It is necessary to think and act differently to achieve better retention and success at tertiary institutions. As the number of students at risk of abandoning their studies continues to grow, urgent interventions must be made to stop the decline, a recent study shows.

Conducted by Megan du Plessis of The Independent Institute of Education (IIE) and Rene Benecke of the University of Johannesburg (UJ), the study investigated a group of first-year students who were identified as being “at risk”, but who had received provisional passes to progress to the second semester.

The aim of the study was to try to understand whether or not students knew about and used the support services that were available to them. Most institutions have support for first years; but unless we can understand why they are or are not used and how effective they are, their impact on retention and success will remain in question.

According to reported statistics from the Council on Higher Education, 40% of students who enrol in higher education institutions will never get a qualification, and 50% of that same group will take five years to graduate.

A third of those assisted by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme of South Africa — at a cost of about R5.7 billion — will drop out while another third will not complete their degrees on time.

The research of Du Plessis and Benecke sought to establish why the open doors to higher education too often became “revolving doors”. You need to know that you need help, and you need to believe that the help will make a difference if you are to make effective use thereof.

The study found that most of the students in the group did not make use of the services, although almost all knew about the services. They seemed to lack an understanding of what the services could offer as well as a motivation to make use of them – probably based on the lack of understanding.

The study concluded that it was therefore necessary to build an active bridge between support services and students, and it was insufficient to provide information and encouragement on a general basis. This bridge needs to be individualised – it must make sense to the individual student how the services will help address their individual challenge.

Ways of doing this include one-on-one discussions or letters, or other forms of communication from the lecturer or the tutor to the student concerned; or a direct approach from the service to the student, detailing how the service can address a particular need such as test preparation, academic writing or time management. These need to be individualised based on student conduct or performance such as a failed test, plagiarised assignment or poor attendance.

Dr Felicity Coughlan, director of the IIE, says that the widely differing school experiences tertiary students have had, coupled with real differences in family familiarity with the demands of higher education and thus home-based support, as well as the actual requirements of higher education, meant that new students represented a complex array of better and less prepared young people.

“Irrespective of their intellect and potential, students who are not equipped with the skills they need to navigate and negotiate the specific requirements of higher education, start with a real structural disadvantage that too often results in failure,” she explains.

“It is not about how smart you are; it is about the extent to which you are able to apply that smartness appropriately for this context. In South Africa, we do not provide all young people with the same starting point.”

Coughlan says that at one institution, it was found that one in every four first-year students in the faculty of economic and management sciences abandoned their studies before the end of the first year. This phenomenon can be observed across all disciplines and places of higher learning.

“The joint IIE/UJ study found that while parents admire their children for being able to further their education, they are often not able to offer the support students need. Therefore, there emerges a clear responsibility on the part of the institution of higher learning to assist students in familiarising themselves with the new culture, and to assist them with making the transition from the school system,” she notes.

Coughlan says that even where students acknowledged difficulties, they were mostly not aware of the availability of support services and facilities; and when they were, they did not make sufficient use of such services.

Motivation is a complex issue, as it rests on a belief that a different outcome is possible. It is thus important to get to students before they feel hopeless about succeeding. Once that sense of hope has diminished, motivation to put in the effort to work harder or differently is difficult to initiate.

“To address this challenge, at least in the short- to medium term, it is necessary for teaching staff to actively steer students in the right direction and strictly monitor their progress,” she adds.

Coughlan says the study highlighted several strategies that could be used at institutions, and these concur with more generalised understandings of the needs of first-year students. These include:

• Prioritising effective, structured tutoring that is carried out by competent educators and not only senior students, which makes the link between the classroom and success explicit;
• Renewed vigour and a willingness to assist among lecturing staff and other support services – services need to recognise that students do not always know what they need, so waiting for them to come to you may not work;
• Involving students in a variety of academic activities so that the individual needs can be met – for some, this would involve tutoring while for others, supplemental instruction or peer support would work better while for others computer-based activities would be more successful;
• More considered planning and implementation of orientation activities so that students can experience the impact of support services rather than simply being told about them – active workshops teaching the skills of engaged reading, for instance, will have a better impact than talks about reading for meaning; and
• Stricter monitoring of attendance, including following up soon with students who are not attending.