Academic development in the mainstream: A case study in an undergraduate engineering programme in South Africa

  • Hilton Heydenrych University of Cape Town
  • Jennifer M Case University of Cape Town
DOI: https://doi.org/10.20853/29-5-523

Abstract

A recent CHE report has highlighted the poor graduation throughputs in South African undergraduate programmes. Academic development constitutes the current university response to these challenges and to date much work has focused on the establishment of foundation programmes. The present case study – centred on the chemical engineering programme at the University of Cape Town - offers an analysis of the possibilities for academic development in the mainstream programme. Quantitative longitudinal analyses of cohort graduate throughput show significant improvements over two decades, both in aggregate and in demographic breakdown. A survey of academic staff in the programme pointed to the significant impact of the establishment, in the early 1990s, of a post focusing on academic development. These findings also gave evidence of a departmental culture centred on critical debate and innovation in the undergraduate programme.
Published
2016-01-14
How to Cite
Heydenrych, Hilton, and Jennifer M Case. 2016. “Academic Development in the Mainstream: A Case Study in an Undergraduate Engineering Programme in South Africa”. South African Journal of Higher Education 29 (5). https://doi.org/10.20853/29-5-523.
Issue
Vol. 29 No. 5 (2015)
Section
General Articles

Copyright (c) 2016 Hilton Heydenrych, Jennifer M Case

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This journal is an open access journal, and the authors and journal should be properly acknowledged, when works are cited.

Authors, copyright holders, may use the publishers version for teaching purposes, in books, theses, dissertations, conferences and conference papers.

A copy of the authors' publishers version may also be hosted on the following websites:

  • Non-commercial personal homepage or blog.
  • Institutional webpage.
  • Authors Institutional Repository.

The following notice should accompany such a posting on the website: This is an electronic version of an article published in SAJHE, Volume XXX, number XXX, pages XXX “XXX", DOI.  Authors should also supply a hyperlink to the original paper or indicate where the original paper (http://www.journals.ac.za/index.php/SAJHE) may be found.

Authors publishers version, affiliated with the Stellenbosch University will be automatically deposited in the University Institutional Repository  SUNScholar.

Articles as a whole, may not be re-published with another journal.

The following license applies:

Attribution CC BY-NC-ND 4.0