In this week's PLoS Medicine , Imelda Bates of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK and colleagues report on how they developed and validated an evidence-based tool for evaluating doctoral programmes in African universities. Their process incorporated the perspectives of students, staff, the research community, and policy makers and they aim for it to be applied across different countries.
The authors say: "Our standardised evaluation process not only enabled the universities to develop and monitor strategies to address their own capacity gaps but also provided them with a mechanism for justifying, planning, commissioning, and monitoring inputs by external funders while retaining leadership of the process."
Funding: This study was funded by a grant from the Wellcome Trust, UK, to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine MCDC project ( http://www.mcdconsortium.org/phd-programme.php ). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Citation: Bates I, Phillips R, Martin-Peprah R, Kibiki G, Gaye O, et al. (2011) Assessing and Strengthening African Universities' Capacity for Doctoral Programmes. PLoS Med 8(9): e1001068. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001068
CONTACT:
Imelda Bates
Disease Control Strategy Group
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
Pembroke Place
Liverpool
Merseyside
United Kingdom
+44 151 705 3115
ibates@liv.ac.uk
PLOS Medicine