Student Retention & Graduate Destination Higher Education & Labour Market Access & Success

by Letseka, Moeketsi; Cosser, Michael; Breier, Mignonne; Visser, Mariette

• ISBN13: 9780796923097
• ISBN10: 0796923094
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-05-01
• Publisher: HSRC Press

Summary

Returning to 2001's South Africa's National Plan for Higher Education, this group of contributors investigates more thoroughly why students in that study dropped out of universities, what helped them to graduate, and what made for a successful transition to the labor market. Their findings show that a decade after the National Plan the attrition rate at universities rate remains high--with 30 percent of students dropping out in their first year of study and white students graduating at a rate double that of blacks. Recommendations include smoother entry into the labor force and implementation of the new Ministry of Higher Education's plan for continuously improving the access and success, particularly of black students, at all levels of the system.

Author Biography

Moeketsi Letseka is a senior lecturer in the department of educational studies at the University of South Africa (UNISA). Michael Cosser and Mariette Visser are research managers in the program on education, science, and skills development at the Human Sciences Research Council. Mignonne Breier is the research development cluster manager at the University of Cape Town.

Table of Contents

Tables	p. vii
Figures	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Postscript	p. xiii
Acronyms and abbreviations	p. xiv
Introduction	p. 1
Background to the study	p. 1
Organisation of the monograph	p. 5
Uniformity and disjunction in the school-to-higher-education transition	p. 11
Introduction	p. 11
Findings from the Student Retention and Graduate Destination Study	p. 12
Observations arising from the analysis	p. 20
Poverty, race and student achievement in seven higher education institutions	p. 25
Introduction	p. 25
South Africa: Two nations	p. 25
Poverty in the Student Retention and Graduate Destination Study	p. 27
Race and poverty	p. 29
The apartheid legacy in education	p. 32
Reasons for premature departure	p. 34
Financing studies	p. 36
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme	p. 37
Conclusion	p. 39
Student inclusion and exclusion at the University of the Witwatersrand	p. 41
Introduction	p. 41
Racial desegregation	p. 42
Staff integration	p. 44
Curriculum integration	p. 46
Institutional culture integration	p. 50
Conclusion	p. 51
Dropout or stop out at the University of the Western Cape?	p. 53
Introduction	p. 53
An institutional case study	p. 54
The Student Retention and Graduate Destination Study at UWC	p. 55
Conclusion	p. 64
Weighing success and diversity in the balance at Stellenbosch University	p. 67
Introduction	p. 67
Measuring success at Stellenbosch University	p. 68
Success factors	p. 70
Non-completion at Stellenbosch University	p. 76
Changing Stellenbosch University's diversity profile	p. 80
Conclusion	p. 84
The graduate labour market	p. 87
Introduction	p. 87
Measuring the performance of the South African graduate labour market	p. 87
Graduate labour market outcomes among the study cohort	p. 89
Graduate employment	p. 90
Conclusions	p. 94
Student graduation, labour market destinations and employment earnings	p. 97
Introduction	p. 97
Data	p. 97
Higher education transition: A descriptive overview	p. 100
From higher education to the labour market: A snapshot of trends	p. 107
Graduation, employment and earnings: A multivariate analysis	p. 112
The determinants of labour market outcomes: Employment and earnings equations	p. 117
Conclusions	p. 123
Afterword	p. 125
Contributors	p. 129
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