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Student success as the end goal:
The overarching importance of equity of outcomes
•
There are abundant indicators that transformation
–
in the sense of fair
distribution of the benefits of higher education
–
is the predominant
imperative for the South African university system
•
Major failure in equity of outcomes: only 7% of African and coloured
youth succeeding in higher education
•
thus improvement in equity of access is largely neutralised
•
Equity
and
development
cannot be seen as separable goals in SA context
•
no chance of sufficient availability of ‘good graduates’ without making the
most of the intellectual talent in all of South Africa’s communities; and
•
equity will have little or no value without overall societal development
•
Yet the performance data disaggregated by population group ‘still
demonstrate apartheid-
era patterns of inequality’
(DHET 2015)
•
so why is equity of outcomes not at the top of the HE agenda?
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