A shocking 40% of South African students drop-out of university in their first year, a major study has found. Financial difficulties among the country's large pool of poor black students are, unsurprisingly, largely to blame first generation students from low-income, less educated families are the most likely to drop out. The Student Pathways study by the Human Sciences Research Council also found that on average only 15% of students finish their degrees in the allotted time.
High student drop-out and failure rates are a major problem in a country with limited state resources, a desperate shortage of high level skills and a pressing need to raise income levels among the poor. While South Africa has a highly successful National Student Financial Aid Scheme, which supports about 120,000 of 735,000 university students, loans and bursaries do not cover the full costs of study, leaving poor students struggling to meet living and other expenses.
