Low-Income Students, Human Development and Higher Education in South Africa

Mikateko Mathebula, Monica McLean, Melanie Walker

Description

This book explores learning outcomes for low-income rural and township youth at five South African universities. The book is framed as a contribution to southern and Africa-centred scholarship, adapting Amartya Sen's capability approach and a framework of key concepts: capabilities, functionings, context, conversion factors, poverty and agency to investigate opportunities and obstacles to achieved student outcomes. This approach allows a reimagining of 'inclusive learning outcomes' to encompass the multi-dimensional value of a university education and a plurality of valued cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes for students from low-income backgrounds whose experiences are strongly shaped by hardship.

Based on capability theorising and student voices, the book proposes for policy and practice a set of contextual higher education capability domains and corresponding functionings orientated to more justice and more equality for each person to have the opportunities to be and to do what they have reason to value. The book concludes that sufficient material resources are necessary to get into university and flourish while there; the benefits of a university education should be rich and multi-dimensional so that they can result in functionings in all areas of life as well as work and future study; the inequalities and exclusion of the labour market and pathways to further study must be addressed by wider economic and social policies for 'inclusive learning outcomes' to be meaningful; and that universities ought to be doing more to enable black working-class students to participate and succeed.

Low-Income Students, Human Development and Higher Education in South Africa makes an original contribution to capabilitarian scholarship: conceptually in theorising a South-based multi-dimensional student well-being higher education matrix and a rich reconceptualisation of learning outcomes, as well as empirically by conducting rigorous, longitudinal in-depth mixed-methods research on students' lives and experiences in higher education in South Africa. The audience for the book includes higher education researchers, international capabilitarian scholars, practitioners and policy-makers.

CHAPTER 1

Raising 'learning outcomes' for inclusive higher education: The Miratho Project

CHAPTER 2

Capabilities and functionings: Reconceptualising learning outcomes

CHAPTER 3

A challenging context and intersectional conversion factors

CHAPTER 4

The Miratho Capabilitarian Matrix:

Evaluating individual achievements and institutional arrangements

CHAPTER 5

Opportunities and obstacles in achieving higher education access

CHAPTER 6

Possibilities for student transformation through capability-enhancing university participation

CHAPTER 7

Pathways for moving on from university

CHAPTER 8

Five students' life histories: Conversion factors, functionings and inequality

CHAPTER 9

Access, participation and moving on for low-income youth

Sujets

• EDUCATION
• Rural
• Inclusion (education)
• Higher
• List of universities in Africa
• Level
• Rural area
• Tertiary education
• School
• Campagne

Informations

• Publié par: African Minds
• Date de parution: 15 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781928502401
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

i

Low-Income Students, Human Development and Higher Education in South Africa

Low-Income Students, Human Development and Higher Education in South Africa Opportunities, obstacles and outcomes

Melanie Walker Monica McLean Mikateko Mathebula Patience Mukwambo

Low-Income Students, Human Development and Higher Education in South Africa Opportunities, obstacles and outcomes

Melanie Walker, Monica McLean, Mikateko Mathebula & Patience Mukwambo

AFRICAN MINDS

Published in 2022 by African Minds 4 Eccleston Place, Somerset West, 7130, Cape Town, South Africa [e-mail] www.africanminds.org.za

2022 African Minds

All contents of this document, unless specified otherwise, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors. When quoting from any of the chapters, readers are requested to acknowledge all of the authors.

ISBN (paper): 978-1-928502-39-5 eBook edition: 978-1-928502-40-1 ePub edition: 978-1-928502-41-8

Copies of this book are available for free download at: www.africanminds.org.za

ORDERS: African Minds Email: [e-mail]

To order printed books from outside Africa, please contact: African Books Collective PO Box 721, Oxford OX1 9EN, UK Email: [e-mail]

Contents

About the authors .................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgements ................................................................................................. v

CHAPTER 1 .......................................................................................................... 1 Raising ‘learning outcomes’ for inclusive higher education: The Miratho Project

CHAPTER 2 .........................................................................................................17 Capabilities and functionings: Reconceptualising learning outcomes

CHAPTER 3 ........................................................................................................35 A challenging context and intersectional conversion factors

CHAPTER 4 .........................................................................................................55 The Miratho Capabilitarian Matrix: Evaluating individual achievements and institutional arrangements

CHAPTER 5 .........................................................................................................75 Opportunities and obstacles in achieving higher education access

CHAPTER 6 .........................................................................................................93 Possibilities for student transformation through capability-enhancing university participation

CHAPTER 7 .......................................................................................................115 Pathways for moving on from university

CHAPTER 8 .......................................................................................................137 Five students’ life histories: Conversion factors, functionings and inequality

CHAPTER 9 .......................................................................................................157 Access, participation and moving on for low-income youth

Appendix A........................................................................................................ 165 Appendix B ........................................................................................................ 171 References ...........................................................................................................183 Index.................................................................................................................. 197

About the authors

Monica McLeanis professor emeritus in higher education at the University of Nottingham, and honorary professor at the University of the Free State (UFS).

Mikateko Mathebulaa senior researcher at the South African Research Chair in is Higher Education and Human Development at the UFS.

Patience Mukwambois a temporary lecturer at the University of Pretoria and research associate at the South African Research Chair in Higher Education and Human Development, UFS.

Melanie Walkeris distinguished professor and South African Research Chair in Higher Education and Human Development at the UFS. She is a National Research Fund (NRF) A1-rated scholar, fellow of the Academy of Science South Africa (ASSAf) and fellow of the Human Development and Capability Association (HDCA).

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Acknowledgements

We are tremendously grateful to all the life-history students for giving up their time to talk to us every year over more than four years. It has been a privilege to share in the telling of their stories about their university education and experiences, and to understand better the challenges they face and what needs to change. At different points various colleagues have assisted us with aspects of the project: Merridy Wilson-Strydom and Ann-Marie Bathmaker, who were both co-investigators for part of the project, Charles Sheppard, Carmen Martinez Vargas, Melissa Lucas, Sander van Leusden, Lihlumelo Toyana, Anesu Ruswa, Pearl Mncube, Motshewa Sesing, Enrica Chiappero-Martinetti and Alberta Spreafico. Mukovhe Masutha from the Thusanani Foundation was the initial inspiration for putting together a funding proposal after a serendipitous meeting at a seminar in Johannesburg in February 2015. Fulu Ratshisusu and Phathu Mudau from Thusanani Foundation connected us with students. We are grateful to them for their ongoing support and interest. Tari Gwena provided the project with excellent administrative support. Elmarie Viljoen-Massyn and Fenella Somerville assisted in the preparation of the book manuscript. We are grateful to the funders who made this work possible: the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the UK Department of International Develop- ment (DFID) (award number ES/NO10094/1) and the NRF (grant number 86540). Our colleagues at the UFS in the Higher Education and Human Development research group and the School of Education at the University of Nottingham have provided us with a collegial environment for undertaking our research, as did our colleagues across the ESRC-NRF Higher Education Pathways project (2015–2018). Stakeholder meetings in Gauteng provided valuable feedback on the way, as did presentations at various keynotes, conferences and seminars, which stimulated us to think and rethink our analysis and interpretations. In particular, we are grateful to Sandra Boni, Melis Cin, Joan DeJaeghere, Tristan McCowan, Paul Ashwin, Ina Conradie, Stephanie Allais, Ahmed Bawa, Russell Davies, Emily Henderson, Faith Mkwananzi, Nelson Nkhoma and the late Brenda Leibowitz. Each of us owes a personal debt to our partners and family members (human and canine). Melanie thanks Ian for his usual patience and encouragement and Brodie for always being so joyful, as well as her sister Vicki for her support. Monica thanks Iraj, her three children, their partners and six grandchildren for making life rich and rewarding, especially in difficult times. Mikateko is grateful to Lazlo for his encouragement and for

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LOW-INCOME STUDENTS, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

being her sounding board as always; she also thanks her parents, Virginia and Godfrey Mathebula, and her sisters, Makungu and Vukosi, for their love and support. Patience thanks her husband, Tinashe, for his support and constructive discussions, as well as her children, Jamie and Christian, for their encouragement, curiosity and unending questions.

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CHAPTER 1

Raising ‘learning outcomes’ for inclusive higher education The Miratho Project

In rural South Africa during times of floods some villages become stranded and children cannot reach schools in other villages. To prevent the disruption of their children’s education, communities build makeshift bridges, known in Tshivenda as ‘Miratho’. These bridges are rickety, therefore it takes courage on the part of parents and students to traverse them when they might collapse at any moment. Over a period of five years, our 1 research project followed the educational experiences, from leaving school to graduat- 2 ing, of about 60 university students from low-income rural and township households in South Africa. We called the project Miratho because these bridges symbolise the determination of such students and their families to work together to pursue education for a better future for all, in the face of severe obstacles and risks. Tintswalo is one such student who has pulled through against many odds. His secondary school in a rural village was dilapidated and the only resources were textbooks which he carried with him through the bush to school and back to his home ten kilometres away, so that the goats in the school’s village would not eat them during the night. His teachers and an uncle encouraged him, and he achieved the grades to enter ‘Country University’, a rural historically disadvantaged university, to study for a BEd in agriculture and biology. At university, bursaries were delayed, but he managed to eat enough and pay rent with help from his family. Life was tough in his first two years at Country. Learning in English was difficult and his access to computers was limited, but he enjoyed his course, and his friends were like brothers who kept him going. He worked extremely hard, focused on his dreams for a better life and gained in confidence. Tintswalo is now teaching Life Sciences at his old secondary school and is living at his family home. He would like to obtain a PhD. However, as we shall show, by no means have all the students’ journeys so far have ended with employment or further study.

1

2

Our project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Department for Inter- national Development (DFID), now known as the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (grant number ES/NO10094/1), with supplementary funding from the National Research Foundation (NRF) (grant number 86540). The project was funded till September 2020, with a no-cost extension to June 2021. A total of 66 students were included for the first interviews in 2017 and 58 by the last in 2020, with an informal follow-up in 2021. Originally, we had planned for 48 interviews across four universities, but the Thusanani Foundation non-governmental organisation (NGO) asked us to include Rural University. In some universities we were able to recruit more than 12 students.

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LOW-INCOME STUDENTS, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

What the Miratho participants have in common is the battle to get into university, to flourish at university, and to transition to work or further study. As researcher Nic Spaull (in Nxumalo 2021: 1) has pointed out, while degree-entry grade 12 passes have increased by 7% since 2011, university enrolment has grown by just 2.7% since the same year. Spaull (Nxumalo 2021) recounts the 2016 Davis Tax Committee report which gave a stark glimpse into access to higher education: Only 10% of children from the poorest 70% of the population qualify to go to university, compared to 40% of children from the wealthiest 10% of the population. As Spaull (in Nxumalo 2021: 1) explains, ‘The children of the wealthy are likely to get to university because the children of the wealthy are more likely to attend functional schools which give them the passes that they require to gain entry to university’. We can assume that the challenges for the 70% are significant. The call for funded research proposals in 2015 to which we responded was focused on ‘raising learning outcomes in education systems in challenging contexts’. Miratho had two main aims. First, the project aimed to investigate how complex biographical, socio-economic, policy, and educational factors interact to enable or inhibit pathways for rural and township youth to get into, get on, and get out of higher education with valuable learning outcomes. Second, we aimed to explore a theoretical approach for understanding higher education learning outcomes which considers students from low-income backgrounds who face multi-dimensional challenges when pursuing education. In this book we will discuss what we learned of the students’ lives and how we conceptualised the multi-dimensional benefits that such students value and can accrue from a university education. In parallel, we discuss the limitations on benefit- ting, resulting from students’ university experiences, their personal circumstances and the broader socio-economic context. In the rest of this chapter, we first locate our research within a commitment to human development defined as expanding people’s freedoms and opportunities towards improving their well-being. In this definition, higher education is one of society’s public goods. Next, we outline our research methodology and methods and introduce the capability domains which are the product of the research. Finally, we sketch the main argument of the book as it unfolds chapter by chapter.

Rationale for pursuing the human development capability approach (CA)

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 2020) defines human develop- ment simply:

Thehumandevelopmentapproachisaboutexpandingtherichnessofhumanlife, rather than simply the richness of the economy in which human beings live. It is an approach that is focused on creating fair opportunities and choices for all people.

Human development focuses on human flourishing and freedom from poverty and other deprivations. Having followed our South African students from low-income backgrounds through tribulations and some triumphs as they tenaciously pursued a university education for six years or more, our commitment to human development

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RAISING ‘LEARNING OUTCOMES’ FOR INCLUSIVE HIGHER EDUCATION

principles and goals has been strengthened. The Miratho students’ experience of poverty is a legacy of colonialism and apartheid, not least in the historical imposition of rural ‘bantustans’ or ‘homelands’ set aside for Africans and segregated urban townships (see Ross 1999), which are the sites of the home communities of these students. We aim to produce evidence and an argument for proposing that South African universities’ contribution in social transformation and human development should have a dual focus: on mitigating the effects of material deprivations and redistributing material resources more justly, which we understand as integral to the decolonisation project; and, on a wider set of opportunities and freedoms for students from low-income households. In turn, the expansion of such freedoms can have a positive impact on social development and the public good. The capability approach is grounded in human development. It was developed with a focus on poverty reduction by the welfare economist Amartya Sen (1985, 1999) who is committed to human development and social justice. Later, Martha Nussbaum (1997, 2000, 2003, 2010, 2011) took up Sen’s ideas, bringing in a philosophical perspec- tive to the capability approach and producing her own set of ten ‘universal’ capability dimensions. Since then, the approach has been applied in many social fields, including education. The capability lens has the power to illuminate both the conscious and delibera- tive aspects of human agency (the decisions and choices that students make) and how structural inequalities present barriers to students’ success. In the terminology of the approach, ‘capability’ is the opportunity and freedom to make choices in life, while ‘functioning’ is an achieved being or doing. We employ this approach because it enables us to investigate and evaluate the fair distribution of what matters to people in the form of capabilities and functionings. As Mahbub ul Haq (2003: 17) elucidates, ‘the basic purposes of [human] develop- ment is to enlarge people’s choices’. While a definition of human development might be simple, the actualisation of such a vision is complex and requires demanding transfor- mations across multiple economic and social arenas. In this book, we argue that the mainstream discourse of learning outcomes in education does not offer sufficiently expansive conceptual and theoretical purchase on the highly complex problem of educational success, which should encompass economic, social, historical-colonial, political, cultural, and psychological aspects of human life. Rather than restricting focus to pre-specified ends of curricula and pedagogy, our conceptualisation is grounded in human development applied toalla university education, linking opportuni-aspects of ties, processes, and outcomes. The Miratho students are human individuals trying to set themselves apart from a crisis of poverty and inequality in the world, exacerbated now by Covid-19. In 2018 3 the World Bank declared that it had set itself the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 by reducing the share of the global population living on less than USD 1.90 a day (about ZAR 30), and by increasing the incomes of the poorest 40% of people in every country. Even such modest goals are in serious jeopardy. After 15 years of progress in eradicating poverty, Covid-19 pushed approximately 124 million more people below the poverty line in 2020 (Van Trotsenburg 2021). Calculations indicate that the pandemic’s potential impact on multi-dimensional poverty reduction is between 3.6 and 9.9 years

3

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/30326

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