Inclusion of Students with Disabilities in South African Higher Education

Abstract

Globally, few students with disabilities progress to higher education. This is mostly due to avoidable barriers they face as they navigate different educational structures from lower levels. Even for those few students who make it to higher education, they continue to face challenges. A qualitative study was carried out at the University of the Free State and the University of Venda. Fourteen students with disabilities took part in this research that was aimed at exploring their academic and life experiences. This article interrogates the inclusion of students with disabilities at two South African universities. This article is timely as South Africa has initiated the development of a national policy framework on disability in the post-school education and training systems. It highlights some of the areas where inclusive policies should pay attention in an effort to fully cater for the needs of students with disabilities.

Keywords:

• Capabilities approach
• equity
• higher education
• inclusion
• students with disabilities
• South Africa
• transformation

Notes

1. Under apartheid, HEIs were designed to serve only one of the four apartheid racial groups (Africans, Coloureds, Indians and Whites). Generally, most white universities were advantaged in terms of their resourcing, and black universities disadvantaged, with fewer resources and students coming from poor socio-economic backgrounds (Ndimande, 2016).

2. The incident took place in 2008 at a white male student residence called Reitz. White male students were filmed humiliating black cleaning staff in a mock ‘initiation’ ceremony. The video became public and resulted in a Ministerial Commission into race at all South African universities (Suransky & van der Merwe, 2016).

3. ‘Coloured’ is an ethnic label for people of mixed ethnic origin who possess ancestry from Europe, Asia, and various Khoisan and Bantu tribes of Southern Africa (Quintana-Murci et al., 2010). While it is from the apartheid era, it is still used for statistical data collection, including higher education. Such labels are nonetheless, very problematic.