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06 November 2018 Photo Sonia Small
Matrics 2018 a shift from access to success urgently needed in higher education
According to UFS Rector and Vice-Chancellor, Prof Francis Petersen, we should ask ourselves how learners successfully exit institutions of higher learning – within the minimum time and with an appropriate qualification that will enable them to start earning an income and contribute to the economy.

Opinion article by Prof Francis Petersen

 

With Grade 12 learners from across the county in the full throes of writing their matric examination, one inevitably wonders about 2019 and where those who pass successfully, will find themselves.
 
The announcement of subsidised free education last year has increased learners’ access to higher education.
 
However, the question we should ask is no longer how these learners enter institutions of higher learning, but how they exit successfully – within the minimum time and with an appropriate qualification that will enable them to start earning an income and contribute to the economy.
 
Universities getting involved in schools

I believe universities have a critical role to play in ensuring their own students’ success. It often involves taking a step back and getting actively involved in the schools that supply us with a new cohort of first-year students annually. We should not wait until they reach our campuses to identify academic obstacles; we should be proactive and do what we can to help improve our school systems.

At the University of the Free State, we have established Social Responsibility Enterprises (SRE) on our South Campus in Bloemfontein, which focus on the mentoring of teachers in order to make a sustainable impact. A total of 78 schools in the Free State, Mpumalanga, and the Eastern Cape benefit from this programme. SRE mentors are assisting school principals with school management, while teachers in Mathematics, Physical Science, Accounting, and English as language of learning are assisted in mastering curriculum content, pedagogy, and classroom management. 

Mentors visit schools and share knowledge, extra material, and technology to improve the standard of teaching. The impact has been significant. Matric results, Mathematics pass rates, and Physical Science pass rates have improved dramatically in these schools. We also identify learners with the potential to get access to university (i.e. first-generation students) and assist them through extra classes and in applying for tertiary education and bursaries.

Using technology to reach learners

Another important initiative is the Internet Broadcast Project (IBP), established on our South Campus seven years ago. Our aim is to take quality education to all learners across the Free State, regardless of their socio-economic backgrounds and the standard of education at their schools. Schools are equipped with internet broadcasting devices, and lessons by top-qualified presenters in a studio are transmitted live to learners. They also have an opportunity to interact with these presenters.  Currently, the departments of Education in three provinces (including the Western Cape) are also considering the implementation of the IBP as part of their interventions in schools.
 
A total of 71 000 learners in 83 different schools are currently reached through this project every week – and the impact is far-reaching. The Free State has delivered the best matric results in the country for the past two years. Last year, the Free State MEC for Education, Tate Makgoe, made special mention of the IBP for the profound role it played in this achievement.
 
Understanding students’ needs

However, preparing learners for access to higher education is not enough; the crucial factor is how they exit successfully. The university’s Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is continuously developing data analytics to better understand our students and to help them navigate their studies. Making use of international funding, CTL is playing a leading role nationally to develop academic advising (using predictive data analytics) that helps students match their studies with their career and life goals.

One of the main factors that has been found to inhibit student performance, is food insecurity. Research has shown this to be a challenge faced by universities across the world. In South Africa, our institutions of higher learning have risen to this challenge, responding with efforts in various forms. At the University of the Free State, the No Student Hungry initiative (NSH) was launched in 2011. A research study conducted by our Department of Nutrition and Dietetics indicated that 59% of the student population suffer from food insecurity. Many of these students eventually drop out of higher education because of the need to earn an income. The NHS provides our students in need with modest food allowances and daily access to one balanced meal. Students are selected in terms of financial need, academic performance, participation in student life, and a commitment to giving back to the community. The programme allows students to focus on their studies without worrying about their next meal, thus increasing their chances to excel academically and ultimately obtain their degrees.  Since its inception, close to a thousand students have been assisted by this initiative and have given back nearly 37 000 community hours to South African communities.
 
Currently, the NSH programme is enhanced through the development of an institutional endowment fund aimed at raising capital from business, industry, and the private sector. This provides an opportunity for these sectors to become involved and support the challenge of food security among students, thereby supplementing the efforts of the university and government. 

Teamwork needed to progress from access to success

Teamwork such as this is needed on all levels to transform the educational landscape in our country. As institutions of higher learning, we need to increasingly find innovative ways to become involved in the broader communities we serve – beyond our academic curricula.
 
In this way, we will finally be able to move beyond the question of access that has been dominating discourse and demonstration for so long and focus more specifically on ensuring that our students successfully exit the post-school system.

News Archive

Open letter from Prof Jonathan Jansen to all UFS students
2014-02-22

Dear Students of the University of the Free State

In the past four years there has emerged a new consensus on the three campuses of the University of the Free State (UFS) about the things that divide us – such as racism, sexism and homophobia. Students and campus leaders have worked hard to develop this new consensus in residences and in the open spaces on campus. There can be no doubt that new bonds of friendship have developed across the markers of race, ethnicity, class, religion and sexual orientation. I bear witness to these new solidarities every day on the campus.

You chose a white student to head up the transformation portfolio on the SRC. You chose a black captain to head up the university’s first team in rugby. You chose a white “prime” as head of residence to lead a predominantly black men’s residence. You chose a South African woman of Indian descent as Rag Queen and last week, a black student from Cape Town as the men’s Rag winner—choices not possible and never made before in our campus history. Many of you have intimate friends who come from different social or cultural or religious backgrounds. You learn together, share rooms together, pray together and party together. In other words, in the day to day workings of this university campus, you have demonstrated to campus, city and country that we can overcome the lingering effects of racism and other maladies in this new generation. You have helped create a university community inclusive of people of diverse religions, abilities, class and sexual orientation.

I have said this repeatedly that from time to time this new consensus will be tested – when a minority of students, and they are a small and dwindling minority, still act as if these are the days of apartheid. And when that consensus is tested as it was this week, and as it will be tested in the future, only then we will be able to assess the strength and durability of our progress in creating a new South African campus culture of human togetherness based on respect, dignity and embrace.

The real test of our leadership, including student leadership, is how we respond when our transformation drive is threatened.

Let me say this: I have absolute faith in you, as students of this great university, to stand together in your condemnation of these vile acts of violence and to move together in your determination to maintain the momentum for the Human Project of the University of the Free State. We have come too far to allow a few criminals to derail what you have built together in recent years.

There will, no doubt, be unscrupulous people on all sides of the political spectrum wanting to milk this tragedy for their own narrow purposes. There will be false information, rumours and exaggerations by those who wish to inflame a bad situation to gain mileage for their agendas. That is inevitable in a country that is still so divided.

I ask you, through all of this, to keep perspective. Two or ten or even twenty students behaving badly do not represent 30,000 students; a minority of violent and hateful persons do not represent the ideals, ambitions and commitments of the majority. At the same time, let us be realistic – anyone who thinks you can drive transformation without resistance clearly does not understand the difficult process of change.

The events of the week remind us, however, that we still have a long road to walk in deepening social and academic transformation at our university. Yes, we have invested hundreds of hours in training and mentorship; we have created new structures – such as the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice – to capture the energy and imagination of students driving transformation; we have created many opportunities for students to study and travel on this and other continents to enable cross-cultural learning; we have established formal and informal opportunities to dialogue about difficult issues on and off campus between students and their leaders; and we crafted new curricula to enable teaching and learning on the big questions of our times.

But this is clearly not enough, and so I have decided on the following immediate next steps:
  1. We will meet for several hours next week to think about how we can deepen the transformation of our university after this terrible incident.

  2. We will arrange a University Assembly on the events of the past week so that we speak with one voice on human wrongs and to re-commit to human rights and we will continue with open forum discussions during the months to come.

  3. We will review the entire spectrum of programmes, from orientation to residence life to the undergraduate curriculum, to determine how effective our interventions really are in reaching all students with respect to basic issues of human rights.

  4. We will review our media and communications strategy to determine how far and deep our messages on human rights travel across all sectors of the university community. In this regard it is important that the campus be blanketed on a regular basis with our condemnation of human wrongs and our commitment to human rights.

  5. We will commission the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice to review the events of the past week and make recommendations on how we can improve the campus environment so that all students are protected from harm inside residences, classrooms and in open spaces of the campus.

  6. We will take the questions raised during this week into the academic community and to the general staff of the university so that all personnel also engage with our own roles and responsibilities with respect to campus transformations.

  7. We undertake to make annual report-backs on transformation to all stakeholders in public forums so that students and staff and external communities can track the progress of the university on matters of human rights on campus.

I wish to thank my staff for acting firmly as soon as this tragic event came to our attention. We worked through the night to find and identify the perpetrators. We traced the two students and immediately handed them to the police. They were expelled. And throughout this process we offered counselling and support to the victim of this violent act.

The two former students were expelled and will now face justice in the criminal courts. It is hoped that in the course of time they will come to their senses and seek restoration and reconciliation with the student they so callously harmed. They are not part of the university community anymore.

That is the kind of university we are.

Jonathan D Jansen
Vice-Chancellor and Rector
University of the Free State
20 February 2014

 
Note: The use of the word ‘campus’ refers to all three campuses of the UFS, namely the Bloemfontein Campus, South Campus and Qwaqwa Campus.

 

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