The Role of Human Capacity Development in Bridging Knowledge Gap Inequalities

Human capacity development is one of the key strategies for tackling global inequality in that an educated populace provides the foundation upon which industrial skills are built. A high-end skills-base contributes towards full participation in economic and social debate when allocating limited resources across competing priorities within a society. For South African universities, particularly universities of technology, the gap between undergraduate and postgraduate throughputs is wide. This negatively impacts knock-on sectors like research and other centres of excellence. There is a drive to bridge this gap as the benefits will impact on high-end skills sectors. It is within this context that arguments are provided for creating sustainable incubators or pools of potential candidates for high-end skills training as these are critical in addressing national inequalities. The potential of knowledge growth was assessed using data for 2003 to 2014 for Masters and Doctoral student at Durban University of Technology (DUT). The performance of postgraduate students was found to decline in the higher degrees which is the contribution of low enrolments