CHAPTER 5: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION OF QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS
5.2. Keeping students on the graduation path
5.2.2. HEIs keeping students on the graduation path
In terms of suggestions to HEIs, it appears that South Africa lacks appropriately skilled educators. The country’s educational policies, such as widening access to HEIs, or government stimulating demand for students from previously disadvantaged population groups, have led to unexpected levels of diversity and many first generation students who were not adequately prepared by the school system or whose parents were not prepared to be partners in their children’s education. While secondary schooling plays a major
163 role in enhancing a student’s chances of success at university, teaching approaches at university play an equally important role. HEIs often do not provide sufficient and comprehensive targeted support for students to cope with their attitudinal, educational, emotional, and social challenges and to remain in their chosen educational pathways. High lecturer: student ratios were blamed in focus groups for undermining teaching and learning.
Smetherham (2009) is of the opinion that, while HEIs may get students who are badly prepared by the school system, if they can hold on to them long enough, work on their self-confidence, provide extensive support in development of the skills central to most HEIs’ disciplines, and get them inducted into these disciplines, they will flourish and go on to graduate. Groves (2009) suggests that a flexible or long university degree that adopts a thorough and incremental approach to helping under-prepared students bridge the gap between high school and higher education could work in South Africa.
Students in South Africa are more likely to be products of poor quality schools, cognitively under-prepared, financially at risk, and may need support structures and systems to persist and graduate. At UKZN there are poor students who need more financial aid, loans, bursaries, or sponsorships. On the other hand, there are students who are poorly prepared cognitively who need extra academic support or an additional academic year to adjust and become fit to graduate. Emergent findings from focus group discussions suggested that even the most compassionate of decision-makers struggles to find ways of drawing the lines equitably between these binary divided categories and/or their mix with all that this entails - more financial resources being granted to HEIs, feeder high schools, and students; employing more academic staff; or working out a formula that would take the disciplinary statistics into account, both for scholarships and for cut-off points for NFSAS.
A recurrent perspective in the focus groups has been that to get the education system going, education stakeholders have to learn from the setbacks identified and rethink how to fine tune current support structures and systems in HEIs and feeder high schools, and to identify students at risk. Suggestions to reduce student attrition, increase graduation, and improve throughput rates might entail one or a combination of the steps (not in any particular order) in Table 5-4.
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Table 5-4: Suggestions to HEIs to reduce student attrition, increase graduation, and improve throughput rates
• Keep track of student intake (progression/retention) and graduation (or attrition).
• HEIs to focus on the five benchmarks of effective educational practices, namely: (1) level of academic challenge, (2) active and collaborative learning, (3) student-staff interaction, (4) enriching educational experience, and (5) supportive campus environment (Strydom et al., 2010)
• Improve accountability and analyze contributing internal and external factors that hinder student success. Consider strategies proven to promote academic diligence and ebullience among students and bring reversal in its trend (enhance academic preparation and motivation)
• Assess student satisfaction and identify endowment in terms of financial resources, physical facilities and infrastructure, and other incentives (cheaper meals and housing) that can beckon students and help them take cognizance of these support (bridge) programmes and services
• Relevant here are issues surrounding the effective collaboration between Faculty, students’ affairs administrators, students, tutorials in small groups, and the security or confronting inappropriate behaviours. Faculty members to adopt a duly permissive attitude in lecture theaters and give attention, time, and personal respect to all of the students (weak or able) to the same degree
• Focus on high schools that feed the HEIs by making input and valuing their input in connection with higher education standards and expectations in the early development of would-be students
• A word of caution: there is no guarantee that through interaction with high schools, students will graduate. However, South African HEIs stand a good chance of retaining millions of students who would otherwise drop out if their expectations in terms of standards are known by high schools
• Implement a mandatory HE requirement that students attend academic orientation and counseling sessions. These will equip them with the necessary skills and referral options to support services and resources available to them as well as enable a reduction in the incidence of attrition
• Implement a mechanism of students’ affairs and support (caring attitude, constraint or control) working collaboratively with the college, faculty, department, school, the administrator of the programme, the curriculum designer and parents; so that students are never in any doubt as to the different degree paths they can take and the choices available to them
• Be sensitive to student perceptions. Organize academic year planning, staffing, and class rosters/timetables on the assumption that large numbers of students will be absent, or drop out if it is unaccommodating. Acknowledge that teaching may need to be amended
Source: Survey of the Higher Education literature.
Participants acknowledged that for the sake of cash flow management, it is important to have a mix of programmes within one university. Generally, lecture (or tutorials) are offered in a manner that allows students to understand the relationship between different modules; for example, how does economics (laws
165 of demand and supply) link with accounting (capturing and proper recording of entries in bookkeeping – an economic activity). As students are engaged and involved in their own learning, they identify their strengths and weaknesses and are encouraged to consolidate their strengths and improve on their weaknesses.
It is widely recognized that small classes are better (Guney, 2009). The benefits include a holistic, interactive, and integrated approach to teaching to enable students to draw from their own experiences. The identical curriculum for both the BCom (Accounting) and BCom (General) degree means that first-year lectures are over-crowded with an average head-count of 1 500 students across the years measured (UKZN, 2004-2008). If lectures (or tutorials) in the FMS were run in small groups, students would be expected to be the main role players through discussions and debates (Zikhali and Bokana, forthcoming). This would help them improve their understanding of the material taught in the mainstream lectures, and lead to permanent learning. The FMS needs to understand how students learn in over-crowded venues. Thus, small classes are of benefit to UKZN, academic staff members, and students themselves.
A synopsis of student evaluations suggests that a mere 3 percent of students enjoy attending lectures (De Lange and Maharaj, 2010). This suggests that academic staff in the FMS, CLMS and UKZN need assistance in developing and improving their teaching approaches, methods, practices, and skills to attract students back into lectures theatres. An enabling educational environment is crucial if students from poorly- endowed schools and impoverished socio-economic backgrounds are to succeed at university.
Advances in technology have introduced a new language, a new discourse, new social networks, new engagement methods in an online environment, which together can result in the FMS, becoming a dinosaur.
The Faculty needs to understand how students are learning in this new context and tailor traditional teaching and learning practices to appeal to students.
Focus group participants were of the opinion that the subsidy per student in the over-crowded first-year management studies modules is subsidizing other disciplines and stand-alone modules within UKZN.
They want the funds provided from the intake of the FMS to be allocated to teaching and learning initiatives and student support structures and programmes within the CLMS to address educational issues. These include dedicated personnel – academic and support – tutorial venues and collaboration with student counseling services to monitor and encourage the development of academic staff and students so that they can reach their full academic potential in order to realize their career dreams and social potential (Author’s own enquiry as a member of the FMS’ Education Unit Board). This would be further strengthened by
166 cascading the management of different student support systems, structures and programmes down to School level. This would enable Schools to allocate adequate funds and educational resources in line with the CLMS’ strategies, structures and areas of specialization.
The loss of students in some Schools within the CLMS could be seen as a gain rather than a loss, if only the proportion of the salary costs of academics engaged in teaching is taken into account. That is, the proportion of students at each level and discipline divided into the total salary cost for the Colleges, Faculties, or Schools. For instance, if in these Schools academics used to spend 40 percent of their time on research and 60 percent on teaching, small classes can reverse this time allocation to 60 percent on research and 40 percent on teaching, resulting in more publications and increased research output payouts. Small classes are beneficial since they can level the proportion of the salary cost per student of those engaged in teaching the modules and the staff: student ratios in the FMS.
5.2.3. COMMUNITIES AND CSOs/NGOs KEEPING STUDENTS ON THE