Higher education in South Africa should be of considerable interest to higher education researchers outside of South Africa, as well as within, for the general and comparative assessments it makes. The South African higher education researchers included within its covers have clearly engaged with research and writing from many parts of the world, which they have then applied to make sense of their own condition.

The book is a very important contribution to the growing body of work on postgraduate, and specifically doctoral, education. The metaphor of pushing boundaries is very appropriate, as it suggests a field of study and a range of behaviours and institutional organisational approaches to postgraduate education that are dynamic and characterised by fluidity, creativity and challenge. Readers will gain new theoretical perspectives, ideas for improved practice, and fresh perspectives on boundaries and pressing issues that deserve to be pushed and conceptualised in new ways.

After centuries of barely visible incremental development, postgraduate education has experienced twenty years of considerable turbulence as governments recognise its latent power, some responding more quickly than others and each in different ways. This anthology, drawing on research, deep reflection and praxis, illustrates the current situation in a range of geographical environments that result from such interventions, or lack of them, providing readers both with information about neglected contexts, challenges and concerns and with stimulating ideas about how they might be managed more effectively. Professor Emerita Pam Denicolo, University of Reading, UK.