If you have been working at a university, you know exactly what I mean. The start of the academic year sees many bright-eyed first year students thronging excitedly through the gates of the university. I tend to categorise them into two groups: (a) those thrilled by their new student cards, determined to maximise their new-found freedom and live it up; and then (b) the more timid mortals who are often to be found anxiously scanning their maps of the university to make sure they have gotten the lecture venue right. One thing is for certain, though. However students may react to their first year of university, they are rarely ever prepared for some of the tough realities of university life. For some, the gap between expectations and reality sinks in quickly, such as in front of the registration queues and all the mind-numbing bureaucracy that comes with being a university student. For others, that realisation could come a little later, such as upon receiving that first poor grade or the first time they experience a challenging social encounter in their residence. It could be anything really. It takes some time, and perhaps a few enlightening experiences, before those first-year students realise that they have been holding unrealistic expectations about their first year of university study.
While university is often (and rightly so) perceived as the path to personal independence, intellectual freedom and socio-economic mobility, few understand that the university can be cruel to its new initiates. Universities tend to deal awkwardly with first year students. Universities are not formally prepared to deal with the complexities of the higher education journeys of young people who are undergoing huge life changes as they become students. Students tend to be bombarded with information and bureaucracy in the first few weeks of university. Registration queues shuffle students from one end of campus to another. This is the very time that we should be intentionally offering students support and acclimatising them to the new and often bewildering world into which they are entering.
For many students, subject choices are often made in panic mode, because there is no better information available. This often leads to regret and wasted resources further down the line of the student’s higher education journey when they realise they might have made a mistake with their subject choices.
Should it be surprising then, that many of our first year students choose to opt out? Research shows us that the highest drop-out rate in the university pipeline is that of the first year of study. The problem of low throughput rates is not uniquely South African one, but one which is truly global. It, however, resonates particularly deeply in a South African context, with the country’s history of colonialism and apartheid and our inequitable educational system.
A steadily growing body of research and scholarship bears testimony that university can be sites of trauma and suffering, particularly so for the majority of South Africa’s poor black student population. I point out to important and ground-breaking studies such as that of the Human Sciences Research Council’s ‘Studying While Black’ (2019) or the seminal work ‘Higher Education Pathways: South African Undergraduate Education and the Public Good’ (2018) edited by Paul Ashwin and Jennifer Case. Such works illuminate the experiences of South Africa’s student population in ways which underscore the contexts of hardship and struggle in which most poor black students are uncomfortably located. They also surface the issue of student experiences within the higher education system, whereas previously questions of access and exclusion have historically tended to dominate the discourse. As pointed out succinctly by Vincent Tinto (2008), access without support does not, in fact, constitute access. Support is a vital component of the student success puzzle.
Please don’t get me wrong-there is no blame game at hand. It would be too easy to portray all universities as hard-hearted and student-unfriendly. However, this would be a misleading portrayal of some universities who have whole-heartedly embraced an ethos of student support and tried, with varying levels of success, to filter this message through to all parts of the institution. Teaching and learning centres are employing innovative support initiatives such as writing centres, peer leaders and programmes such as the First-Year Experience and even the Senior Year Experience .Various transformational discourses such as that of invitational education have been floating around different institutions of higher education. Morrow’s concept of epistemological access (2009) is a powerful example of consciousness of the structural barriers faced by university students. Of course the extent to which such discourses of student support have actually found meaningful traction at all of South Africa’s universities, is a different question altogether.
A case has to be made for extensive and extended institutional support at the level of the first year of study. This does not suggest that the first year of study has to be treated as an isolated stage in the higher education journey or that there aren’t other important stages in the higher education experience (for example second year or that all-important final year). Rather these various stages of the higher education journey should be seen (and crafted) as part of a seamless whole which facilitates student transitions into, through and out of the higher education system. An intentional, consciously constructed and highly supportive first-year experience should be seen as the foundation of a successful higher education journey. The prize-the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow-is for students to leave university degree in hand and importantly-with a discernible sense of having enjoyed the journey.
No, first-year experience programmes are not time and resource-intensive. No, it is not about ‘spoiling’ our students. No, it is not about how preceding generations ‘made it’ through their studies without support programmes. It is about something incredibly important and yet so simple: giving students the experience of higher education that they deserve.
I do think we are on the right path in South Africa in terms of getting better at supporting our first-year students, and students in general. South Africa’s Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) has seen fit to share the vision of supporting our students and helping boost the national retention rate. The advent of the First-Year Experience movement in the United States and globally, has exerted a powerful influence on South Africa. We remain grateful to our colleagues at the University of South Carolina (USC) in the United States, the National Resource Centre for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition (NRC). Without them, there would not be an SANRC advocating for first-year students in South Africa. I would say there is much about which to be hopeful.
Having said that, every time I see one of those first-year students moving their belongings into residence or even timidly approaching someone for directions, I simply cannot stop myself wanting to stop, hug them and whisper in their ear it’s all going to be okay.
References
Case, J. & Ashwin, P. (Eds) (2018) Higher Education Pathways: South African Undergraduate Education and the Public Good. African Minds.
Morrow, W. (2009) Bounds of Democracy: Epistemological Access in Higher Education. HSRC Press.
Swartz, S., Mahali, A., Moletsane, R., Arongundade, E., Khalema, E.N., Cooper, A. & Groenewald, C. (2019) Studying While Black: Race, Education and Emancipation in South Africa’s Universities. HSRC Press.
Tinto, V. & Engstrom, C. (2008) Access without support is not opportunity. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning. 40(1), 46-51.