There’s a 10-year gap between Māori scholars and the rest of Aotearoa when it comes to attempting the ultimate academic achievement - Stuff reporter Karanama Ruru investigates why.

A decade can pass in the blink of an eye but, for Ngaroimata Reid, time has taken on a new, urgent, meaning since a cancer diagnosis in 2020 and subsequent treatment.

Reid (Ngāti Wai, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Kahungunu, Rangitāne) is one of a growing number of Māori scholars completing their PhD, the pinnacle of academic degrees, while pushing against extra challenges that see Māori become doctoral candidates a decade later on average than everyone else.

She spoke to Stuff ahead of the MAI Te Kupenga Hui-a-Tau - an annual gathering of Māori and indigenous doctoral candidates - with about 120 scholars meeting in Tāmaki Makaurau from today until Sunday to connect and showcase their research.

Hui like this are necessary, said co-ordinator Abigail McClutchie, because the Māori experience of doing a PhD is often very different.

McClutchie (Te Rarawa, Ngāti Porou) said the average age for a Māori PhD candidate is 48 - 10 years older than the overall average.

“Research shows we often don’t go straight from an undergraduate degree, to a masters, then on to a PhD,” McClutchie said.

“We have a lot of experiences along the way ... so having the annual hui-ā-tau is a way we can support each other throughout our academic journeys.”

Reid, 58, agrees - her life, blending academic achievement, looking after her whānau and her hapū, is a perfect example.

“You get pulled into and drawn into what your community is doing and working on all the time,” she said.

As well as direct service to their iwi, hapū and whānau, Māori PhD scholars had an added academic pressure of trying to deliver help through their research, too.

“Our research is unique in that it is that indigenous perspective. You're always mindful that that is what you're contributing to, it's always on your mind: ‘How am I contributing to mātauranga Māori?’”

What does the research say?

A PhD, or Doctor of Philosophy, is the highest level of degree you can achieve. It requires students to undertake at least three years of study, producing original research in their chosen field.

According to Universities New Zealand in 2020, the overall average age of the 5265 people enrolled as PhD scholars was 38 - two-thirds were NZ European.

Meanwhile, the 2018 report Te Tātua o Kahukura found “financial constraints, including restrictions on access to student loans and allowances”, impacted many Māori doctoral candidates. This affected mature scholars in particular, with “wider financial commitments”.

The report found many mature Māori scholars - older on average - experienced ageism as a “significant barrier” to growing their careers.

“Institutional racism and white privilege were identified as a fundamental issue for Māori and Indigenous doctoral scholars engaging in Western university structures,” the report said.

It’s never too late

Reid was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020, only a year after she started her PhD. This was 15 years after she completed her Masters in management.

She had held down a job, volunteered with her marae, hapū and the Māori Women’s Welfare League, and raised her children.

“My marriage split up for eight years and then we came back together again. So yeah, whānau, health, life.”

In 2019 she decided it was time to pursue her doctorate - focusing on wāhine Māori in leadership.

“I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020 so I had to take a year off to go through treatment. I then got back on the horse two years later because it takes time for treatment,” she said.

Reid said she was trying to "bubble back up again and keep on track" with her PhD work.

“There’s an urgency now. You realise how precious time in life is. It becomes a mission starting and completing [my PhD],” she said.

“Getting back on the horse is another way of returning to normality, or returning to what you intended in the first place, not to waste time any more.”

Reid said doctors haven’t given her the thumbs up yet, but she is on medication and will remain on her doctors’ radar for the next five years.

“Although I’ve left it a bit late, it’s never too late,” she said.

I felt like I've had two full-time jobs’

McClutchie, 58, spent nine years on her thesis before she handed it in, in September.

Back in 2015, when she started, she realised working and studying full time was too much, often getting locked in the library after studying late into the night.

“I felt like I've had two full-time jobs,” she said. “It's hard-out and definitely the last year it was more like 60 to 70 hours of doctorate working and finishing [my PhD], doing work and launching ReoSpace and that sort of stuff.”

ReoSpace, in the library at Waipapa Taumata Rau - the University of Auckland, is a space for students to learn and speak te reo Māori. McClutchie works a 40-hour week there as kaiārahi for Te Tumu Herenga: Libraries and Learning Services, to pay for her learning journey and support her whānau.

“We as Maori women, we're often juggling a lot, we're doing it all,” she said. “You know, we hear these types of stories and all sorts of forums these days about the load that Maori women are carrying.”

The rewards, however, of achieving academic success can be all the sweeter because of the extra challenges.

After she hit “submit” on her thesis, the first person McClutchie told was her mum.

It was a whānau win, said McClutchie. “My mum particularly has always been very invested in my success and made sacrifices so that I could have success.”

Her mum, said McClutchie, “told everybody she was so proud”. A cousin said she’d uplifted her whole family - “You never think about that.”

Family pride is something Reid has experienced, too. Those years spent between her master’s and beginning her doctorate were, after all, spent with her whānau.

Her children are all adults now, with their own academic, and life, success.

“I've got three boys. One lives in France, one lives at home, and my oldest boy just lives up the road from us and my husband, he's an architectural designer, and I think all of us are happy and proud of us as a whānau, that we've all taken these steps towards study.”

Looking to the future

Despite the challenges, there’s hope for the future of Māori PhDs - you’ve just got to be prepared, says McClutchie. “You've got to make room for this, this is not something you can do on the fly.”

Get your community around you, she says, your writing community, your whānau, and your department school faculty.

After all, there are about a thousand or more Māori people who have reached this mountaintop, which at the very least is “the evidence we can do it”, she says.

“It's not easy. There's so much to learn. But you can do it. We can do it.”

- Stuff