Navigating a foreign land: Obstacles confronting black students
In South Africa, where universities remain heavily influenced by Western educational models, black students’ backgrounds significantly influence their chances of graduation. Specifically, factors like home language, economic background, and experiences of racism and sexism critically affect whether students are able to integrate socially and academically.
This was the finding of a recent study that sought to understand predictors of student attrition and retention. “Universities need to understand the body of students they are dealing with,” says Siyanda Cele, who undertook the research for his doctorate in social justice education at the University of the Western Cape. The findings underscored the need for universities to tailor their offerings to reflect students’ needs and identities.
Cele analysed qualitative data drawn from a larger education and emancipation study led by the Human Sciences Research Council. His data comprised in-depth interviews with 66 black African students over four years (2013 -2017). The study used the widely cited Tinto’s Student Integration Model as an analysis framework, positing that social and academic integration are the primary pillars of students’ success. Insufficient social integration leads to poorer academic integration and vice versa, decreasing the likelihood that students persist in higher education.
The study expanded the model for a local context, adding ‘student background’ as a third, interactive predictor. This new model aims to help universities better understand and support their students and improve retention rates.
An unfamiliar place
Although black South Africans comprise the overwhelming majority of the population, the study participants reported experiencing the university environment as foreign and unwelcoming. ‘At the heart of the findings of this study is the point that race contributes to the exclusion of Black African students in South African universities,’ Cele writes.
Students in Cele’s study reported that black academics were underrepresented in university staff, and course curricula continued to be based on Western epistemologies. The data revealed students questioning, ‘’Do we not have philosophers in Africa? Are there no scholars in Africa?’, “because everything has to be referenced by theories in a Western context,” says Cele.
Cele’s data also suggest that patriarchal norms compounded experiences of alienation for black female and LGBTQI students. For instance, gender stereotypes influenced course decisions, with women less likely to apply for male-dominated subjects like engineering. Incidents of gender-based violence, discrimination and exploitation on campus contributed to hostile social and learning environments. This, in turn, reduced black students' integration and the likelihood that they completed their degrees.
During the course of the primary study, the #FeesMustFall movement (2015-2017) erupted in universities across the country, igniting calls for decolonisation and Africanisation in higher education. Despite the discourse that has followed, universities have not yet achieved decolonisation, Cele suggests.
Language of power
Race continues to shape educational experiences significantly through language. Cele’s findings suggested that language barriers were among the greatest obstacles to social and academic integration.
