African Theories of Student Success. Decolonising Retention and Completion in Higher Education

Description

This book confronts the paradox of expanding university access across Africa alongside a crisis of student completion. It critiques decades of imported solutions Tinto’s integration model, American first-year experience programmes, and engagement instruments from resource-rich environments as poorly theorised for African contexts. The work systematically grounds student success in African epistemologies, drawing on Ubuntu philosophy, the Siyaphumelela national initiative, resilience research in resource-constrained environments, and lived experiences across the continent. Rather than rejecting Western scholarship entirely, it insists African students are not failed copies of European or American ideal types but complex agents shaped by cultural, economic, and spiritual frameworks. Primarily aimed at academic advisors, student affairs professionals, and institutional researchers, the book offers practical theories for senior managers and policymakers too. With South African higher education as its primary empirical base, it incorporates evidence from Kenya, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Botswana, contributing toward a genuinely pan-African theory of student success.