Independent Newspapers
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Durban – More than half of KwaZulu-Natal university students do not finish their degrees and diplomas in the minimum time required, with many students needing an extra year or two before graduating.
Statistics provided to The Mercury by universities gave credence to calls for all Bachelor degrees to be extended by a year, to help school-leavers adjust to higher learning.
The feasibility of mainstream four-year degrees has been a source of fierce debate, since mooted by Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande in 2009, and more recently by the government’s National Development Plan.
A report released earlier this month said that many school-leavers pursuing degrees in physics were so ill-prepared for university that lecturers faced a dilemma over whether to dumb down content or have them drop out.
The report, by the SA Institute of Physics and the Council on Higher Education, said that high school maths did not give pupils the problem-solving skills needed, and warned that if a four-year BSc was not implemented, the “crisis” would persist.
Nationally, across faculties, only one in four university students (excluding distance learning students) graduate in minimum time.
At the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), 43 percent of students are capped in the minimum time – but 29 percent need one extra year, and 17 percent another two years before graduating.
At the Durban University of Technology (DUT), of 4 326 first-time students enrolled in 2008 and whose progress was tracked, 42 percent graduated during 2010 and 2011, and another 9 percent in 2012.
At the Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT), 20 percent completed their studies in minimum time, with engineering and natural sciences students taking an average of four years to graduate with a three-year qualification. The University of Zululand did not supply figures.
Professor Ian Scott, of the Centre for Higher Education Development at UCT, has been a vocal proponent of the four-year degree. Scott, who has done work for the council on teaching and learning, said that universities should aim for “at least” half of all contact (non-distance learning) students to complete curricula as planned.
“There is little or no prospect of this happening within our current mainstream curriculum structures and teaching and learning practices,” Scott said.
Already, universities – including UKZN, MUT and DUT – offer extended or augmented degree programmes, designed to improve throughput, and allow entry to school-leavers from historically disadvantaged schools who do not have the required points score for admission, but who have potential.
UKZN’s registrar, Professor Jane Meyerowitz, said that academic support systems identified first years “at risk”, and helped them back on track, while certain disciplines held tutorials in Zulu to explain concepts to students whose mother tongue was not English.
MUT’s Professor Crossley Mjojo said that, among other interventions, it was reviewing the pass percentage for supplementary exams, and increasing the number of academic staff with PhDs and Master’s degrees.
leanne.jansen@inl.co.za
The Mercury
