Studying while black: race, education and emancipation in South African universities

Abstract

It is common knowledge that students, staff and the government are all embroiled in a struggle to transform South Africa???s institutions of higher education, and that these struggles are simultaneously historical and contemporary, practical and ideological. This study asked, 'Who succeeds, and who does not?' in universities and was therefore intentionally student-centred. Our research was part of a larger study on education and emancipation, which analysed the progress made in the implementation of the recommendations of the Soudien report; media representations of students and higher education institutions; and the identities and competencies of students entering universities in South Africa. After selecting a small cohort of students from eight diverse universities across South Africa, we tracked the students' journeys through university (and sometimes out of it), asking what obstacles the students encountered, and what they, along with their institutions, were doing in response. As we entered the study???s third year in 2015, the start of the student protests brought national attention to many of the stories we had already heard from the students involved in this study. In the later years of the study we heard from students who were actively involved in these transformation struggles as well as those who sat on the sidelines.