Examining the Performance of the South African Economics Departments, 2005‐2014

• Date: 01 March 2017
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Author: Mariana Moses,Atoko Kasongo,Derek Yu
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/saje.12139

EXAMINING THE PERFORMANCE OF THE SOUTH

AFRICAN ECONOMICS DEPARTMENTS, 2005-2014

DEREK YU*

†

,ATOKO KASONGO

†

AND MARIANA MOSES

†

Abstract

This study examines the teaching and research activities of 17 Economics Departments in 2005-

2014 by consulting the information from each university’s faculty prospectus, publication in

accredited local and international peer-reviewed journals, Economic Society of South Africa con-

ference participation, Economic Research Southern Africa working paper series and the National

Research Foundation. The results indicate there is big variation in the departments’ teaching and

research activities during the period. Nonetheless, research output increased, in particular publica-

tion in accredited international journals in both absolute and proportional terms.

Keywords: Economics departments, research, teaching, South Africa

1. INTRODUCTION

Over the past two decades, there has been a growing body of research into the perform-

ance of economics departments internationally. Information on the ranking of the

departments, although controversial at times, provide answers to questions asked by stu-

dents, job seekers, university administrators and government officials, especially when it

comes to the disbursement of a large sum of money amongst the tertiary institutions

(Lee et al., 2010:1346).

For students, information on the performance of the departments suggests the cur-

rentness of departmental knowledge and skills, and serves as a proxy for university quality

which influences the students’ decision on where to study (Graves et al., 1982:1131;

Miller et al., 1996; Cokgezen, 2013:96; Macri and Sinha, 2006:112). Job searchers who

would like to work in the best academic research environment could use the information

as a low-cost proxy to identify the most suitable institution for potential employment

upon completion of doctorate studies (Graves et al., 1982:1131). University administra-

tors use the information to evaluate the progress of the departments, if not a tool for rais-

ing funds (Scott and Mittias, 1996:378), while the governments would be able to

identify the most productive institutions when providing research funds (Macri and

Sinha, 2006:112). Finally, the economics departments may have very little knowledge of

what has been happening at other institutions (Luiz, 2004:184). Particularly in South

* Corresponding author: Senior Lecturer, Department of Economics, University of the West-

ern Cape, Private Bag X17, Bellville, 7535, South Africa. Tel: 127 (0)21 959 9301, Fax:

127 (0)21 959 3201. E-mail: dyu@uwc.ac.za

†

Department of Economics, University of the Western Cape.

The authors would like to thank Grant Adriaanse, Ralitza Dobreva, Jade Feder, Tina Fransman,

Ken Kruger, Pierre le Roux, Steve Koch, Waldo Krugell, Josue Mbonigaba, Colette Muller,

Harold Ngalawa, Gareth Roberts, Andrie Schoombee, Jessica Schroenn Goebel, Jan Snowball,

Vanessa Tang, Jade Taylor, Claire Vermaak and Nicholas Wood for the data assistance.

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South African Journal of Economics Vol. 85:1 March 2017

South African Journal

of Economics

Africa, it has been more than 10 years since the mergers and rationalisation of tertiary

institutions took place, so it is important to conduct a study to assess the recent changes

and current state of the economics departments.

While there has been a lot of research literature on the performance and rankings of

economics departments throughout the world (in particular the abundant studies in the

United States), South Africa lags behind with only two studies conducted (Luiz, 2004,

2009), with one of them being done before the merging of the tertiary institutions took

place. In addition, these studies evaluated the performance of the departments by mainly

relying on the information provided by the departmental chairpersons in a survey, so

departments that did not respond to the survey were excluded from the analysis.

It has been 7 years since the last major study of South African economics departments

took place, so it is important to investigate the latest developments in teaching and research

of the departments. This study examines the activities of the departments in 2005-2014,

covering information ranging from staff profiles and curricula, to academicconferencepar-

ticipation and publication on accredited journals. Section 2 reviews the commonly adopted

methodologies used to rank the departments. Section 3 discusses the methodology and data

collection of this study, while Section 4 presents the findings, before Section 5 concludes.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

This section reviews the commonly adopted methodologies to rank the economics

departments in recent literature, namely survey, graduate outcomes, teaching activities,

journal publications, citations and impact factor. In the two South African studies (Luiz,

2004, 2009), in addition to using the actual data compiled on staff profiles, teaching and

research by a detailed survey, the departmental chairpersons were asked to rate and rank

the teaching and research of the departments based on their perceptions, before the cor-

relation between the perception-based ratings and the objective total research output of

the departments was examined. However, one shortcoming of the survey approach is

that any inference based on the data from the surveys could be “overtly subjective and

vulnerable to measurement errors” (Dusansky and Vernon, 1998:165).

For the graduate outcome approach, the two focus areas are the graduates’ publication and

labour market outcome. Laband (1985) as well as Miller et al. (1996) ranked the departments

by looking at publication by graduate students; Amir and Knauff (2005) focused on doctor-

ate students’ placement by examining how they fared with regard to employment in econom-

ics departments or business schools of the universities upon graduation.

Few studies examined the teaching activities of the departments (Luiz, 2004, 2009;

Johnson et al., 2012). In particular, Johnson et al. (2012) focused on the importance of

econometrics in the undergraduate program of nearly 1,500 American colleges and uni-

versities as they argued that econometrics has become increasingly important and should

be a compulsory subject for students majoring in economics.

For studies using research output to rank the departments, publication in accredited

journals was chosen as the primary indicator. Whilst academics also publish in books

and working papers, it is relatively more difficult to evaluate the quality of these alterna-

tive outlets compared to peer-reviewed accredited journal articles, which have undergone

a rigorous peer review process (King, 2000:3; Macri and Sinha, 2006:113).

Studies using peer-reviewed journal publications to rank the departments could be cat-

egorised into three groups: (i) those using the total number of journal articles published

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