IN PURSUIT OF RELEVANCE: A TRACER STUDY OF MASTER’S IN DEVELOPMENT STUDIES (MADVS) GRADUATES FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF BOTSWANA

Abstract

Universities are concerned about the relevance of their programmes and graduate tracer studies have been conducted to assess relevance. The University of Botswana (UB) is also concerned about the relevance of its programmes. Not many graduate tracer studies have been carried out to assess the relevance of UB programmes. This paper is based on a tracer study of the Master of Arts in Development Studies (MADVS) graduate programme in the Department of Sociology at UB. Data was collected through a survey questionnaire and a focus group discussion and analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and thematic analysis respectively. The study found that the programme was relevant to employers: graduates had occupational mobility, salary increases and could change to better (paying) jobs. Although graduates had a good university experience, they also pointed out areas of improvement in the curriculum, namely, that the Department should market itself and its programmes more, students should be encouraged to do dissertations, the Department should review its courses to align them with current and topical issues and that the programme should have different specialisations.