What is postgraduate student affairs?*

It is not that postgraduate student affairs has been absent from higher education in Africa. It is also not entirely under-researched. However, it is true that postgraduate student affairs seems rather "marginal" in student affairs and services overall, and there are several reasons for that. 

Why does postgraduate student affairs seem to be a somewhat marginal practice and research topic? Some of the reasons may include:

1. The undergraduate-centred history of student affairs and the dominant focus on matters of undergraduate access and success, the undergraduate student experience, undergraduate student concerns (like the first-year experience, students-at-risk, first-generation students, equity, diversity and inclusion, on-campus experience, etc.), and the ubiquitous issue of student funding and resource pressures in African higher education. 
2. Conversely, in postgraduate studies there is much more an academic focus related to postgraduate education around research, supervision and "the thesis" which is reinforced by the relative institutional invisibility of postgraduate students, who are often older, employed and in some cases straddling the student/staff experience in higher education, being often part-time, commuting or off campus, working in labs or being on field research.
3. Finally there is typically quite an organisational fragmentation and unclear institutional ownership of the postgraduate experience, e.g., between the traditional (and undergraduate-centred) department of student affairs and offices of postgraduate studies. Academic staff involved in postgraduate studies (such as supervisors) often still play a more 'pastoral' role, while the relative maturity and seniority of postgraduate students also shifts their 'support needs'.

The result is that postgraduate student affairs as a field is both conceptually fragmented and institutionally dispersed, and thus there is need for bringing some coherence to questions of postgraduate access and completion, wellbeing, belonging, funding, peer support, careers, international student experience, diversity, equity and inclusion, including a special focus on matters of student-supervisior relations, supervision practice and supervision experience, research education and training and researcher identity. How to then make out of a surprisingly marginal field a recognisable field of practice and scholarship.

The start can be defining the field. In my view, postgraduate student affairs could be understood as the field of practice and scholarship concerned with the access, holistic experience, development, support, belonging, wellbeing and success of postgraduate students, alongside and in support of postgraduate academic affairs, research education and supervision. It overlaps with postgraduate administration, research education and researcher development, but keeps the postgraduate student in view as a whole person and emerging researcher or professional.

To move forward, I want to propose a potentially important African research agenda—and hence I believe the time has come for the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa (JSAA) to devote a special issue to “Postgraduate Student Affairs in Africa”. 

Such an issue could bring together work that is currently scattered across different fields and ask whether postgraduate student affairs should become a more explicit area "Call for Papers" (see post on LinkedIn).

*Postgraduate (in British English) and Graduate (in American English) are treated here as synonyms.