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In 2000, a total of 120 000 students enrolled in the country’s public higher education institutions. At end of that year 36 000 (or 30%) had dropped out. A further 24 000 dropped out between their second and third years. Of the remaining 50%, less than half graduated within the intended three years duration. Of these, the vast majority were black students. In financial terms, this translates to a loss of about R4.5 billion in subsidies allocated to the higher education institutions by the state. What are the underlying reasons for the high dorp-out rates among black students? In trying to answer this question, the Association for Black Empowerment in Higher Education (ABEHE) and the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) have entered into a joint partnership on a research project entitled, Addressing the High Failure Rate of Black South African Students in Higher Education. The Memorandum of Understanding between ABEHE and HSRC was signed at ABEHE’s Board Meeting on Wednesday evening (8 February 2006) in Benoni, Johannesburg. ABEHE and the HSRC are committed to studying and developing a deeper understanding of higher education retention rates, failure rates, pass rates, graduation rates, and throughput rates. The project aims to make the necessary recommendations for sustainable intervention strategies that would help to enhance retention rates, pass rates, graduation rates and throughput rates in higher education. The ultimate objective of the collaboration between ABEHE and the HSRC is to move black students impoverished by virtue of their socio-economic background and poor schooling from the second economy into the first economy through targeted efforts aimed at removing the barriers to their success in higher education study. The project leader is Mr Moeketis Letseka, a senior research specialist in the Education, Science and Skills Development Research Programme at the HSRC
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