Beyond hard barriers: Lack of aspiration as a soft barrier to access higher education amongst youth living in low-income housing estate
Abstract
This article explores the perceived barriers inhibiting the youth’s access to higher education. The article goes beyond the hard barriers to explore “lack of aspiration” as a soft barrier impeding access to higher education amongst the youth. In this article, the term “soft barrier” refers to lack of aspiration, a less tangible aspect that is much more subjective and less easily measurable. On the other hand, “hard barriers” are understood as factual issues that are easily recognisable and measurable, financial issues, for instance. This article interrogates lack of access to tertiary education as a key development problem in South Africa. Hence, the youth are underdeveloped socially, economically, and academically. The article draws from youth experiences to interrogate inadequate access to tertiary education and its impact on youth vulnerability. In this qualitative study, youth residing at Kenneth Gardens were interviewed to generate data. This study found lack of aspiration as a major soft barrier impeding the youth from accessing higher education. Among other factors, this study also found financial issues, informational barriers, and inability to meet the minimum university entry requirements as the underlying hard barriers impeding young people from accessing higher education.
References
Appadurai, A. 2004. “The capacity to aspire: Culture and the terms of recognition.” In Culture and public action, ed. R. Vijayendra and M. Walton, 58–94. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Archer, L. and M. Hutchings. 2000. “Bettering yourself’? Discourses of risk, cost and benefit in ethnically diverse, young working-class non-participants constructions of higher education.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 21(4): 555‒574.
Bajwa, J. K., S. Couto, S. Kidd, R. Markoulakis, M. Abai, and K. McKenzie. 2017. “Refugees, higher education, and informational barriers.” Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees/Refuge: Revue canadienne sur les réfugiés 33(2): 56‒65.
Béteille, T., N. Tognatta, M. Riboud, S. Nomura, and Y. Ghorpade. 2020. “Higher Education in South Asia: Rapidly Growing, Diverse, and Unequal.” In Ready to Learn: Before School, In School, and Beyond School in South Asia, 281‒300. DOI: 10.1596/978-1-4648-1327-6_ch12.
Bowl, M. 2001. “Experiencing the barriers: Non-traditional students entering higher education.” Research papers in Education 16(2): 141‒160.
Bridges, D. 2005. “Widening participation in higher education ‒ ‘the philosopher and the bricklayer’ revisited.” Paper presented to Philosophy of Education Conference, Institute of Education, London 1‒13 April.
Brock, T. 2010. “Young adults and higher education: Barriers and breakthroughs to success.” The Future of Children 20(1): 109‒132.
Clark, B. R. 1960. “The ‘cooling-out’ function in higher education.” American Journal of Sociology 65(6): 569‒576.
Clark, D. A. 2005. “Sen’s Capability Approach and the many spaces of human well-being.” The Journal of Development Studies 41(8): 1339‒1368.
Conradie, I. 2013. “Can deliberate efforts to realise aspirations increase capabilities? A South African case study.” Oxford Development Studies 41(2): 189‒219.
Conradie, I. and I. Robeyns. 2013. Aspirations and human development interventions. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 14(4): 559‒580.
Finnie, R. 2012. “Access to post-secondary education: The importance of culture.” Children and Youth Services Review 34(6): 1161‒1170.
Flowers, L. A., H. R. Milner, and J. L. Moore. 2003. “Effects of locus control on African American high school seniors’ educational aspirations: Implications for preservice and inservice high school teachers and counselors.” The High School Journal 87(1): 39‒50.
Forsyth, A. and A. Furlong. 2000. Socioeconomic disadvantage and access to higher education. Bristol: The Policy Press.
Gasper, D. 1997. “Sen’s capability approach and Nussbaum’s capabilities ethic.” Journal of International Development 9(2): 281‒302.
Glater, J. D. 2017. “Barriers to Higher Education Access.” UC Irvine Law Review 7(1): 1‒8.
Gorard, S., E. Smith, H. May, L. Thomas, N. Adnett, and K. Slack. 2006. “Review of widening participation research: Addressing the barriers to participation in higher education.” A report to HEFCE by the University of York, Higher Education Academy and Institute for Access Studies.
Harry, T., W. T. Chinyamurindi, and T. Mjoli. 2018. “Perceptions of factors that affect employability amongst a sample of final-year students at a rural South African university.” SA Journal of Industrial Psychology 44(1): 1‒10.
Heifetz, A. and E. Minelli. 2006. “Aspiration traps.” The BE Journal of Theoretical Economics 15(2): 125‒142.
Hubbard, L. 1999. “College aspirations among low‐income African American high school students: Gendered strategies for success.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 30(3): 363‒383.
Jeffrey, C. 2012. “Geographies of children and youth II Global youth agency.” Progress in Human Geography 36(2): 245‒253.
Jones, R. and L. Thomas. 2005. “The 2003 UK Government Higher Education White Paper: A critical assessment of its implications for the access and widening participation agenda.” Journal of Education Policy 20(5): 615‒630.
Kabiru, C. W., S. A. Mojola, D. Beguy, and C. Okigbo. 2013. “Growing Up at the ‘Margins’ Concerns, Aspirations, and Expectations of Young People Living in Nairobi’s Slums.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 23(1): 81‒94.
Kirk, R. and A. Day. 2011. “Increasing college access for youth aging out of foster care: Evaluation of a summer camp program for foster youth transitioning from high school to college.” Children and Youth Services Review 33(7): 1173‒1180.
Kivinen, O. and S. Ahola. 1999. “Higher education as human risk capital.” Higher Education 38(2): 191‒208.
Kiyama, J. M. 2010. “College Aspirations and Limitations: The Role of Educational Ideologies and Funds of Knowledge in Mexican American Families.” American Educational Research Journal 47 (2): 330‒356.
Lambert, M. and J. Vero. 2013. “The capability to aspire for continuing training in France: The role of the environment shaped by corporate training policy.” International Journal of Manpower 34(4): 305‒325.
Lambrechts, A. A. 2020. “The super-disadvantaged in higher education: Barriers to access for refugee background students in England.” Higher Education 80: 803–822.
Lin, T. C. 2004. “The role of higher education in economic development: An empirical study of Taiwan case.” Journal of Asian Economics 15(2): 355‒371.
Magopeni, N. and L. Tshiwula. 2016. “Access to Higher Education in South Africa: Addressing the Myths. Access to Higher Education: Understanding Global Inequalities.” Palgrave: Macmillan Publishers.
Maree, J. G. 2015. “Barriers to access to and success in higher education: Intervention guidelines.” South African Journal of Higher Education 29(1): 390‒411.
Matear, A. 2006. “Barriers to equitable access: Higher education policy and practice in Chile since 1990.” Higher Education Policy 19(1): 31‒49.
Nussbaum, M. C. 2001. Women and human development: The capabilities approach. (Vol. 3). Cambridge University Press.
Pierszalowski, S., R. Vue, and J. Bouwma-Gearhart. 2018. “Overcoming barriers in access to high quality education after matriculation: Promoting strategies and tactics for engagement of underrepresented groups in undergraduate research via institutional diversity action plans.” Journal of STEM Education 19(1): 49‒56.
Pillay, V. 2019. “Displaced margins and misplaced equity: Challenges for South African higher education.” South African Journal of Higher Education 33(2): 142‒162.
Prakhov, I. 2015. “Barriers Limiting Access to Quality Higher Education in the Context of the USE: Family and School as Constraining Factors.” Educational Studies (1): 88‒117.
Prakhov, I. and D. Sergienko. 2020. “Matching between students and universities: What are the sources of inequalities of access to higher education?” European Journal of Education 55(2): 261‒274.
Preston, D. C. 2017. Untold Barriers for Black Students in Higher Education: Placing Race at the Center of Developmental Education. Atlanta, GA. Southern Education Foundation.
Ramohai, J. 2019. “A black woman’s perspective on understanding transformation and diversity in South African higher education.” Transformation in Higher Education 4(1): 1‒10.
Scanlon, M., H. Jenkinson, P. Leahy, F. Powell, and O. Byrne. 2019. “‘How are we going to do it?’ An exploration of the barriers to access to higher education amongst young people from disadvantaged communities.” Irish Educational Studies 38(3): 343‒357.
Seginer, R. and A. D. Vermulst. 2002. “Family environment, educational aspirations, and academic achievement in two cultural settings.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 33(6): 540‒558.
Sen, A. 1993. “Capability and well-being.” In The Quality of Live, ed M. N. Nussbaum and A. Sen, 30‒53. Cambridge University Press: New York. https://doi.org/10.1093/0198287976.003.0003.
Shaw, J. K. and J. Allison. 1999. “The intersection of the learning region and local and regional economic development: Analysing the role of higher education.” Regional Studies 33(9): 896‒902.
Statistics South Africa. 2004. Recorded Higher Education. (Annual Report). Pretoria: Statistics South Africa.
Statistics South Africa. 2011. Recorded Higher Education. (Annual Report). Pretoria: Statistics South Africa.
Statistics South Africa. 2019. Recorded Higher Education. (Annual Report). Pretoria: Statistics South Africa.
Taylor, B. J. and B. Cantwell. 2019. Unequal higher education: Wealth, status, and student opportunity. Rutgers university press.
Walberg, H. J. and R. Greenberg. 1996. “Youth realities and aspirations.” Journal of Research in Rural Education 12(3): 178‒180.
Walker, M. 2018. “Dimensions of higher education and the public good in South Africa.” Higher Education 76(3): 555‒569.
Ward, N. L. 2006. “Improving equity and access for low-income and minority youth into institutions of higher education.” Urban Education 41(1): 50‒70.
Watts, M. and D. Bridges. 2006. “The value of non‐participation in higher education.” Journal of Education Policy 21(03): 267‒290.
Wilson-Strydom, M. 2017. “Disrupting structural inequalities of higher education opportunity: ‘Grit’, resilience and capabilities at a South African university.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 18(3): 384‒398.
Copyright (c) 2021 Zethembe Mseleku
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 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
