en-
created by such developed infrastructure is gineering and mathematics (STEM) educa-
the multidisciplinary Institute of Infectious tion aimed at investigating critical matters
Disease and Molecular Medicine in Cape in the school curricula and best practices in
281
TWAS book_Chap10-11.indd 281 2009/10/06 12:06:11 PM
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