Postgraduate student retention and success pot

Tables and figures vPreface vi Abbreviations and acronyms xv 1฀ The฀study’s฀origins฀and฀motivations฀ 1 1.1 Introduction 11.2 The background 11.3 Personal motivation for the study 61.4 Th

Charlton Koen

Postgraduate student retention and success:

A South African case study

© 2007 Human Sciences Research Council

Copyedited by Laurie Rose-Innes

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Tables and figures v

Preface vi

Abbreviations and acronyms xv

1฀ The฀study’s฀origins฀and฀motivations฀ 1

1.1 Introduction 11.2 The background 11.3 Personal motivation for the study 61.4 The scope of the retention problem in South Africa 81.5 The scope of the retention problem at UWC 91.6 General explanations for retention difficulties in South Africa 141.7 Explanations in research on master’s students 16

1.8 Explanation gaps 171.9 Conclusion 19

2฀ The฀analytical฀framework฀ 21

2.1 Introduction 212.2 General theoretical approaches 222.3 Tinto’s theoretical approach 252.4 Criticisms of Tinto’s views, and retention characteristics identified in

other theories 262.5 The theoretical model of this study 282.6 Data and method: why a case study? 342.7 Research techniques 35

2.8 Data analysis 392.9 Limitations of the research 392.10 Conclusion 40

3฀ ฀Review฀of฀literature฀on฀master’s฀students฀in฀

South฀Africa฀ 41

3.1 Introduction 413.2 Factors affecting student performance 433.3 The quality problem 46

3.4 Routinising conduct 483.5 Research evidence and academic anecdotes 493.6 Research themes and findings from institutional research 513.7 Findings on policy-related objectives 52

3.8 The natural sciences model as a proposed solution 543.9 What can we learn from this? 56

4.1 Focus of the chapter 594.2 Tinto’s model of social and academic integration 604.3 Baird’s institutional integration perspective 654.4 Bean’s person-fit model 67

4.5 Research findings on retention 684.6 Conclusion 75

5฀ ฀Academic฀organisation฀and฀institutional฀

features฀at฀UWC฀ 77

5.1 Introduction 775.2 Institutional type and key features 775.3 The adequacy of institutional resources at UWC 805.4 Academic goal-setting at UWC 84

5.5 Change, ‘integration’ and student-staff growth patterns 885.6 The influence of financial variables at UWC 96

5.7 Adaptations and improvements at UWC 965.8 Conclusion 97

Appendix฀ 99 References฀ 105

Table 2.1 NRF scholarships for master’s dissertation students at UWC, 1986/87–

1999/2000 32Table 4.1 Baird’s perspective on institutional integration 66

Table 4.2 Organisational and individual factors promoting retention and success 71

Table 4.3 Organisational, academic and psychological obstacles to retention 73

Table 5.1 Enrolment patterns, 1960–2003 89

Table 5.2 Student enrolment change by race, 1965–2003 89

Table 5.3 Permanent academic staff and student numbers, 1979–2000 95

Figures

Figure 2.1 Institutional and socialisation interactions 24

Figure 3.1 Master’s and doctoral enrolments 45

Figure 3.2 Master’s and doctoral graduations 45

Figure 4.1 Tinto’s person-fit model 63

Figure 4.2 Bean’s person-fit model 68

in the area of human resources development and publishing prolifically Ironically, during the month of June he had taken leave to attempt to complete some of the final chapters of his PhD, for which he had been registered in the Faculty of Education at the University

of the Western Cape since 2002 His thesis was entitled ‘Factors influencing the retention and success of South African postgraduate students, a case study of master’s students at the University of the Western Cape’ I was his supervisor.1

The five chapters of this monograph comprise Part 1 of Charlton Koen’s PhD thesis After the Introduction (Chapter 1), they cover the theoretical perspectives underpinning his PhD study (Chapter 2) and literature reviews of HE studies on student retention by South African writers (Chapter 3) and international writers (Chapter 4), concluding with a case study of the University of the Western Cape (Chapter 5) Part 1 provided a background and context for the data analysis chapters (Chapters 6–9) in Part 2, focusing on master’s student retention and success at UWC during the period 1996–2002 Part 2 of his PhD was incomplete and, thus, is not included here

It must be stressed that all five chapters of Part 1 had been written up in complete form at the time of his death.2 Moreover, it might be noted that it is unusual for the first part of a PhD to be in such complete form before the data analysis chapters of the second part have been well constructed Here it must be borne in mind that Charlton had already written up some of his core quantitative findings on UWC master’s and doctoral student retention and success, as well as having undertaken a qualitative analysis of some of the student experiences, based

near-on his data collectinear-on (a survey and a series of in-depth interviews) as part of a UWC

1 Although I have always been based at the University of Cape Town, in the Department of Sociology, I worked for nearly a decade in the 1990s on research in the field of HES, and was linked to the UWC Education Policy Unit (EPU), now the Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE), initiated and directed by Harold Wolpe until his death in

1996 During 2001–04, I was seconded part-time to UWC to direct a coursework master’s programme in HES based in the Faculty of Education and linked to the EPU Charlton Koen moved from the Department of Sociology at UWC to join the EPU as a researcher in 1999, and in 2002 he registered for his PhD at UWC under my supervision In 2004, he left the EPU for a position as a senior researcher at the HSRC in Cape Town.

2 Since these chapters were virtually complete, I have only undertaken very minor editing, which has mainly involved: inserting occasional academic points or phrases of clarification; adding some bibliographical references, which were incomplete or omitted; and very occasionally filling in some cells within data tables, which were empty or unfinished

I deliberately did not attempt to edit his arguments or his frequent sharp or critical commentaries (some of these were posed in a starker way than I would have put them, but I decided to leave Charlton’s work to ‘speak’ in the way he had left it within the nearly complete chapters) I am also extremely grateful to Laurie Rose-Innes, who had previously undertaken a style/language edit of one or two pieces Charlton had written while at the HSRC, and who agreed here

to undertake a similar edit of the five chapters (both Charlton’s and my own styles are sometimes overly ‘academic’ and convoluted, so it was valuable to attain the excellent services of someone like Laurie to streamline the style of text

study led by himself as researcher in the Education Policy Unit (EPU) during 1999–

2001 (see Koen 2001a, discussed below) Thus, the order of his work was in effect:

firstly, UWC data collection and initial data analysis during 1999–2001 (leading to the

publication of Koen 2001a, also Koen 1999 and 2000, and later 2003a); thereafter,

the theoretical and literature review/analysis in 2002–04 (resulting in Part 1 of the

PhD, the five chapters of this monograph); then, more extensive data analysis and

final writing up of Part 2, scheduled for 2005–6 Although Chapters 6–9 were never

completed, some core data analysis can be found in Koen 2001a.3

It must be stressed, too, that I have assisted in this publication of Part 1 of his PhD

thesis not merely in memory of a colleague and doctoral supervisee The most

important reason for publication is that I believe the chapters of this monograph

comprise the best theoretical work thus far by a South African researcher in

the emergent field of HES Not only is this work very good in conceptual terms

(theoretical frameworks and reviews of international perspectives and findings), but

it is also extremely well rooted in empirical data (the unfinished work of Part 2)

Thus, it ‘obeys’ Charlton Koen’s own injunction to South African researchers in HES

that they should ‘stop writing based largely on anecdotal evidence and their personal

experiences of universities’, and rather ‘get down to some serious empirical research’

before putting out academic articles about issues on which they have undertaken

very little serious empirical investigation (see my brief discussion below, and Koen’s

extended argument, especially in Chapter 3 of this monograph) To conclude this

point, the real value in the publication of the monograph, therefore, is not primarily

to honour and remember him in relation to his research work, but to enable the

quality of his analyses in the field of HES, with particular reference to his PhD study,

to reach a South African and international audience

In the light of the above, it is also important to summarise how the five chapters

published here might be viewed and read This part of the PhD can be read as a

unity, and stands alone as a significant contribution Nonetheless, while reading

these chapters, it is important to bear in mind that Koen saw them as providing the

scaffolding for the later analysis of the UWC master’s student data, which were to

follow in Part 2 of his thesis Thus, it is important to consider carefully the outline

Koen does provide, in Part 1, of his research methodologies underpinning the UWC

data to be analysed in Part 2 This outline includes:

• his own personal motivation for the study, and perceived gaps in existing South

African HES (Chapter 1.3 and 1.8, respectively); and

• his use of the following data-collection methods:

– a self-completion questionnaire sent to over 1 000 UWC master’s and doctoral students,

– in-depth interviews of nearly 100 UWC academic staff and postgraduates, – in-depth case studies of postgraduate programmes in two UWC academic departments, and

– extensive collection of documents, as well as informal participant observation, while he was at UWC for several years (all described in Chapter 2.7, followed

by sections on data analysis and limitations of the data in Chapter 2.8 and 2.9, respectively)

3 See also the appendix at the end of this monograph, where a short document, ‘Overview and structure of the PhD

thesis’, written by Charlton Koen shortly before his death is included This document provides a useful guide to how

Chapters 1–5 of Part 1 relate to the chapters that were to follow in Part 2.

Since Part 2 of the PhD was never completed, the interested reader may wish to refer

to Charlton Koen’s earlier research report on some of this UWC data on master’s and doctoral retention and success, by consulting Koen (2001a).4 In addition, at occasional points in this monograph, I have added, in brackets, references to either Koen (2001a) or to the unfinished data analysis of Part 2, in order to clarify the place

of the latter work in relation to the chapters included here (see also the appendix to this monograph).5 I hope this locates his arguments in the broader analytical context, which was always his intention

It is must be emphasised that there is a conceptual thread running right through Charlton’s PhD thesis, including the five chapters of the monograph, which is well captured in its essentials in a draft of the ‘Abstract’ that he was writing for his thesis (as found on his computer):

This study examines postgraduate academic practice and interactions within the academic community at UWC that promote or impede student success from 1996 to 2002 The purpose is to provide a social science analysis

of the academic organisation, the experience of master’s and doctoral students, and of organised activities to promote retention and success…

International research studies on retention and success of masters and doctoral students emphasise that retention and success are dependent on the knowledge creation opportunities at universities and how well students adjust to the knowledge environment Important characteristics of retention further involve economic security, psychological motivations to succeed, organisational interaction between students and academics, the organisation

of academic activity and the way in which students fit into an institution In studying these issues, this research builds on the work of Vincent Tinto and other Parsonian functionalists

Despite the abstract being incomplete, all the core components of the conceptual

thread of his PhD thesis are contained in these lines:

• that the academic practices and interactions within an academic community

like UWC are essential to the success and retention of master’s (and doctoral) students;

• that how a university and the departments within it actually organise their postgraduate activities is vital for the well-being and satisfaction of the

institution’s postgraduates;

• that the specific experiences of master’s students need to be carefully

investigated and analysed, in order to grasp the problems of student retention and success;

4 Koen (2001a) ‘Improving time-to-degree among master’s and doctoral students at the University of the Western Cape’, available in the library of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education, UWC, where copies of most other publications

by Charlton Koen are held Note also, those of Charlton Koen’s publications that have been directly cited in Chapters 1–5 here have been included in the references at the end of this monograph A much more extensive listing of his work during 1999–2005 (research reports, journal articles, conference papers and seminar papers) was compiled shortly after his death by his colleagues in the ESSD Research Programme of the HSRC and may be consulted at the end of the publication of his two final research papers, assembled in memory of Charlton (see Koen 2006)

5 For this appendix and a listing of references, as well as Chapters 1–5 in their latest form before Charlton died, I am very grateful to his wife Eleanor and sister Karin who, despite the pain of their loss, undertook to find this PhD thesis work on Charlton’s home computer I am also indebted to his colleagues at the ESSD, particularly Andre Kraak, Glenda Kruss and Sharon Flemmit, and to Allison Fullard of the CSHE library, who all assisted me in numerous ways I should also add that in a short ‘Acknowledgements’ found on his computer as draft for his PhD thesis, he specifically stated:

‘I wish to thank: my family, colleagues at the Centre for the Study of Higher Education, particularly the former chief

• that a postgraduate culture (embedded in the organisation of postgraduate

systems and activities), which a university is meant to nurture, needs to be understood as a vital internal factor that facilitates the retention and success

of master’s students – a factor as important as (if not more important than) the

external factors of economic security (e.g financial support) and broader political (e.g apartheid) and socio-economic (e.g social class) forces;

socio-• that the specific contribution of his PhD study, unlike previous South African

studies of postgraduate students, is to make transparent, via detailed empirical

work, the important role of these knowledge environment factors within UWC

itself (or rather, to reveal the absence of many such postgraduate support factors

internal to this institution); moreover, these internal university factors have

been pointed to by a range of international research studies over the past few decades, with the work of Vincent Tinto, based on a Parsonian functionalist

approach to institutional culture, having laid a foundation for theoretical

analyses of postgraduate practices within HE institutions, including Koen’s own analysis

The short discussion of the various chapters of the monograph, below, shows how

this conceptual thread and its core components are weaved through each of the five

chapters, in an interesting and novel sequence by Charlton Koen in Part 1 of his

thesis

Charlton Koen the researcher: the impact of UWC on his work

Before tracing this thread through the chapters, it is relevant to outline very briefly

some aspects of Charlton Koen the researcher, including his close and intense

experiences over two decades (from the mid-1980s until 2004) of UWC and its

institutional academic culture This is important, firstly because, as he outlines in

the initial chapter, his PhD thesis can only be understood in relation to his ‘personal

motivation for the study’ (Chapter 1.3) Secondly, as it becomes clear across the

monograph and, in particular, with reference to the case study of UWC in Chapter 5

(‘Academic organisation and institutional features at UWC’), the historical shape and

culture of this university provide the institutional context/framework within which all

his data analysis (the missing Part 2) of master’s student retention and success needs

to be located Therefore, although some information is provided by Charlton of his

own history at UWC (especially in Chapter 1.3, and with comments elsewhere in the

monograph), it is pertinent here to provide a summary of some of his experience

within the institution

His analysis of UWC during the period of his PhD work (2002–2005) is shaped by

his earlier experiences as a student and later as a lecturer within the institution

After completing high school, he began as an undergraduate in 1984, attaining his

BA with a major in sociology in 1986 at UWC He completed an honours degree in

the Sociology Department during 1988–89,6 and subsequently completed a master’s

degree in sociology, while employed as a lecturer in the same department, during

1996–97, before registering for his PhD in 2002 All these years as a student at

undergraduate and especially at postgraduate level provided him with deep insights

(and potential biases, I would suggest), in relation to theorising the central issues

6 I served as an external examiner for this sociology honours class, and recall recommending to Professor Jeff Lever as

convenor of the UWC sociology postgraduate programme that Charlton Koen was clearly an ‘excellent scholar in the

of his PhD thesis around the retention and success of master’s students at UWC Probably even more important than his student experiences, in shaping his ideas about UWC, was his employment there as a lecturer in the Department of Sociology:

he was employed as a lecturer, initially on a part-time basis and then full-time, throughout the period 1989–99, after which he moved to the EPU (within the Faculty

of Education) as a full-time research officer from 1999–2004 In fact, he clearly

‘served’ as a ‘participant observer’ or ‘semi-researcher’ of UWC itself over the period 1984–2004 Undoubtedly, as he notes (perhaps not strongly enough) in Chapter 1, this shaped his interpretations of the data he collected for his PhD study

He undertook some formal research fieldwork in relation to his honours and master’s dissertations while a lecturer (e.g Koen & Roux 1992a and b) However, like many lecturers at UWC, his heavy teaching loads limited the amount of serious research possible Hence, his real research career began on joining the EPU This can be observed in terms of his research publications, which grew and expanded greatly during the years 1999–2005 at the EPU (see the steady increase in his research publications, in the bibliography provided by his colleagues in Koen 2006) Indeed, it needs to be recognised that during this period, this quiet and unassuming researcher was becoming one of the most productive research workers, especially in terms of high-quality publications, in HES in South Africa He continued this trend as a senior researcher at the HSRC from around mid-2004 until his death His move to the HSRC was based on a decision to locate himself in an environment that might further enhance his research development It is pertinent here that while conducting research within the EPU/CSHE of UWC, he again was a de facto ‘participant observer’ of this university with respect to all its strengths and weaknesses, especially now in relation

to its institutional practices and culture around research activities (within the EPU

and Faculty of Education, in particular) Moreover, as a registered PhD student at this university, he experienced direct personal contact with its ‘PhD culture’ and issues around this

Thus, the point of the above is not only to provide some additional biographical elements; it is also to stress that any reader of this monograph needs to appreciate Charlton Koen’s long involvement, over two decades, as student, lecturer and researcher within the very ‘veins and capillaries’ of UWC as an institution

Undoubtedly, this deep insertion into UWC shaped the research of his PhD during the period up to 2005 in significant and complex ways

Chapters 1 and 2: setting the framework

As suggested above, there is a thread of core components in Charlton Koen’s analysis, which runs through the five chapters (and also the chapters of the incomplete Part 2) Essentially, the purpose of the first two chapters of the monograph is to set the overall framework of the analysis

In Chapter 1, Koen confronts the reader with statistical data and some qualitative material indicating serious problems with respect to throughput rates and ‘drop-out’

of students, especially at postgraduate levels, at South African universities, including UWC He does this, in part, with illustrations of findings from his own investigation

of master’s and doctoral students during 1999–2001 (Koen 2001a), which formed the baseline for his PhD work He shows also how the thrust of the recommendations (in Koen 2001a) derived from his research data is around improvements needed at UWC,

with respect to enhancing the internal systems, practices and culture of postgraduate

studies within departments Anticipating arguments in the chapters to follow, he

briefly opens the debate about:

• the lack of serious empirical research in the field of HES on master’s and

doctoral students in South Africa and the problems they face; and

• the quite prolific expansion of empirical research on postgraduate retention

and success in the field of HES internationally after the 1970s, with important findings emerging from this, but about which studies (especially of American and European universities) most academic commentators and researchers in South Africa seem blissfully ignorant

Thus, the scene is set for taking up, in Chapters 3 and 4, these questions and

‘explanation gaps’ (see Chapter 1.8) in South African HES research However, prior

to this, in Chapter 2, Koen provides an introduction to the theories and perspectives

of Vincent Tinto, the doyen of HES research into student retention and success in the

USA since the 1970s, whose findings stress the central socialisation role played by

the institutional organisational structures, practices and culture within a university in

enhancing throughput and reducing student withdrawal He concludes this chapter

with some discussion of how Tinto’s work (taking into account criticisms thereof

by international writers) can be fruitfully utilised for his own PhD study of master’s

students at UWC

Chapter 3: a sharp critique of South African research and

scholarship on higher education

This chapter, one of the best in the monograph, is a trenchant critique of research

in the field of HES in South Africa over the past decade Koen does not mince his

words, and is prepared to take on some ‘leading lights’ who have ventured into this

field of scholarship with their publications on South African universities Some of his

central points are as follows

Most South African writers are non-specialists in this new international area of

research, and draw mainly on anecdotes and personal experiences of the universities

in which they are based, to pass comment in ‘research articles’, which require much

more thorough empirical investigation before ‘hasty’ conclusions can be made

Essentially, this is a call by Charlton for South African scholars to take much more

seriously the field of HE research theories and the findings that have emerged

internationally, and to build local ‘research knowledge’ in these areas where currently

very little ‘hard’ (quantitative) or ‘rich’ (qualitative) data exists with respect to our

universities and universities of technology

Partly because of an absence of serious local research, and because of a general

dependence on ‘currently accepted theories about South African society’, the existing

South African literature on student retention and success (and on other areas of

university life) significantly over-stresses what Koen terms external factors These

include the historical apartheid system (students are perceived to be poorly prepared

for university study by badly functioning high schools, hence they drop out),

socio-economic conditions at home (financial constraints lead to poor student throughput

and withdrawal) and insufficient financing of universities by the government

(resulting in high student-staff ratios, leading to withdrawal of master’s students

because of lack of contact with staff and poor thesis supervision) It is not that

Koen denies or ignores such external factors Rather, his point is to call for a serious

investigation of what he calls internal factors.

An understanding of internal factors, particularly those within departments, requires

a theoretical perspective that addresses questions of ‘socialisation’ and ‘social

interaction’ of master’s (and other) students within the academic milieu, at the level

of ‘micro-structures’ Such internal factors are outlined by Koen in Chapter 3, in order

to highlight how his own PhD study was constructed (via the survey questionnaire, in-depth interviews, case studies and document collection), specifically to address the influence of such university microstructures and practices and their associated

‘postgraduate culture’ Thus, he orients many of his own research questions around factors such as: the interaction between supervisors and master’s students, and interactions within a department between staff and students and among students themselves; the rules and systems in place in an academic department to develop and enhance the internal organisation and coherence of its postgraduate programmes; and general activities within a department and faculty to develop and enhance a culture of learning and scholarly attitudes towards rigorous research

In the data analysis in Part 2 of his PhD thesis, he explains that he certainly will give weight to external factors such as financial and home constraints facing master’s students, and factors such as the historical under-resourcing of UWC Nonetheless, he notes that he will analyse and assess, in particular, the internal factors impacting on master’s students at the micro-levels of this university Although Part 2 is incomplete, his earlier report on some of his data, in Koen (2001a), shows consistent investigation

and analysis of both ‘external’ and ‘internal’ factors, in terms of the theoretical

approach he developed for his thesis

Numerous other components are discussed in this chapter, with respect to his framework of ‘external’ and ‘internal’ factors Suffice it to say that Charlton Koen’s analysis in Chapter 3 is a real contribution to the furtherance of quality research and scholarship in the emergent field of HES, and deserves to be taken seriously by a wide range of commentators (both academic and non-academic) at our South African universities

Chapter 4: learning from international empirical studies of student retention

This chapter follows from his critique in the previous one of the ‘absences’ and

‘misdirection’ of much current South African scholarship with respect to research into our own higher education systems and practices Here in Chapter 4, Koen undertakes

a review of a wide range of international scholarly work in the sub-area of ‘retention and success’ within the field of HES

A particular strength of this chapter is the enormous number of international studies that Koen managed to locate and critically review It is a product of hard work and sustained searching and analysis of the literature of the past three decades When I first read the draft of this chapter (in 2004), I was quite taken aback by the quantity

of international in-depth studies he had located Another strength is his careful and detailed review of the work of Tinto and numerous other scholars working in this area, especially in the USA and Europe and sometimes elsewhere An additional strength is the way he applies his critical mind to all the international writers,

being prepared to highlight that which might not apply in South Africa, yet always

having an eye for how these writers can inform (or not inform) his own empirical

investigations and analyses

This review of the international literature in the sub-area of ‘retention and success’

is a real feat, and deserves to be read by anyone interested in what international

scholars are writing about on questions of student retention and especially on

issues of postgraduate organisational systems and culture at the level of academic

microstructures

Chapter 5: problematising academic culture and institutional

practice at UWC

In this chapter, we have one of the best (if not the best) existing analyses of the

history and current organisational shape and practices of a South African university

This is an excellent case study of UWC and, as noted above, it was to provide the

‘sociological scaffolding’ for the data analysis in Part 2 of his PhD The chapter is well

worth a read on its own, and perhaps should be published separately in a collection

of case studies of some of our universities during the period of the 1960s–1990s This

chapter should be considered carefully, and I will not explore its main arguments

here, except to point out the following as background

Some of the richness of Charlton Koen’s historical and contemporary analysis in this

chapter is due to his own participation in the institutional practices of UWC over

many years following his first registration there as an undergraduate in 1984 Its

value flows also from his access to, and systematic collection of, a very wide range

of documents and statistical data from within UWC itself, with some of the material

going back to the 1980s and earlier

Charlton is very critical of his Alma Mater in this chapter In particular, he argues that

although due weight should be given to its apartheid history of under-resourcing

of financial and academic inputs, this alone cannot explain some of its serious

postgraduate and research deficiencies, which impact directly on the retention and

success of the master’s students whom he had studied for his PhD thesis Rather, he

maintains that the ideology from the late 1980s of UWC becoming an ‘Intellectual

Home of the Left’ had an underdeveloped conception of the importance of rigorous

scholarship and research Parallel to this, he argues that there existed within UWC a

weakly constructed understanding of the importance of building solid departmental

microstructures of organisational practice and culture, especially to enhance the

research activities of postgraduate students and academic staff

Thus, in many ways, Chapter 5 is both unusually rigorous in empirical investigation

and unusually critical about a university in which the researcher participated for 20

years As noted above, the text has been retained as it was at the time of Charlton’s

death, and readers must judge his arguments as put forward by him in this chapter

Conclusion

This conclusion is necessarily brief Charlton Koen’s untimely death was a great

and unexpected shock to his family, friends and work colleagues Therefore, this

publication is bounded by grief and regret about what might have been Charlton’s

future, as a husband and father and extended-family member and scholarly colleague Nonetheless, it is hoped that the monograph serves to contain and bind together some of his richest sociological thoughts – about society, universities and students, and about how good institutional practices can be built in order to enhance research, scholarship and student training within our HE system.

AD academic development

CHE Council on Higher Education

DoE Department of Education

HB historically black

HBT historically black technikon

HBU historically black university

HE higher education

HEMIS Higher Education Management Information System

HEQC Higher Education Quality Committee

HWU historically white university

NPHE National Plan for Higher Education

NRF National Research Foundation

PET Postgraduate Enrolment and Throughput

SANTED South African Norwegian Tertiary Education Development

SAPSE South African Post-Secondary Education

SES socio-economic status

SSR staff-student ratio

TELP Tertiary Education Linkage Programme

TSDM Total Survey Design Method

UWC University of the Western Cape

The study’s origins and motivations

Introduction

According to Russell Bernard (1988), there are five questions researchers should ask

themselves before embarking on a study He posits that there ought to be personal

interest in the topic, scope for scientific research, the availability of sufficient data,

clear scientific value to the research and no real risk of ethical problems In line

with these postulates, the approach followed in introducing this study is to start by

presenting a personal account for studying retention One reason for doing this is that

it provides insight into the lens that framed my thoughts when I began researching

the topic and writing about it However, reasons for studying retention and student

success are not solely personal The study is also worth doing for several academic

and scientific reasons Here, motivating factors include the scope of the retention

problem in South Africa, the availability of secondary data and what I describe as the

poor state of local research on retention and on the learning experiences of master’s

students

In the sections below, I address these motivations Part of this mapping exercise

involves describing the data sources and the rationale for the research model

From my personal motivation for studying retention, it is possible to locate various

academic features that suggest some institutional responsibility for the scope of

the retention problem at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) It is logical

that institutions should shoulder some blame for negative student outcomes, since

institutions provide the context within students undertake academic activities

The bulk of South African policy research on retention does not mention this

Consequently, the mapping exercise in the introduction to this study also involves an

account of the explanations offered for the retention and drop-out problems in South

Africa To further concretise the motivations for conducting the study, a description of

research gaps in the policy literature that require plugging follows this

The background

When I began researching retention in 2001, the topic had gained prominence in

South Africa (as it had earlier in many other countries) in the context of new policy

proposals contained in the National Plan for Higher Education (NPHE) The National

Plan (DoE 2001) followed the Size and Shape Report of the Council on Higher

Education (CHE 2000) Both documents highlighted that higher education (HE)

institutions in South Africa are not terribly successful in terms of a broad range of

efficiency indicators, and regarded improvements in the retention, throughput and

graduation of students as essential institutional and national goals

Despite the fact that master’s qualifications constitute an important feature of a

university’s status outputs, the CHE report and the National Plan indicated that South

African universities do not pay sufficient attention to retention at this level, or at other

levels of study This is true As in most other countries, the majority of universities

in South Africa promote their public role by celebrating success indicators like high

recruitment and graduation numbers, but have done little to address student drop-out

rates and to promote student retention Because of this, it seems that most institutions

in South Africa show little commitment to promoting the general welfare of students and do not invest enough in their own status outputs

Internationally, the retention literature abounds with cost-benefit models that highlight the financial circumstances under which institutions are likely to invest in retention efforts (see, for example, Colby 1986) One point emphasised in this literature is that retention efforts are often situational responses, because institutional finances (and sometimes survival) are threatened The argument is that financial losses arising from declining student numbers force institutions to pay greater attention to investing additional effort in retaining students Bluntly stated, some of the literature suggests that institutions tend not to be concerned with retention when their finances are

sound However, the literature indicates that when they are concerned, master’s and

doctoral students inevitably become the focal point of efforts to retain students and

to improve their completion times The principal reason for this is that the financial returns on postgraduate students tend to be much higher than for other students.The case of UWC illustrates this contention Before 1999, when student numbers dipped alarmingly and threatened the size of the state budget awarded to UWC, the university did not accord much significance to retention In the aftermath of the drop

in student numbers from about 14 500 in 1996 to about 9 500 in 1999, one UWC response involved initiating research on retention and completion rates of master’s and doctoral students Based on an interest in this topic, I undertook a research project entitled ‘Improving the completion rates of master’s and doctoral students

at the University of the Western Cape’ The research did not focus solely on to-completion’; a significant aspect related to information about why students leave Another concern was how to improve retention The data for the project emanated from an institutional review conducted as part of formulating a new Strategic Plan for UWC in 1999 Following the formulation of the Strategic Plan, UWC (through its Institutional Planning Office) obtained donor funding to extend and improve student enrolment management and the support provided to master’s and doctoral students.1The context of the research included figures for postgraduate students that showed low retention and throughput rates For example:

‘time-• between 1996 and 1998, the pass rate for honours students was about 40 per cent; and

• between 1995 and 1998, the throughput rate was 17 per cent for master’s students

One leg of the improved support involved establishing a project called Postgraduate Enrolment and Throughput (PET) The project received substantial donor funding

to marshal resources for providing master’s and doctoral students with additional research training, access to research mentors and improved access to computer and other study resources, and mentoring assistance for supervisors This aimed to improve student performance and to promote networks and the establishment of structures to assist students with their studies Through this organisational investment, the Institutional Planning Office intended to change aspects of the institution’s

1 The larger project involved linking institutional inputs, institutional processes and outcomes to strengthen enrolment management To do this, the UWC project had six components dealing with recruitment, marks tracking, administrative support, retention, graduation and employment.

support for master’s students The Office also aimed to effect quantitative changes

in the retention and completion rates of master’s and doctoral students by aligning

institutional policies and practices with a redefined institutional vision and mission

(expressed in the Strategic Plan)

Another leg of the institutional support project involved interviews with academics

and students, and administering a questionnaire to gain an improved understanding

of the experiences of academics and students, and to inform the activities of PET

The resulting data constitute the main source material used in compiling this thesis

The key findings derived from the interviews and questionnaire are outlined below

(for full report, see Koen 2001a)

The number of students enrolling for master’s and doctoral studies increased steadily

since 1984 by more than 300 per cent This contributed to a diversified postgraduate

student population that consists mainly of coloured and African students Other

notable demographic and academic features over this period include a sharp increase

in the numbers of female students, of master’s and doctoral students graduating each

year, of coursework master’s programmes and of overall research output, as well as

of master’s students not completing their studies

The growth in student numbers placed enormous strain on academic provisioning,

as many students struggled academically because they had not developed proper

research and writing skills at preceding levels The loss of scores of senior staff

members during the 1990s exacerbated the strain These factors combined to push

down the research requirements associated with master’s study, and led to new

master’s programmes starting out with students being required to complete 16–20

modules and a research paper

The median age among master’s and doctoral students was 37 years Well over half

were employed permanently (67 per cent), studied part-time (60 per cent), were

married (56 per cent), had dependants (65 per cent) and worked in order to pay their

fees (70 per cent) Most (87 per cent) contributed to family income, felt hamstrung by

economic and family responsibilities and seemed constrained by life circumstances

from completing their degrees in the minimum period

Some supervisors and students were unclear about faculty rules around the

submission of research proposals to higher degree committees and the administrative

processes involved in the completion of a mini-thesis or thesis Since procedures

and submission dates appear in university and faculty booklets and reminders are

regularly distributed within faculties, the source of this problem was ignorance,

neglect of duty and a lack of clarity around lines of responsibility within departments

Students complained bitterly about limited contact with supervisors, inadequate and

delayed feedback and the absence of clear guidance from staff Factors singled out

included academics taking leave without informing students, heavy workloads and

a lack of research competence and knowledge of different methodologies among

academics Many students also complained that they conducted research without

a clearly formulated plan or a coherently structured investigation of variables, and

that structure was only introduced into their writing towards the end of the research

Higher-degree committees often referred proposals back for basic reasons related to poor editing, inadequate formulation of the research problem, inadequate literature reviews and unsubstantiated statements Other problems identified by staff included difficulties encountered in writing in English, a lack of confidence in developing arguments, difficulties in linking variables to possible outcomes, and limited research skills

Students often lacked guidance with respect to raising scholarship money for research purposes Reasons include late registrations, only tackling the mini-thesis during the second year of a coursework master’s programme, limited information within departments about funding sources, inadequate use of notice boards to communicate information, and limited knowledge of funding sources among staff Some students complained that scholarship information became available only shortly before or after the stated application deadline

Several departments responded to the challenge of retaining students and facilitating completion by following up on students who had limited contact with their

departments While some departments lacked clear policies, others established postgraduate committees to spur on student efforts and arranged structured sessions

to bring students together Postgraduate committees were generally engaged in efforts

to improve the academic milieu by involving students in departmental activities and

in providing students with clear guidelines

The study included the following recommendations (Koen 2001a):

• Evaluate the performance of supervisors on an ongoing basis This should involve monitoring the number of candidates they supervise and their ‘time-to-degree’ To facilitate such evaluation, staff should be encouraged to have regular, scheduled meetings with students and to include a record of these in annual student progress reports

• Regulate the maximum number of students a staff member may supervise, and factor the time spent on supervision into workloads While it may be prudent to investigate international norms around this, optimal numbers should

be determined within faculties, with consideration given to the status of the students For example, supervision time for one doctoral student may be rated equivalent to supervision time for two thesis master’s students or three coursework master’s students (or five research-paper students)

• Encourage students and supervisors to draw up a set of agreements that address general issues related to supervision and issues specific to the research undertaken The latter activity could highlight the general aims and objectives, the specific tasks involved and the timescale for completion of the tasks

• Encourage faculties to compile and provide annual faculty-based feedback

on the progress and performance of master’s and doctoral students and their supervisors To facilitate such feedback, faculties should construct standard data sets that link student records to supervisor names, student topics and individual student progress reports This should build on current examples where students are required to provide six-monthly or annual progress reports

• Provide master’s students with a firm grounding in research methods While the nature of research training necessarily varies, research courses that address methodological, research design and data analysis concerns are necessary Alternatively (or in addition), statistical and research methodology consultants

should be funded to assist students on an individual basis (while quantitative research should be more strongly encouraged)

• Encourage department heads to put in place strategies to ensure that students

continue to be supervised when staff members leave the institution or take sabbatical leave Also, encourage effective department-level planning around the resources they need to support students and the expectations they have regarding faculty support

• Encourage departments to improve the general academic and research

environment by supporting seminar programme activities, actively engaging in team research that draws in students and establishing journal and other forums

in which staff and students can engage around developments in their disciplines

• Departments and faculties should be encouraged to hold general orientation

sessions to establish programme norms and expectations These sessions should involve a library support component, and should alert students to funding options and offer advice on how to write good funding proposals In addition, process issues related to topic selection, appointment of supervisors and co-supervisors, and thesis submission required clarification

• Application and registration dates for master’s students required adjustment

Some programmes only start in March and end in October This reduces a long programme to five to six months contact time and compresses the research time of senior students considerably It also results in students applying late for funding

year-The movement in this list of recommendations is from putting in place measures

to regulate supervisor behaviour to extending research training and departmental

support, to adjusting institutional regulations and promoting student involvement in

postgraduate activities The problem the study implicitly highlighted was not merely

that a degree of neglect characterised institutional provisioning, or that academics

lacked research competence Instead, the combined effects of shrinking institutional

resources and student expansion required the extension of organisational routines

Principally, this required stronger normative institutional guidelines to regulate

interactions and to provide a dual frame of accountability for academics and students

This thesis draws partly on data presented in the report of my research project

referred to above It also goes beyond the report by incorporating additional data

collection and by connecting the data to international findings on retention In

addition, the thesis places the retention analysis of UWC within a general conceptual

framework informed by international writing The main reason for a general

conceptual framework concerns the poor state of the macro-oriented South African

research on retention This formulation of the state of South African research is

important Together with my personal experience, it is responsible for the research

approach used in this study It is also responsible for the fact that the approach

incorporates the themes scattered across the relevant South African literature and for

the attempt here to expand the focus of local research

As shown below, and in more detail in Chapter 3, theoretical accounts in South

Africa are limited to identifying structural sociological factors that play a role in

student drop-out This ‘scaffold’ list of general societal factors is of limited value At

best, it provides a one-dimensional view of factors that shape retention, because it

directs attention to factors that do not speak to cultural practices withinin universities

and technikons What we have is a list of single-item macro-societal factors that

influence almost all outcomes at universities and technikons, accompanied by an absence of micro-institutional data As a consequence, we know very little about the actual factors that lead students to leave universities and technikons I contend that the conventional portrayal of drop-out in South Africa is riddled with missing data Therefore, there is an obvious need to redress the imbalance in research focus.Another reason is that findings on academic practice, the operation of communities

of practice, and student-student and academic-student interactions are necessary

to understand the actions of individuals in HE That is, understanding the impact

on retention of the institutional context in which academics and students operate

is itself a source of conceptual, empirical and analytical interest in this study

Explanations that do not take stock of the implications of social rules, mutual obligations, normative behaviour, social interaction and the co-influences of historical location and cultural practice overlook the basic fact that these features constitute foundational elements of social interaction Therefore, they need to be considered in accounts of human motives and behaviour At worst, a look at such structural aspects

of behaviour can serve to illustrate additional concerns that have to be considered in accounting for retention problems

Related to this, and based on the much more extensive American and British literature (see detailed review in Chapter 4), there clearly exists a wide range of models that do not rely on single-factor explanations For this reason, the large body of international literature on retention is pivotal to this particular study The international literature includes many salient dimensions related to institutional culture not hitherto examined in South African retention literature Therefore, examining this economic, psychological and sociological literature and testing some

of its propositions locally is important Research advances do not result simply from replication They emanate as much from engagement with research theories and data and from efforts to obtain support for theories that do not feature in a country’s research domain (see the review in Chapter 2 of Vincent Tinto’s theoretical insights for USA universities, which have been utilised in my own work here)

Indeed, the international literature seems to have much to offer It emphasises that retention explanations are multifaceted, not mono-causal, and that retention theories are largely sociological and psychological in orientation (Braxton et al 2004; Yorke 1999; Yorke & Longden 2004; see Chapters 2 and 4 below) Many of these sociological and psychological theories also incorporate and hinge on economic and organisational factors Compared with the body of international literature, what is striking about the South African literature is the absence of psychological explanations Another notable feature is that there has not been any systematic research that examines what combination of economic, organisational, psychological and sociological factors determine why master’s students stay or leave, and what influences this decision Therefore, an important rationale for the study relates to filling part of this lacuna

Personal motivation for the study

I also need to outline personal and subjective reasons for doing this research My own teaching (from 1989–2000), research (1991–92, 1996 and 1999–2004) and study experiences (1984–86, 1987, 1988–89, 1996–97 and 2002–05) at UWC were not satisfying The primary reason is probably that I registered as a full-time student

throughout but, for financial and employment reasons, mainly attended part-time

classes and could not participate fully in student activities At the same time, the

prevailing academic climate was distinctly anti-intellectual, because student protest

repeatedly interrupted classes and because university life for most academics during

the 1980s and 1990s did not include research activities

During these periods, I completed a BA degree (1984–86), an extra subject in 1987

(while registered for a qualification at another institution), Honours (1988–89), an MA

in Sociology (1996–97), and undertook a PhD (2002–05) Between 1989 and 1998,

I worked in the Department of Sociology as a lecturer, and then as a researcher at

the Centre for the Study of Higher Education from 1999 until 2004 Through these

student, academic and research experiences, I long ago concluded that the university

does not fulfil the essential role of knowledge provision associated with universities

Anderson (2002: 13) highlights this failure as follows:

My research discovered that UWC – the country’s first non-racial aligned university – was far more successful at ideologically representing the masses in their struggle against apartheid than in furnishing a

ANC-pedagogically effective compensatory education for its diversely

‘disadvantaged’ student body

This deficiency related substantially to the original function of the university, its

changing institutional missions, levels of resource provisioning and staff composition

The failure to adequately provide for disadvantaged students equally related to

the prevailing academic ethos and the cultural, intellectual, moral and political

responsibility UWC carried as the vanguard institution educating the coloured elite

For coloured intellectuals at UWC, in the context of apartheid, this also meant that

the university had to use its resources and the space afforded it by institutional

autonomy and ‘academic freedom’ to promote an alternative to apartheid university

education

As indicated by Anderson (2002), the consequences for students were often negative,

since student boycotts, classroom disruptions, renegotiation of academic programmes

and the application of an open student admissions policy compromised the quality

of education UWC offered It is also clear that UWC has contributed positively to

intellectual life, despite the negative impact of the culture deficit factors associated

with the institution’s founding and the role the state expected it to perform Some

academics at UWC have contributed greatly to discussions on the role of universities

and academics in society, and have done groundbreaking research in the natural

sciences (where research and teaching remain joined) However, in my view, the

main failing concerns the absence of an enduring intellectual and academic culture

spanning the university, and the centrality of the ‘teaching to undergraduates’ and

‘providing remedial education’ focus

That the absence of research-based academic engagement outside some natural

science fields remains a failing 45 years after the institution opened its doors is

indicative of a lack of strong institutional commitment to this goal One result is

that the organisation of master’s study at UWC remains severely hampered by the

fact that part-time students form the core of master’s students Another result is that

master’s training at UWC has not succeeded in preparing students for independent

doctoral research The poor quality of primary research resources and the limited

research training and research knowledge of academics further constrain independent knowledge production.

In my view, these failings are partly a consequence of the institution attributing insufficient value to research activities, because its core historical mission and main source of funding have always predominantly related to teaching undergraduates The increasing deployment of part-time academics, for example, simply serves the teaching goals of the institution Related to this, the institution has neglected its scientific goals and has neglected to promote a vision of scientific enquiry among its permanent academics and students Viewed in comparative terms, this case study of master’s students at UWC provides a lens through which to understand the difficulties

of developing master’s research and of building lasting academic cultures

What my past involvement with UWC also means with respect to this study is that

it is ‘anthropological’ The study focuses on sociological theories and on cultural, economic, organisational, psychological and sociological factors that influence retention, but a strong thread also involves reliance on anthropological data and

‘personal historical insights’ This dual focus created a structural dilemma with respect

to writing up the data that relates directly to doing a case study on an institution with which I have a long association On the one hand, it means that I have something

of an ‘insider’s perspective’ and a set view that academic goal-setting constitutes

a fundamental problem at UWC and is somehow involved in retention On the

other hand, another starting point in this research is that not enough gets done to determine why students leave institutions In this sense, I am not an uninterested researcher; rather, the intention is to assist the institution in improving its retention and success, precisely because national and UWC-specific data indicate that large numbers of students leave the HE sector

The scope of the retention problem in South Africa

What we know about student departures and retention in South Africa is not encouraging The signs suggest that South African HE is doing poorly Each year, large numbers of students depart from universities without completing their studies Macro-indicators on the extent of student drop-out in South Africa show that about

30 per cent of pre-graduate students left university in 1980 without completing their studies (Dreijmanis 1988: 27) This figure decreased in subsequent years In 2001, the NPHE emphasised that an average of about 20 per cent of all undergraduates and postgraduates drop out of the HE system each year (DoE 2001: 21)

The term ‘average’ is important While the national Department of Education (DoE) has stressed that high drop-out figures and poor retention rates impede the HE goal

of efficient student throughput, to date the department has provided only estimates

of the size of the drop-out problem In 2000, the prevailing estimate suggested that about 100 000 students drop out annually Two years later, a senior HE analyst cited the same figure of about 100 000 students In 2002, this meant that the average of

100 000 students who drop out annually without completing a degree or diploma comprised about 15 per cent – as opposed to 20 per cent in 2000 – of the student headcount (Bunting 2004a)

Besides its scale, the impact of drop-out numbers and of low retention is crucial As highlighted by the CHE (2000), drop-outs cost the South African taxpayer R1.3 billion

per annum (see also Jenkins 2001; Rossouw 2001) In 2000, this amount was equal

to the combined state subsidy for one-third of universities The damage drop-out

causes to individual esteem and self-image is obviously also critical, since it applies

to large numbers of well-educated individuals These students lose a defining feature

of university life – a complete undergraduate and postgraduate experience Further,

the implications of drop-out are vital for institutional stability, since forced exclusions

have been the specific focus of considerable student protest and have caused several

lengthy disruptions to academic activity

The extent of the problem, together with longstanding high-skills supply shortages,

also means that we continue to struggle to fill critical labour market shortages, and

that our skills profile remains unbalanced Therefore, a cloud of concern about

efficiency hangs over the HE system, since drop-outs are largely responsible for

South Africa’s graduation rate of 15 per cent in 2002 being one of the lowest in the

world (DoE 2002) Lower student enrolments due to drop-outs have also impacted

significantly on university subsidy allocations, because the number of enrolments is

linked to institutional allocations

From what we know, the drop-out problem is most acute, as it is in other countries,

at the first-year level and at technikons In 2000, the CHE suggested that about 25

per cent of first-time students leave within a year, but cited no source for this Recent

figures on first-year drop-outs, presented at a colloquium on institutional autonomy,

offer a more striking picture According to Bunting (2004b), a national analysis of

cohort data on all first-time students entering universities and technikons in 2001

showed that 50 per cent did not return the following year This figure consisted of

41 per cent who did not return to universities in 2002 and 58 per cent who did not

return to technikons

These unequal outcomes between universities and technikons, and amongst

universities and technikons, are also evident in analyses of data contained in the

three-year rolling plan institutional submissions (Bunting 2000) These data indicate

that drop-out rates for 1996 varied from 12 per cent at one historically white

university (HWU) to 49 per cent at one historically black technikon (HBT) In the

current DoE (2002) data, HWUs also record lower drop-out rates than HBTs These

differences in drop-out rates correspond to the varying institutional profiles between

HWUs and HBTs with respect to admission selectivity, financial and socio-economic

background and race of students, and the research and academic quality of staff at

universities and technikons

The scope of the retention problem at UWC

Calculations by Bunting (1999a) indicate that drop-out rates at UWC improved

considerably between 1988, when 39 per cent of students were excluded, and

1998 when 20 per cent were excluded Nevertheless, in 1998, 1 878 students (246

more than the number of new first-time registering students) dropped out without

completing their studies (UWC 1999a) This 1998 total represented an increase of 559

drop-out students on the previous year What this increase partly illustrates is that

the number of outs increased in the late 1990s and that the number of

drop-out students sometimes varies sharply from year to year What it also highlights is

that drop-out, especially in the late 1990s, impacted negatively on student headcount

totals, and decreased subsequent state subsidy allocations

These drop-out students comprise two categories: forced exclusions and voluntary drop-outs Forced exclusions relate to students excluded by an admissions committee consisting of academics, institutional managers and student representatives The committee is required to examine whether students – earmarked for exclusion because their financial debt is too high or because they have failed too many courses – can be re-registered on defendable grounds The number of annual forced exclusions has been consistently high Institutional figures show that over the period 1993–1999 more than 7 600 students did not complete their qualifications at UWC for financial and academic reasons (UWC 1999a) Over this period, exclusions

on academic grounds accounted for about one-third of forced exclusions, while exclusions of students who owed money accounted for two-thirds

Many undergraduate and postgraduate students also left ‘voluntarily’, despite being

in good academic standing For example, institutional data for 1995 (UWC 1999a) reveal that 3 287 undergraduate students in good academic standing exited without completing their degrees In comparison, 299 postgraduate students in good academic standing did not return the following year to continue their studies Since only

24 students were excluded from UWC on academic grounds in 1995 (the lowest number over the past 30 years), this meant that 25 per cent (3 610) of the 1995 enrolment dropped out ‘voluntarily’ by the end of the year without completing their qualifications In 1995, this amounted to 27 per cent of undergraduate students and

12 per cent of postgraduates

That such drop-out is often only temporary is also clear from the cohort and other graduate data Cohort data on first-year students registering in 1995 indicate that many return shortly after dropping out For example, an analysis of cohort data for

2 864 first-time entering students showed that:

• slightly more than 1 200 (42 per cent) dropped out before completing their three-year programme;

• most of these students (n566 = 54 per cent) dropped out after the first year;

• one-fifth of those who left after year 1 returned in year 2 and year 3; and

• only 46 per cent completed their three-year undergraduate programmes in

4 years – 30 per cent did so in 3 years (UWC 1999a)

An analysis of data on the 1996 UWC graduate cohort further indicates that undergraduates who obtained BA qualifications included students who first registered during the 1960s and early 1970s Therefore, drop-out obviously does not mean that students do not later return, but it often also means that returning students need to establish new social and support networks, are faced with new curricula and have to establish relations with new and younger students For many, it also means that the return experience is extremely tough in social, psychological and academic terms, even for those who return soon after first leaving

Of course, it could also be argued that, in some ways, the return of drop-out students provides evidence that life circumstances play a crucial role in retention, and that changing life circumstances affect drop-out The puzzle posed by return students is that they are less likely to return to an institution at which they failed if they blame the institution for their failure They are also unlikely to return if they doubt their academic ability to succeed This suggests that there is not necessarily a correlation between negative institutional experiences and drop-out, but rather that economic, psychological, health and other external factors play a role in drop-out

Regarding this hypothesis, within the predominant university perspective, a faltering

economy and the low social-class background of many students account for a drop

in retention A small-scale survey (n187) administered to a cohort of drop-outs (n629)

who entered UWC in 1995 revealed that lack of finance, as opposed to personal,

academic or institutional factors, was the main reason cited for early departure (UWC

2000b) In this cohort of undergraduate drop-out students, 65 per cent came from

households where declared income was less than R3 500 per month Based on this,

and on results from a telephone survey at Port Elizabeth University, Cloete (2004) has

suggested that the impact of financial factors on (voluntary) departures has probably

been underestimated

However, the financial-need argument is not sufficient, since students in good

financial standing also exit Indeed, what UWC has not explained is why drop-outs

include students from middle-class homes who passed their courses Institutional data

indicates that drop-out students include students from middle-class areas who passed

their matriculation examination with a ‘C’ or better aggregate, who were awarded

university scholarships on the basis of their performance, who paid their fees and

who also passed their courses (UWC 1999a) These findings on middle-class students

also suggest that, for some students, the level of academic support does not influence

drop-out This conclusion, which is evident in the retention problems experienced by

HWUs, emerged from a small-scale study on student performance in UWC’s Human

Ecology department (Cairncross 1999) The issue of academic support is certainly

crucial, but, as throughput rates show, students who fail courses more often than

they pass frequently persist with their studies, nonetheless

A common UWC perception is that many master’s students leave or become inactive

for long periods because they struggle to complete their mini-thesis or thesis Reasons

for this generally concern students not showing the necessary academic ability to

complete a mini-thesis Fundamental concerns at UWC focus on the conceptual

abilities of master’s students, their theoretical knowledge and their mastery of

research techniques The role of academics and, in particular, a lack of support by

supervisors for master’s and doctoral students constitute another reason (Koen 2001a)

However, many students also do not even tackle the mini-thesis A report in 1999 by

a UWC task team charged with student recruitment, retention and financial aid noted

with reference to honours students that:

The non-return of those that completed their first year coursework is a major source of concern In some faculties as many as 79% of those that completed the first year successfully do not return to complete their mini-thesis degrees This is a terrible waste for both the university and the students (Carolissen 1999: 12)

This report revealed that honours, master’s and doctoral students from three faculties

attributed delays in completion and actual drop-outs to a combination of institutional,

extra-institutional and academic workload factors The extra-institutional factors

included limited financial support and full-time employment The institutional factors

included limited knowledge about resources available at UWC, junior staff having

heavy teaching loads, and an absence of research guidelines Students also indicated

that lack of communication between supervisors and students, involvement of

supervisors in their own research, and the overextension of academics compromised

completion and affected drop-outs

This list of factors is noteworthy for what it excludes While students may well decide

to leave the honours programme because they never intended to tackle a mini-thesis, the text of the report did not raise questions about student aspirations, expectations, intentions and study plans That is, despite the fact that the retention literature abounds with descriptions about the importance of motivation, pre-enrolment objectives and career intentions, this was completely absent from the institutional reflection Also absent was commentary on:

• household factors;

• the quality of the educational encounter;

• the type of academic and counselling support available to students;

• the involvement of staff in motivating students; and

• the fit between departmental offerings and students’ interests, needs and skills

A report on 2002 data relating to MA and PhD students by the dean of UWC’s arts faculty noted:

The throughput rate is unacceptably low The overall picture is of far too many people stuck in the system and continuing for up to six years on a master’s thesis, and then more frequently than not failing to finish (Ridge 2003: 827)

Based on institutional reports, this overall picture is not restricted to poor performance in the arts faculty, and to master’s students Based on data for the same year, a report by the dean of education, repeating the language of his 2001 and 2000 reports, indicated that:

It is important to note that the MA students have a very high pass rate concerning courses that they select in the structured MA programmes

However, the completion of the mini-thesis takes much longer than the one-year that it should The thesis-writing problem remains a complex one where time, personal circumstances, and other barriers like the high-level English language proficiency that is required, impact negatively on their progress (Meerkotter 2002)

The second quotation brings out three fundamental points that relate to the research problem tackled in this thesis First, it illustrates that there is a big difference in completing coursework – consisting of short research papers and examinations – and completing a mini-thesis or thesis This difference concerns length, the different competencies that are measured, and the extent of independent work Second, it focuses on the language competency of master’s students in English This is poor, since English is a second or third language for most Consequently, many students depend on writing consultants to polish their theses Third, it suggests that non-completion is an individual problem that arises from student-related factors This absolves the institution – and, in the cases above, the specific faculty – from blame The present study tries to look at the student success problem from a different angle The kind of issue addressed here is reflected in the contents of the letter below, written by a master’s student This letter was returned along with a survey in the study on master’s and doctoral completion rates (Koen 2001a) It provides an account

of one person’s experiences, and is reproduced here because it includes insights that

point to some of the issues covered in this thesis.2

Dear Sir

I must say that my postgraduate experience at UWC was rather interesting

My first year of registration was a complete waste of my time I couldn’t start my project due to a lack of funds This was because the research I wanted to do was not in any of the categories that academic staff in my department was knowledgeable on Luckily toward the end of that year I secured an internship with the Agricultural Research Council The Council provided funding to cover all my research expenses and as a result I had a supervisor who was interested in the work I intended to do and who could motivate me As part of the internship programme I received

a lot of exposure, in terms of conference attendance, meeting with other

students on the internship programme, did a management course and was introduced to other people in my field Later, this made finding a job a little easier I got many opportunities as a result of this, while most of my fellow postgraduate students never did I had the opportunity to attend and present at international conferences If I was just another student in our department those are the things I would have missed out on

I experienced many problems during my studies There were space constraints and generally just too many people having to use the same equipment It created problems Other problems were things breaking

Then it took a year for the department to fix or replace it The technical staff also used to treat your queries nonchalantly and dealt with things only when more than three people complained about it As a result of things like this happening, the progress of my research was halted a couple of times And wasting a year waiting for things to arrive or be repaired was rather frustrating I realise that the university has problems with funding, but then you should only accommodate as many students as you can and not think that you will cross that bridge when you get to it Or think that the more students you take on the more money you will generate because it simply doesn’t work like that Also I think that if postgraduate students are accepted to a department it should be done on merit and not because you have to fill a certain number of places, otherwise lecturers get retrenched

I am by no means saying that my experience was just bad because there were good times as well I made really good friends at UWC and I had fun

It was definitely a learning experience and I am better off for most of them

The experiences captured in this letter highlight the centrality of resource scarcity at

UWC, the fact that some students get inadequate support, the constraints financial

stringency imposes on research progress, personal circumstances, the implications of

these aspects for ‘time-to-completion’, and the absence of a community of practice

While the letter raises questions about how accurately the general sentiments describe

the experiences and assessments of UWC master’s students, the letter also points to

2 The writer’s name and citation are omitted because of the ethical constraint of protecting the privacy of individuals

and maintaining confidentiality.

the key issue this study explores – the relationship between objective constraints and subjective assessments and its impact on retention.

General explanations for retention difficulties in South Africa

Despite the student-related financial, time, personal circumstance and academic ability explanations, there are signs, nonetheless, that we actually do not know why students leave HE institutions ‘voluntarily’ in South Africa Part of the historical picture is that in 1963 the state commissioned the National Bureau of Education and Social Research to investigate the ‘white wastage’ rate and to determine what explained high drop-out, repeat and failure rates amongst white students Another aspect of this investigation involved determining the extent of the ‘financial wastage’ arising from white drop-outs and high failure rates of white students The overarching objective was to improve efficiency in white student throughput in order to solve looming ‘manpower’ problems What informed the research was the clear dominance

of white students in terms of enrolments, the labour market consequences of out, and the negative cost of investing in failures (see Buro vir Opvoedkundige en Socio-Economiese Narvorsing 1969)

drop-The findings of the Bureau identified two strategic factors As was argued later by the 1972 Van Wyk de Vries Commission, the Bureau indicated that the main cause of drop-out was that students failed to adapt to the demands of HE The Bureau found that the cause related to the school system not preparing students adequately This resulted in some students finding adjustment to the requirements of HE difficult The second reason discerned by the Bureau assigned some blame to institutions They attributed student failure to the admissions policies not functioning effectively in excluding students who lacked the necessary intellectual capacity (Van Wyk de Vries Commission 1972: 235)

What this policy research illustrates is that student retention and drop-out is a longstanding national policy concern that cuts across different governments Most recently, the 1996 National Commission on Higher Education report and the 2001 NPHE flagged retention as a pressing concern The thrust of the comments about retention in these documents is that student failure or success is not an individual attribute that is unrelated to notions of public accountability Student success emerges

as a collective responsibility that institutions have towards the state and the public to provide an adequate source of high-skills labour and to maintain adequate efficiency rates Another longstanding emphasis that unites the findings of the National Bureau

of Education and Social Research and comments in the NPHE is the view that

HE institutions can improve retention by improving planning and by developing enrolment management plans

Theoretically, it is necessary to stress that the dominant explanations for the failure and drop-out of university students across the HE system in South Africa link to six predictable ‘structural sociology’ perspectives that are often recycled in policy texts:

• rational-economic;

• resource-scarcity;

• ineffective admissions policies;

• schooling deficits;

• inadequate adaptation; and

• inappropriate vocation choice

Suppositions about what characteristics an HE institution should display and what

qualities an HE student should possess underpin these views are Collectively, the

perspectives further indicate that some institutions and some groups of students

exhibit characteristics that are contradictory to an academic culture Derived from this,

the perspectives suggest that the consequences of the intersection and interaction

between these contrary academic characteristics lead to student failure Viewed

on their own, the main arguments of these perspectives point to the following

dimensions

The rational-economic view links performance directly to economic inputs It argues

that human capital assumptions influence the decision to study further, but that some

students do not succeed because they come from low socio-economic backgrounds

and do not receive adequate financial support at university Therefore, they leave

The resource-scarcity view draws a connection between student outcomes and

resource dependency, resource distribution and resource use This view argues that

resources are inadequate at most institutions, hampering academic development,

negatively affecting academic socialiation, and resulting in students not receiving

adequate academic support and dropping out because they cannot cope

The admissions-screening view argues that institutions that rely on open admissions

policies and that do not link admission to performance in a competency-based

assessment do not sufficiently discriminate between students and condemn many to

failure

Linked to this, the schooling-deficit model and the adaptation-deficit model assign

responsibility for failure and drop-out to the South African schooling system for not

providing students with the configuration of competencies, knowledge and skills

required to succeed at university

On the other hand, the vocation-choice view contends that limited provision of

guidance at schools and a thin focus on career guidance at universities is responsible

for students choosing programmes and courses that do not suit them Later, they lack

interest in their chosen vocation, and thus drop out (see Agar 1993)

These historical explanations are found in the NPHE, which attributes student

departures to, amongst other things, poor academic preparation and performance,

socio-economic background, inadequate financial support systems and inadequate

academic networks (DoE 2001) Questions also surround the goals of organisations

and their compatibility with promoting student success For example, Bunting (2004a)

indicates the probability that institutions have ‘over-enrolled’ students at times to

increase their revenue That is, they created a short-term financial solution that

reinforced the long-term drop-out problem and cost-recovery problems by taking

in students who were vulnerable to early departure Of course, institutions have

steadfastly denied accusations that they intentionally admit students who have little

chance of academic success Nonetheless, it is perhaps instructive that the registration

of ‘excess’ students as a response to student drop-out emerged during UWC’s

strategic planning process in 1999 (UWC 1999a)

What currently runs through the above perspectives is the argument that a societal

cause-and-effect chain links the apartheid context, socio-economic and financial

factors, schooling background and student failures Going back to the conclusions reached by the National Bureau of Education and Social Research, the causal chain now also includes the effects of apartheid schooling on black South Africans and socio-economic and financial factors Thus, viewed longitudinally, the typical policy explanation for retention has expanded, but is, nonetheless, limited Primarily, it remains confined to commenting on student ability and financial factors, and centres

on the following hypotheses:

• Socio-economic factors and family circumstance influence a student’s ability to complete his or her studies

• Retention improves when selective admissions policies are used

• Financial support improves the chances of retention

• Students who succeed have been academically well prepared at school for HE study

• Resources at institutions impact on student retention

• Students with clear educational objectives and well-defined career trajectories are more likely to stay and complete their studies than are students who are undecided about their future careers

Bunting (2004a) adds student expansion as a resource explanation Bunting contends that, linked to persistent sharp increases in student numbers, there exists

a relationship between worsening staff-student ratios and higher drop-out rates because education expansion has negatively affected staff-student contact Principally, the growth of the HE system since the mid-1980s has meant that large classes

have increasingly become a phenomenon across the system, instead of only being clustered at expanding historically black universities (HBUs), as initially happened One important reason for this relates to the decline from 71 per cent in 1986/87 to

51 per cent in 2001/02 in the state contribution towards the expenses of universities (Barnes 2002) Since national student growth over this period was three times greater than the subsidy increases, the financial squeeze the state forced upon universities induced worsening staff-student ratios and imposed significant constraints on the appointment of new and senior academics

An important implication of these explanations is that they exonerate institutions from blame for retention problems The explanations clearly deflect attention away from ineffective institutional management, which gives rise to extended study periods and drop-outs Rather, they serve to highlight areas in which HE institutions need support For example, the explanation that poor retention relates to low admissions requirements, which are caused by schooling deficits, implies that institutions need

to provide increased academic support to counter drop-out; however, such support requires external assistance

Explanations in research on master’s students

There is a relationship between the policy thrusts in the above-noted six perspectives and the general thrust of academic writing in South Africa on master’s student

performance A composite picture of the themes and findings of this research is presented in the second half of this PhD thesis Findings from investigations into factors that affect completion and into the poor record that characterises the time it takes students to complete master’s studies show the same conclusions Mouton and Hunter (2001) indicate that retention difficulties partly relate to the fact that students have trouble in adapting to higher degree studies at all levels Jansen (2001) assigns

blame to what he decries as the limited ability of students and academics Zeelen

(2003) has drawn attention to inadequate resource levels at HE institutions; his view

is that increases in material resources contribute to student learning and that changes

in learning environments cause associated changes in student performance

The literature also identifies a number of student-linked factors Internationally,

Yorke (1999) uses the concept ‘pathology’ to emphasise the fact that student-linked

factors often include a list of ‘usual victim’ items In the South African research, the

‘pathology’ factors include the following items identified by Rudd (1985):

• poor academic preparation;

• competing interests such as household obligations and work commitments;

• insufficient time for data collection;

• students often writing dissertations in total isolation (without guidance);

• students spending years searching for a topic and writing a proposal; and

• students experiencing academic boredom

The consequences of this pathology are variously depicted as students not showing

satisfactory academic progress and not learning much from the postgraduate

experience, and students sometimes experiencing a lack of congruence between

their study and career intentions Collectively, these student-linked factors are further

believed to contribute to waning student interest, frustration with academic progress

and a sense of alienation or marginalisation, which contribute to withdrawal from

studies

Explanation gaps

While we have a shortlist of explanations for student performance problems in South

Africa, we actually do not have much data on drop-outs For example, we do not

know whether males or females are more prone to leave Common sense tells us that

science students are less prone to drop out than humanities students, because science

admissions policies are more selective and because science students are better

funded, but we have not demonstrated this with empirical data Of course, findings

on this could be highly informative If male drop-out is much higher than female,

this may help explain why females outnumber males by almost 3:2 in some HBUs

If humanities students are more likely to leave than science students, there could be

some underlying reason related to course structures, or academic ability, or screening

selectivity It would also be interesting to establish why technikons show higher

drop-out rates than universities, since technikons charge lower fees, presumably

attract students with clear vocational interests, set lower academic expectations, and,

therefore, in terms of the South African explanations, should be more geared towards

retaining students than is the case with universities

We also do not have much concrete evidence on the particular reasons that lead

students to leave The six perspectives do not answer the following questions:

• Why do financially well-off students who performed well at school, whose

school subjects and university courses are aligned, and who receive adequate

financial support, leave university?

• Why do students with good marks leave institutions?

• Why do students who were attracted to an institution based on its reputation and the values it articulates end up leaving because an incompatibility developed between their expectations of the institution and their experiences?

• What is the relationship, if any, between academic department and structural university characteristics like planning, organisation, institutional rules, institutional socialisation, academic culture and student success or failure?

• What is the relationship between student aspirations, expectations, intentions, study plans and retention?

What this means is that policy texts and other research in South Africa have identified observable macro-characteristics that show the extent and nature of the retention and drop-out problems and the apartheid-linked landscape factors that contribute to student failure However, viewed in terms of a balance sheet, the six perspectives, amongst others, leave us with a unidimensional picture of student departures, revealing distinct shortcomings in:

• accounting for the impact of student socialisation and the impact of university experiences on student drop-out;

• explaining why students in good academic and financial standing leave institutions;

• determining the relational effects of domestic and work pressures on retention and drop-out; and

• accounting for the impact of psychological factors on student drop-out

For example, the schooling deficit and adjustment models in South Africa do not explicitly address how new students progress from an initial sense of insecurity and inadequacy to coping with expectations and a combination of personal development and intellectual growth In line with this, the South African literature

is silent about the relationship between retention and personal and social solidarity experiences within an institution The literature also addresses neither the importance

of orientation programmes in easing students into HE practices nor the need for counselling support to motivate students to persist through periods of uncertainty The six views are also not particularly useful in explaining why master’s students leave universities and technikons While some students enter master’s programmes with poor honours or third-year marks, this follows at least three or four years of

HE experience and largely removes schooling factors as a reason Why resource scarcity would further explain master’s student departure when resource scarcity did not lead to earlier departure or failure is another imponderable The same applies to the rational-economic model, since master’s students often are not solely reliant on scholarships or bursaries It is also clear that many well-funded students leave

The problem is that while it is well established in the international literature (see Chapter 4) that institutional failure is to blame for retention problems, the focus of the South African research assigns blame to individual students or to the apartheid growth context That is, the research inevitably makes the point that students who fail are underprepared academically, lack income to pay for fees, suffered from poor schooling, and are victims of massification The South African focus fails to ask the following questions:

• Are institutions set up to facilitate student success? Does institutional culture

contribute to retention difficulties?

• Do institutions provide adequate student services and are student and academic

services sufficiently integrated to promote retention success? Put differently, what limits on retention arise from the way in which academic culture is organised and distributed?

• What is the relationship between the provision and distribution of services and

organisational arrangements and student retention?

Here the principal failure is that comments about retention in South Africa involve

findings on drop-out and do not highlight positive organisational action An equally

important aspect of these explanations is that they sideline the issue of developing

a conceptual explanation of retention For this reason, we do not have theoretical

models that attempt to explain student actions Another silence concerns ‘faults’ in

academic culture that possibly promote student departures

Conclusion

The difficult aspect to explain about this silence is why it exists Traditionally,

research ventures into uncharted areas and offers new explanations With respect

to retention, this has not happened in South Africa Developments over the past

four decades have not yielded new explanations about the causes of drop-out The

consequence is that we do not know what the impact of academic culture factors is

on drop-out

Against this background, what this study attempts to do is understand the nature

of students’ academic experiences and the relationship between their experiences

and their decisions to discontinue their studies or to remain part of the university

The aim behind this is to chronicle the way master’s education is organised in

departments at an HBU, to set this within a historical account of organisational

change at UWC, and to see whether student knowledge and social experiences

lead to students developing a sense of belonging to, and becoming part of, the

institution Viewed more broadly, the study focuses on the relationship between

institutional resources (physical and human capital), organisational activity and

student socialisation experiences; it is concerned with interactions between external

forces shaping the university environment and how academics and master’s students

experience that environment

The rationale for this case study is threefold First, viewed in comparative terms, this

study provides a lens through which to understand the difficulties of developing

postgraduate research and academic culture at an HBU Particularly, the study

addresses the steps taken by an HBU that has limited capacity to provide

high-quality academic output at the master’s level to respond to the national development

imperative of processing large numbers of master’s students speedily One feature

of this lens involves looking at the actions the institution has taken in responding

to social demand for high-level HE, the compromises this holds for knowledge

production and the compromises it imposes upon academic values and expectations

Second, the case study raises questions about whether UWC has devised appropriate

organisational structures to promote student retention and success in master’s

programmes There is an increasing shift towards producing professional knowledge

at the master’s level, standardising knowledge requirements, and minimising knowledge creation, which is left to doctoral and post-doctoral students and permanent academics and researchers This increasing functional separation has implications for centralised top-down leadership in institutions and programmes Third, the case study applies aspects of a conceptual framework embedded in the writings of Tinto (1975, 1987a and b, 1993, 1998) in a South African setting Despite the fact that there are many well-founded criticisms of this conceptual scheme, the main reason for using his views as a point of departure relates to the status of his work on student integration, the fact that retention analyses are based on the underlying structure of his student integration perspective, and the insights that student integration offers regarding the organisation of master’s study at UWC

Another useful way of putting the rationale for using his writings derives from comments Colin Bundy made in a very different context in respect of a substantially different problem Then, Bundy used the following metaphor to support a decision to stick to a specific conceptual framework:

Over several years, it attracted a number of critical broadsides, which are logged in more detail below It shows its age and bears signs of the shelling it sustained; methodological holes have opened in its hull;

there is conceptual damage in the superstructure…Some might wonder whether what survived was still worthy enough to be fitted out for another voyage…upon inspection it seemed to me that enough was yet intact, and the original design sound enough (Bundy 1988: Preface)

The next chapter provides an outline of this conceptual framework and of the way in which it fits into the study

The analytical framework

Introduction

Given the obvious and extensive deficits in South African research on retention raised

earlier, I draw on theories that originated and are mainly applied in the United States

of America (USA) This privileging of views relates to the origin of most studies on

retention, the extent of USA-related writing on the subject and the leading standing of

this work The general theoretical approach to studying retention in the USA involves

identifying independent variables that are implicated in student success or failure and

testing the relation between the variables and retention or drop-out

Internationally, theories about student success and retention are plentiful and are

grouped in different ways The conventional emphasis in recent books by leading

retention theorists categorises the theories in terms of economic, organisational,

psychological and sociological orientation A narrower classification collapses these

four categories into two divisions: psychological and sociological In this narrower

schema, the sociological theories tend to, but do not always, incorporate economic

and organisational components Some sociological theories incorporate psychological

dimensions There are also distinctly organisational and cost-centred economic studies

that incorporate sociological and psychological elements As a result, it would be

inappropriate to speak of a gulf between sociological and psychological perspectives

Instead, what we have in the large body of literature is considerable conceptual

consensus, but variance in the factors addressed in retention studies

The classification approach followed in this thesis draws attention to this consensus

For this reason, I start by describing the analytic influences that anchor retention

theories The fact that the theories and models that abound in the literature are based

on structural contingency and structural functional analogies is often missed in the

classification of views as psychological or sociological Results of this theoretical

architecture include the fact that the literature focuses on patterns, the ‘ordered’

nature of culture, the idea that HE institutions can be viewed as cohesive, stable,

integrated wholes, and that research will uncover social facts An implication of this

consensus is that a substantial component of the retention literature is concerned with

social rules, normative behaviour and aspects that create bonds between students and

academics and between students and institutions

Most views can be described further as being actor-centred and as acknowledging

the structural and cultural boundaries that limit actions What is important about these

aspects is that functionalism and notions of rationality and rational choice permeate

the international literature An important aspect of this is that research on retention,

at its core, argues that the provision of certain resources is functional to retention and

success, and that means-end calculations apply with respect to institutional inputs

and student drop-out decisions Thus, normative institutionalism, goal setting and

alignment between institutional and individual goals, along with rational, cognitive

decision-making, are crucial indicators of retention

Next, in briefly describing the theoretical orientation of this study, I draw attention to

the thoughts of the main retention theorist, Vincent Tinto I also highlight criticisms

and suggested revisions of his writings (of which a more detailed outline is provided later), and identify those aspects of his writing that I use in the study This involves presenting a sociological interaction model, which over time has come to incorporate distinct economic and organisational components, and highlighting mainly the economic criticisms The rationale for this is that a fundamental difference between the case study presented in this thesis and the American context concerns the stability

of institutions Another difference concerns the social background and financial security of students Thereafter, I sketch an outline of the theoretical approach I use throughout this study In doing so, I draw attention to fundamental differences between USA and South African institutions with respect to level of stability, pace

of change, resource levels, racial and financial background of students and staff qualifications

General theoretical approaches

The analytic lens influencing approaches to the study of retention can be traced

to three sets of influences The first relates to a branch of psychology concerned with the impact of ‘forces’ and environmental influences The second relates to an associated sociological approach concerned with ‘interconnections’ and interactions within an environment The third relates to the convergence between sociological and psychological development theories and student outcomes literature

From my reading, the standard psychology approach to student behaviour in the USA contends that ‘psychological force fields’ influence student behaviour, and that student actions are shaped by their experiences and level of involvement The main proponent of this perspective, Kurt Lewin (1936) expressed this view in terms of a behavioural formulation: B = f(PxE) This postulates that behaviour (B) is a function (f) of interaction by a person (P) with his or her environment (E) Lewin’s theory

is that any decision (act or behaviour) is influenced by environmental experiences (psychological forces, commitments and goals) and that these experiences cause the behaviour in question

This perspective draws attention to the college or university as a social institution It also posits that a student has encapsulating experiences Further, it draws attention

to the way in which an institution impacts on a student and what behavioural adjustments manifest as a result of the interaction with the institutional environment The perspective also emphasises that a student will succeed if he or she is committed

to interacting with the environment A related value of this approach is that it easily leads to testable hypotheses For example:

• a student will seek social affiliation and learn the norms, values and attitudes prevailing in an institution in order to fit in and to improve his or her chance of success; or

• a student will drop out because he or she did not adequately adapt to the social interactions in the new environment

Another aspect of psychology-influenced models involves stage theory conceptions These contend that students move through different stages during their studies, face different challenges in each stage, and that retention and success depend on how well they master the technical and knowledge demands associated with each stage

A second perspective on student behaviour derives from the influence of

development and organisational theories concerned with understanding how HE

helps students grow This body of literature explains cognitive (psychological) and

development (sociological) challenges students face in terms of a person-environment

fit analogy that is associated with structural contingency theory (see Burns & Stalker

1961) This posits that congruence between the values, interests, needs and abilities

of an individual and an organisation is beneficial to retention and student success

(see Holland 1985) An implicit feature, therefore, is the centrality of organisational

interactions and a focus on the role of the organisation

Another feature is the contention that student outcomes, like retention, depend

on situational factors in an environment (within and outside universities) This is

captured in terms of an ‘input-environment-output’ (I-E-O) emphasis For many

theorists, it also means that structures like student affairs’ divisions play a central role

in student learning and have to be involved in efforts to promote organisational fit

and successful outcomes This focus in American HE literature, which dates from the

1930s, was significantly boosted from the late 1960s through the rise of organisational

studies and by writings on how students fit into universities

A third perspective relates to the functionalism of Emile Durkheim (1952)

Specifically, Tinto (1987a, 1993) used Durkheim’s sociological explanation of suicide

as an outcome of the level of ‘integration’ in society to classify retention as related

to how students fit into a university In doing this, the point of departure for Tinto

is that studies on retention and completion should examine the interconnectedness

of functions within an institution and establish to what extent social regulation,

academic support and socialisation facilitate success Along the lines of Parsons

(1951), this interconnectedness describes the relationship between organisational

goals, on the one hand, and organisational means, on the other, and incorporates the

view that successfully functioning within an institution implies adapting to its rules

Following from these functionalist views, most retention models posit that retention

and success are achieved when a student has been ‘acculturated/enculturated/

assimilated’ and functionally integrated

What unites the above three perspectives is their essential similarity with regard to

conceptions of organisational behaviour and socialisation The general organisational

approach in these theoretical influences (force field analysis, structural contingency

theory and functionalism) follows the socialisation model adopted by Silverman

(1970) He described the way in which organisations shape behaviour in terms of

common values, norms, assumptions, expectations, resources and functions The

essential Parsonian point is that a university is a social institution that fulfils a cultural

socialisation function Related to this, the three codifications posit that socialisation

connects the ‘social’ (institutional and organisational components) and ‘personality’

systems through primary groups (like academics) and institutional norms (role

descriptions, goals and means) Zito (1975) represents these interrelationships with

respect to the interaction between the ‘social’ and ‘personality’ systems as depicted in

Figure 2.1 Institutional and socialisation interactions

Socialisation Personality system

Primary group (academics, peers, family)

Social system

Values and structures Institution

Source: Adapted from Zito (1975)

For these perspectives, an important point about the intersection of these factors is that the socialisation process constitutes an institutional responsibility that relates

to its functions Since these perspectives contend that particular sets of institutional forces promote student success, it follows that institutions must pay attention to economic, organisational, psychological and sociological factors to optimise student success A related point that cuts across the three perspectives is that organisational behaviour and the environmental factors promote or impede student success Another cross-cutting theme is that organisational characteristics significantly influence student success

Another general element implicit in the three perspectives is the idea that stable organisations that change their behaviour in response to low retention rates and adapt their organisational activities show an improved measure of success in retaining students This stresses an important point: to manage change and maintain systems, organisations need to promote cohesion and function cohesively Along with this, most retention studies assume a particular organisational norm embedded in HE structures in Europe and the USA This takes as its point of departure the assumption that institutions are stable and well-functioning units that possess good physical and social facilities Two other important issues are that change is seen as part of the institutional landscape and cultural changes are viewed as outcomes of slow adaptive processes