Mildred Murbartian Aguilar Dip. Presidenta

My first assumption, that very little research had been undertaken or published about access to Master’s level studies in general, and RPL at the postgraduate level specifically, proved to be accurate. As discussed in Chapter 3, the concept of RPL is relatively well-defined at the undergraduate level in South Africa, and national and institutional policy in this area is indeed mostly directed towards undergraduate access. However, as anticipated, the conceptualisation and implementation of RPL at the postgraduate level was informal and left largely to the discretion of individual institutions. At the time of the study, no national or institutional framework, or guidelines for RPL at the postgraduate level, was available.

135 The Latin term ‘Ad Eundem Gradem’ is seldom used these days in higher education institutions internationally or for that matter, in South Africa. Rhodes University seems to be one of the few institutions still using the term although it is increasingly used interchangeably with the more modern term Recognition of Prior Learning. In addition, the AEG rule was not uniformly applied at Rhodes University in the ten year period under review, with several cases identified of AEG admissions not being processed via Senate, and some admissions being recorded as AEG when according to the Institution’s AEG rule, the candidates already met the requirements for regular admission. As predicted, access to Master’s level study via AEG was not widely known or publicised at RU – either within or without the University. As discussed in Chapter 7, inconsistencies between policy and implementation in terms of the University’s mission and goals (regarding widening access and increasing postgraduate numbers) were evident - with symbolic support given for RPL in institutional documentation, but little active encouragement provided in practice. Perhaps for this reason, the number of students admitted to Master’s studies at RU via the AEG rule for the years 1999-2008 was small – an average of just 7% per annum.

My assumption that the national motivation for recognizing prior learning was social or for ‘the public good’ (in the sense of being for the greater benefit of society) rather than having a political agenda (in the sense of being a direct strategy for addressing inequities of the past) was not supported in the early research findings. In the first formal South African national policy on RPL in higher education published in 2002, it was clearly stated that “Recognition of Prior Learning in South Africa has, unlike similar initiatives in other countries, a very specific agenda. RPL is meant to support transformation of the education and training system of the country.” (SAQA, 2002: 11) In addition, the only mention of RPL in the national Higher Education Qualifications Framework (RSA, 2007: 6) is that “The recognition of prior learning should enable potential students, including those who had suffered disadvantage in the past to be admitted to particular higher education programmes depending on their assessed knowledge and skills.” However, the national RPL policy was updated in 2013 (SAQA, 2013) and the revised approach, while still aiming to accelerate redress, appears to be more focused on the public good aspect, with the phrase ‘RPL in South Africa has a specific transformation agenda’ not appearing in the 2013 RPL policy.

My sense that many academics at RU would have strong reservations about recognizing prior learning, would not welcome an RPL framework, and may display ‘academic arrogance’ towards those who did not have formal qualifications was unfounded to a large extent. As shown in the report on interviews with academics and senior administrators at the University (Chapter 7), 100% of the respondents

136 were supportive of the concept of RPL. There was, however, a distinct resistance to the prospect of externally imposed regulations, with the majority of interviewees feeling the current case-by-case evaluation process was appropriate. The interviews did confirm, however, that little attention or thought had been given to the concept of RPL by most RU academics, and that the issue was not a priority on the institutional or academic agenda.

The overall impression interviewees had of RPL candidates was favourable and many positive comments were made about their performance, contribution and attributes. Where negative points were made, the interviewees were usually quick to add that these comments would probably apply to all Master’s students, not just RPL students. While in some regards RPL students were treated differently, it was emphasized that this would only be in terms of access procedures and support, not in terms of exit standards. However, despite interviewees’ affirmative feelings and experiences, RPL students were generally viewed as being deficient, a higher risk to institutional and individual supervisor’s reputations, and needing more supervision and support than regular admissions.

In contrast to this institutional perception of RPL students being inferior, the statistical findings (Chapter 6) showed that in the final analysis, there was no significant difference in the performance of those students admitted without the formal pre-requisite qualifications, except in terms of dropout rates where AEG students had a slightly higher dropout rate than those students who had a four-year undergraduate or honours degree. In addition, full-thesis AEG students were more

likely to obtain a distinction and less likely to linger in the system, and it therefore

appears from the data analysis that full-thesis AEG students perform better than coursework-and-thesis students and indeed, better than formally enrolled students as well in terms of the likelihood of obtaining a distinction.

While I anticipated that the humanities would admit more students on an RPL basis than the natural sciences, this proved not to be the case. The proportion of RPL admissions in the natural sciences over the period 1999-2008 was 6% compared to 5% in the humanities. The Education Faculty enrolled the highest proportion of RPL students during this time (15% of all Education admissions were AEG admissions, and 33% of the total number of AEG admissions were in the Education Faculty) which could be a result of this Faculty being the most proactive in its outreach efforts and thorough in its RPL evaluation procedures.

137 9.2.2 Graduateness and Postgraduate Readiness

Turning now to the concept of graduateness, I assumed that the notion of ’graduateness’ - the attributes university graduates are expected to possess as a result of their studies – would be becoming increasingly relevant nationally and internationally as HE resources dwindle and public accountability rises. The research found this to be the case, with various national education systems as well as individual higher education institutions formally defining the attributes they would expect their graduates to possess. However, it seems that there is no universally accepted definition of graduateness, nor is there a uniform list of generic graduate attributes. Furthermore, in all instances examined, the idea and definition of graduateness was used in relation to being ‘ready for the world of work’ rather than to capture the essence of being appropriately prepared for postgraduate study. For this reason, it became necessary to develop a term which reflected the attributes expected of students who are suitably prepared for postgraduate study and the term I settled upon was ‘postgraduate readiness’. This will be discussed further in Section 9.4.