Course details

Summary

The Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) is an advanced postgraduate degree undertaken by research only and leads to advanced academic and theoretical knowledge in a specialist area. The PhD is suitable for students who want to pursue an academic or research career.

The programme enables you to make an original contribution to knowledge or understanding in your field of study and meet recognised international standards for such work. You have a minimum of two supervisors to guide and advise you, with one assigned as the primary supervisor.

A PhD qualifies students as experts in their fields. The opportunities to apply this knowledge will be extensive, both in industry and academia.

Career opportunities

• Research
• Teaching

Structure

Stage one

You are admitted provisionally in the first year where you will refine your preliminary proposal into a fully fledged PhD proposal (the PGR9 document). This document critically reviews the significant work done in the area of research. The PGR9 proposal should also contain a suitable research methodology and methods along with a time-frame for completion of the degree that highlights important milestones to be achieved in the next couple of years. Once your PGR9 proposal is completed and approved through the faculty processes it is submitted to the University Postgraduate Board for full admission approval.

Stage two

Once you have completed your research proposal, you will typically refine your design, collecting data and conducting your research as appropriate. Results are analysed and may be published through international conferences, journal publications and peer review as this lends further credibility to the research.

Stage three

The first step in the final stage of the PhD is spent finalising the data analysis. Thereafter, the PhD thesis should be written and submitted to the supervisors for feedback. It should be noted that the process of finalising the thesis is time consuming as typically two or even three draft versions need to be produced before the thesis is in a form that is ready for submission and examination.

Entry criteria

• A master’s degree with honours; or,
• A bachelor’s degree with honours (equivalent to four years of study)

The degree must have a standard equivalent to first class or second class (first division) honours. The degree should include advanced learning in research, execution of a research project and a written report on the research.

English Language requirements:

Minimum IELTS (Academic) score of 6.5 overall with all bands 6.0 or higher; TOEFL iBT score of 90; Certificate in English for Academic Study (CertEAS) with A grade; GIE with B+ grade; CAE minimum overall score of 176; PTE minimum overall score of 58.