ABSTRACT
The history of postgraduate supervision and research in tertiary institutions worldwide is a relatively short one. Even shorter is its history in the technological institutes and amalgamated teachers colleges that have recently gained university status through restructuring in countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia. The struggle to establish undergraduate courses and to accumulate a core of graduate students at these institutions has been a necessary prerequisite to the recruitment of staff trained in postgraduate supervision, the development of postgraduate programs, and the growth of a research culture. This situation has only come about within the last 10 or so years, and the research culture is still in the early stages of growth in these newer institutions. Because of this situation, fast-growing tertiary departments are now experiencing pressure as the ranks of staff qualified to supervise postgraduate students are stretched to the limit by the numbers of students who are choosing to study beyond the undergraduate level, many of them through the distance education mode because they live in an area remote from their university, or even in a different country.
