Challenging university complicity and majoritarian narratives: counter-storytelling from black working-class students

ABSTRACT

Low completion rates amongst students from Black working-class backgrounds remain a persistent challenge to post-apartheid university transformation in South Africa. Notions of universities as colour-blind, meritocratic, and post-racial have developed around a deficit and victim-blaming majoritarian narrative that individualises educational under-achievement, blaming victims and downplaying the complicity of universities in reproducing inequity. This article analyses the narratives of a group of Black working-class students, and academics on their in-depth experiences of educational success and failure in post-apartheid South African universities. Counter-storytelling is employed to foreground and promote the voice and lived experiences of those who often go unheard; and to highlight their narratives as valuable and critical in understanding persistent inequity in higher education. This article looks beyond the fixation on what students from marginalised communities are perceived to lack to reassert a place for institutional context in studying their experiences, to minimise the de-contextualisation of such experiences; and to illuminate areas of universities’ complicity in reproducing untenable educational experiences and outcomes for those already in the margins. Participants’ counter-stories are presented to deepen our understanding and theorisation of Black working-class students’ lived experiences in a manner that enriches the work of researchers, policy makers and practitioners.

KEYWORDS:

• Black working-class students
• non-completion
• post-apartheid south African universities
• counter-storytelling
• higher education transformation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mukovhe Masutha

Mukovhe Masutha is a Lecturer at the University of Johannesburg’s Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies. His research interests include higher education funding policy, working-class students’ experiences of higher education and experiences of student completion and non-completion in higher education.

Rajani Naidoo

Rajani Naidoo is Professor in Higher Education Management, University of Bath, UK. Her research interests include public sector markets and new public management; trans-national higher education and global governance; higher education and international development and the changing identity and nature of student participation in higher education.

Jürgen Enders

Jürgen Enders is Professor at the School of Management, University of Bath, UK. His academic interest is focused on the study of institutional change in the field of universities, and their role in society and economy.