| Summary: | Coupling access with success in South African higher education has become imperative.
There is a clear need to identify and rigorously research factors contributing to student success
that are within the institutions sphere of influence so that institutional policies and practices can
be intentionally aligned and designed to create conditions conducive to success. Student
engagement represents a multi-facetted approach to understanding students that focuses almost
exclusively on student behaviours and conditions over which institutions can exert a measure of
influence. Strongly grounded in a rich history of theoretical work on effective undergraduate
education, student engagement offers a concrete, theoretically solid manner in which to
understand undergraduate students in South Africa longitudinally with the goal of understanding
the factors that contribute to student success.
The overall research objective of this multi-disciplinary study was to investigate how the
Beginning University Survey of Student Engagement (BUSSE), a survey administered during the
first weeks of the academic year to investigate how measuring levels of student engagement at
high school, expectation to engage at university and levels of engagement during first-year can
be appropriately used by higher education institutions in South Africa at an institutional and
individual level in the context of student success.
The study was conducted over a two year period (2008-2009) at a university in SA
amongst first-time entering degree-seeking undergraduate students in a representative sample
and makes a unique contribution to understanding engagement and success in South Africa as it
is the first study to be conducted using the (BUSSE) in this context and is also the first
international application of the instrument to date. Four research questions related to the overall objective of the study were proposed and
investigated through appropriate statistical tests. Acceptable Cronbach coefficient alpha values
were obtained for all subscales in both samples, and values were comparable to samples in the
US context. Results obtained in the current research study confirm both theory and results
obtained in other samples.
It was found that there is a level of consistency between high school engagement and
expectations to engage during the first year (although this is not uniform across all types of
activities). Female students consistently report higher levels of engagement at high school and
higher expectations for engagement at university. There is some evidence to suggest differences
between students from different racial groups (higher levels of engagement and expectation from
Black African students) and an interaction between gender and race in terms of high school
engagement and expectations to engage during the first year.
As expected based on the literature, student expectations to engage during their first year
exceeded their actual levels of engagement, confirming the notion of the âfreshman mythâ.
However, despite this disjuncture, there is evidence to suggest that students tend to engage more
frequently in the activities they expected to engage in. Regardless of the differences between
Black African and White students in terms of their high school engagement and their expected
levels of engagement at university, there is no significant difference in actual levels of
engagement during the first year.
The examination of the ability of the engagement variables to predict academic
performance and persistence to second year highlighted the methodological and conceptual
complexities associated with predicting success, and there were not consistent findings between
the two samples. The results of the study were discussed and interpreted from the perspective of how
student engagement data can provide actionable solutions to the institution to contribute to
student success in the first year of study.
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