Foundation provision in South African Higher Education: a social justice perspective

Abstract

Foundation (or ‘extended curriculum’) Programmes, generally aimed at widening access and success in Higher Education (Boughey 2007), are now a common aspect of most South African Higher Education institutions - both ‘traditional’ Universities and Universities of Technology. These programmes are often financially supported by government grants in order to help achieve the current social imperatives of equity, transformation, skills development and economic empowerment. An important question is whether, in fact, these programmes are achieving their objectives, particularly when viewed through the perspective of social justice, - which, I suggest, must be taken into account when assessing the effectiveness of Foundation Programmes. This is not to detract from the necessary ‘epistemological’ access (Morrow, 1994), but South Africa is still a country with extremely high inequalities. Currently, South Africa has the biggest gap between the rich and the poor - having ‘overtaken’ Brazil - in spite of 15 years of initiatives aimed at addressing inequities6 . In this paper, I contextualize the goal of Foundation provision with a historical account of the social agenda that have previously informed interventions aimed at access and success in South African Higher Education. In my discussion, I expound on several aspects of social justice that Foundation Programmes should be considering.