2.7 STUDENT SUPPORT
2.7.6 P RACTICES OF STUDENT SUPPORT INTERVENTION PROGRAMMES IN HIGHER EDUCATION
2.7.6.2 Support programmes in higher education institutions
renowned in the surfeit of the correlated literature. Wilcox, Winn and Fyvie-Gauld’s (2005) juxtaposed evaluation of the potential value of first-year support from tutors and peers revealed that peers are more valuable support provider than tutors do. In dichotomy to this viewpoint, Simmons (2013, p. 70) arrived at a finding that considers both the peers and the faculty staff members as equally important in supporting students on academic issues, helping them attain their educational programmes.
Higher education institutions employ multifarious approaches to providing support and their perspectives upon what constitute student support depends a particular kind of support offered. Practises of support provisions take many forms, such as the development of certain programmes (e.g. induction programmes), the establishment of forums and organisations, which focus on students’ needs. The latter is prevalently implemented in higher educations for support provision to specific student category, such as students studying the same field of study. Delving into the influences that lead to the persistence of African American men (AAM) in a student support organisation called Project Empowerment (PE) in the University of Memphis – a white dominated educational context, Simmons (2013, p. 62) found that features of the PE are motivational and supportive for the retention of AAM in the university. The establishment of PE was stemmed from the recognition that the African American students drop out was an alarming concern which needed a support intervention to address the retention dimension (Simmons, 2013, p. 62). Simmons (2013, p. 71) further reflects that the University of Memphis’s EP student organisation comprises a number of student intervention initiatives which incorporate Educational support programme (ESP) and Intellectual Empowerment Sessions (IESs), designed purposely to respectively upgrade academic skills level and to enhance writing and oral competency standards on Spanish language.
2.7.6.2 Support programmes in higher education institutions
The global higher education sector has many and varied programmes aimed at supporting students in their studies. The purposes for which such different support programmes are designed are unique, depending upon the types of students’ needs for their studies. The desktop review conducted to determine student support programmes, which are put into place in the demarcation of higher education terrain,
yielded the variety of data and the variety of support programmes in the higher education institutions. Some of the student support programmes revealed by the desktop review undertaken for this study are as follows:
2.7.6.2.1 Masakh’iSizwe Student Support Programme
The Western Cape government in South Africa initiated Masakh’iSizwe Bursary Programme to support students in Western Cape Province with difficulties they face in their higher education studies (Western Cape government, 2016). Masakh’iSizwe Student Programme provides academic, social and financial supports to students. The programme is divided into seven categories of student support, namely, Social support, academic support, support with skills to improve employability in the labour market, leadership programme, outreach programme, student health and wellness, and professional development programme.
Masakh’iSizwe Student Programme identified the following four objectives for its social support for first-year students:
to help them positively respond to the challenges the institution presents
to help the cope to the personal, social, lifestyle in university and the academic expectations and demands
to enable them take informed decisions on their plans for future
to enhance their abilities to be able to attain academic goals and personal success
The ‘academic support’, which is included in the Masakh’iSizwe support programme, addresses the student unpreparedness, which has been widely propagated in the literature because of the gap between the pre-tertiary and the tertiary education. The programme includes student support interventions such as tutorial classes in order to fulfil the following purposes:
empower and advance students’ competence;
offer quality help which is consistent and suited to the standards of the university; and
enable students achieve satisfactory academic results
The third type of student support that Masakh’iSizwe Bursary programme provides focuses on the employment-oriented abilities, such as driving lessons, the ability to articulate proficiently in English, writing persuasive and professional curriculum vitae, ability to write report. The main objective of this type of support is to improve students’
competitiveness and to enhance their probability to be absorbed in the broader job market.
The fourth support service offered to students by the Masakh’iSizwe Bursary programme is focused on enhancing and empowering students with interpersonal leadership capabilities. It builds and escalate students’ confidence level to take correct, and to some extent hard decision without fear.
The firth support service that Masakh’iSizwe Bursary programme offers to students is a community outreach in which bursars are required to empower learners in poor communities with education and competences in order to promote fields, such as engineering, science, mathematics and technology.
Another essential support intervention embraced into the Masakh’iSizwe Bursary Programme relates to students’ health and wellness. The purpose of this intervention directed to students is to foster heathy lifestyles by creating awareness on distinct ill- health issues, such as, inter alia, HIV/AIDS, high blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol. It has been found that student dropout is also caused by, among other diseases, an HIV/AIDS. (Breier, 2010, p. 665) reported that some students who tested HIV positive dropped out of their tertiary studies because they lost interest and self- esteem. Others dropped out because they wanted to support their siblings whose parents died of HIV/AIDS.
The last support service that Masakh’iSizwe Student Support Programme assists students with is the ‘professional development programme’ that helps them obtains practical experiences in their fields through vocation or in-service training. Students’
Participation in the professional development programme occurs by means of placement in the private enterprises and government department, such as the Department of Transport and Public Works. Masakh’iSizwe student programme also help students find jobs after they have successfully completed their qualifications.
2.7.6.2.2 Ikusasalethu: SAICA’s Student Support Programme
Through ‘Ikusasalethu’ (the tomorrow is in our hands), SAICA’s Student Support is a Thuthuka project that responds to the South African dearth of high-level skills in the field of chartered accountancy. The programme was developed in partnership between the South African Institute of Chartered Accountancy and FASSET and was launched on 4 March 2016 by the University of Cape Town (Creamer’s Engineering News, 2016). SAICA’s Student Support Programme is aimed at preventing student dropout rate and improving as well as expediting students’ retention, and completion rates in the university (Creamer’s Engineering News, 2016). Ikusasalethu is a Thuthuka and FASSET initiative established to promote equity and transformation in the South African demographic profile of the Chartered Accountancy discipline.
Ikusasalethu help students with skills to amplify students’ employability, such as how to prepare professional curriculum vitae, how to manage time for studies, skills to study, additional tuition lessons, motivational sessions, and workshops to prepare students for the examinations.
2.7.6.2.3 Orientation and Support Programmes
In the South African’s University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), student support programmes such as the community internship and mentorship programmes are put into place to assist students with hands-on experiences and to stimulate both their vocational and academic advancement. The community internship entails the development, academic and research projects and the standard procedure for the appointment of students to participate in the internship programme consists of considerations relating to educational level, financial background and local conditions (University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2016). Furthermore, the UKZN offers bridging courses in the form of access, foundation programmes, extra courses, and restructured courses for first-year students to enhance their academic writing and communication abilities and keep them fit and ready to face the challenges, which the university presents to them. The aim of the mentorship programme is to prepare students so that they can eventually able to fit into the institutional culture and to adjust with the
academic environment (University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2016). The mentorship is led by senior students and the criteria to select students to take part into the mentorship programme includes satisfactory results, leadership and communication skills.
2.7.6.2.4 University of South Africa’s student support and learner development
University of South Africa (Unisa)’s response to students’ needs for development and financial aid exist in the range of support services, bursaries and scholarships to help dozens of students from the disadvantaged family backgrounds to further their studies.
Unisa has 357 000 students enrolled for formal programmes and, 79 000 enrolled for informal and short courses, most of them come from the poor families (University of South Africa, 2016a). The Unisa Foundation established the bursary scheme called
‘Unisa Bursary Fund’ to assist students who are financially needy and who have met the university regulation requirements and academic merit level. The university’
strategic objective is to mobilize alumni in the service of humanity, build a learning environment that is conducive for all students, one in which they will feel a sense of belonging (University of South Africa, 2016a). In addition, Unisa also provides an ICT enhanced support to its students. The objectives for which Unisa Bursaries aim to realise include the following ones:
To curtail student dropout that has been the result of financial restraints.
To entice and encourage people who want to further their studies in higher education.
To lessen the challenge encountered by the NSFAS that attempts to cater for a huge student population is the entire South Africa higher education system.
To minimize the level of scarcity in certain fields.
To contribute to the South Africa’ future personnel.
The student support at Unisa consists of counselling, work integrated learning, tutorial services, regional centres and advocacy and resource centre for students with disabilities (ARCSWID). Unisa has seven support centres (regions), namely, Midlands, Eastern Cape, Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, Limpopo and Mpumalanga. These regional centres offer students with tutorial services. The university employed tutors to execute the tutoring role in order to assist students academically. Unisa also has a directorate called ‘Tuition Support’, which consists of
three sub-units, namely, Tutorial Support Services, Telecentre Community Outreach and Experiential Learning. The Tuition Support’s vision is to create excellent structures, processes and tools to provide prime support for needy students (University of South Africa, 2016c). Unisa, furthermore, has the Directorate for Counselling and Career Development which classified types of student support services they offer into three – ‘Manage my career’, ‘Manage my studies’ and ‘Manage myself’. The ‘Manage my career’ entails services that are aimed at supporting students to manage their careers by informing about them, assisting to understand how they can make informed decisions on which career to opt for from a range of the available career options and to impart students with the necessary skills for the workforce (University of South Africa, 2016b).
The ‘Manage my studies’ category of student services assist students to manage their studies by providing them with effective learning abilities and capabilities, time management skills and abilities for the preparation of examinations (University of South Africa, 2016b).
The ‘Manage myself’ classification of student support at Unisa focuses on helping