Disrupting Structural Inequalities of Higher Education Opportunity: “Grit”, Resilience and Capabilities at a South African University

Abstract

Given the extent of inequalities of higher education opportunities in many contexts, this paper investigates how students from marginalized backgrounds make it to university, gaining access “against the odds”. While it is becoming increasingly common to draw on notions of individualized responsibility, such as the construct of “grit”, to explain persistence in challenging situations, this paper argues that individualized understandings are insufficient to take account of the interaction between individual agency and social contexts from which the capability for educational resilience emerges. The argument is theoretically grounded in the capabilities approach, and empirically on narrative interviews with South African first year students from marginalized backgrounds. The paper identifies three internal capabilities that underpin resilient responses of students, and shows how these internal capabilities are influenced, positively and negatively, by conversion factors at the levels of family, school and community.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• Grit
• Higher education
• Agency
• Conversion factors
• South Africa

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Samantha Baloro for assistance with research logistics. I would also like to thank my colleagues Amelia Topper and Mari-Anne Okkolin for useful discussions about these issues, in particular that of grit and resilience.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

About the Author

Merridy Wilson-Strydom is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research on Higher Education and Development (CRHED) at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein South Africa. Her work is focused on higher education and social justice, with a particular emphasis on access and equity at the undergraduate level, explored using mixed methodologies, including fine-grained student life narratives and participatory research.

Notes

1 Pseudonyms chosen by the students are used when presenting the interview extracts.

Additional information

Funding

This paper is based on research supported in part by the South African National Research Foundation, Unique [grant number 87922].