Low-income rural youth migrating to urban universities in South Africa: opportunities and inequalities

ABSTRACT

In order to understand how students from low-income rural backgrounds in South Africa experience higher education and the opportunities and obstacles they encounter, the paper draws on two waves of interviews with 30 students currently studying at three large urban universities. Using concepts of capabilities and functionings, monetary resources and ‘capitals’, the paper outlines common factors which shape rural students’ well-being and their agency in accessing an urban university. Student voices indicate the particular importance of being able to exercise the functioning of navigating and manoeuvring through unfamiliar and often intimidating institutions. The discussion also indicates that it is the intersection of rurality and low income which shapes, even if it does not over-determine, their lives at university. It is suggested that universities could do more to support these students’ well-being, and to recognise the agency and admirable determination which students bring to the challenges they face.

KEYWORDS:

• Rural students
• capabilities
• urban universities
• low income
• navigational capital

Acknowledgements

Our thanks to other members of the Miratho team, Monica Mclean and Ann-Marie Bathmaker as well as to former team member, Merridy Wilson-Strydom. Our appreciation goes also to the students whom we have interviewed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In 2015, 59.7% of the poor were in rural areas. Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo were consistently the three poorest provinces between 2006 and 2015. The Eastern Cape also had the highest SAMPI score (see Sulla and Zikhali [2018]).

2. Pseudonyms used for the three urban universities referred to in this paper are ‘Metropolitan’, ‘City’ and ‘Provincial’. All student names are pseudonyms.

3. See www.miratho.com. Our mixed methods four year project (2016–2020) focuses on ‘inclusive higher education learning outcomes’ for rural youth from low-income households, and is led by the University of the Free State.

4. School quintiles are a rough if imperfect proxy for socio-economic conditions and quality of schooling. The quintile system ranks schools in five bands according to their infrastructure and location. Formerly white schools (model C) fall into quintiles four and five and charge school fees. Fees-free public schools (quintiles one to three) serve low-income communities and lag behind well-off schools in learning outcomes so that Grade 9 pupils in poor, mostly black schools have a backlog of approximately three and half years relative to those in well-off schools (see Moses, van der Berg, and Rich [2017]). Van Broekhuizen, Van Der Berg, and Hofmeyr (2016) claim that many of the patterns of university access are strongly influenced by school results: 53% of learners attending quintile 5 schools achieved university passes, but only 8% of learners from quintile 1 schools.

5. Access to the internet at home was highest among households in Western Cape (23.6%) and Gauteng (14.8%), and lowest in Limpopo (1.6%). See https://www.htxt.co.za/2017/05/31/number-of-south-africans-with-access-to-internet-grows-to-60/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ESRC-DfID [grant number ES/NO10094/1] and the NRF [grant number 86540]; National Research Foundation [86540].