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The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of university undergraduate students who originate from disadvantaged South African schools. The perceptions probed are those that relate to their material circumstances, learning and teaching environment and academic progress.

The paper draws on a theoretical framework that underscores the primacy of the environment blended with transition theory to explain environmental influences on disadvantaged students’ academic progression at university. Data were gathered through detailed face-to-face interviews with eight participants and from the open-ended section of a questionnaire administered to 41 students from which the 8 students were drawn.

The findings demonstrate that disadvantaged students require both physical and socio-psychological support in order to succeed at university.

A university in South Africa and the students from low quintile schools provide the case study for the explication of the findings of this study. Ethical issues such as seeking the informed consent of the participants to access their academic records weighed against the potency or robustness of the results of this study, because few of the participants allowed this researcher to access their results. Thus, this study focussed on potentially sensitive areas such as the academic records of students and poverty. As such it was extremely difficult to persuade disadvantaged students to participate in this study.

The study is thus useful for the school system, families and higher education institutions in the quest to provide the much-needed socio-psychological or “empathetic infrastructure” that acts as the cytoplasm for disadvantaged students’ academic progress at university.

By invoking the primacy of the environment under the rubrics of epigenetics, this study also sought to contribute to the debate around the human genome – a grand ambitious global scientific project launched in the late 1980s to generate a catalogue of all the genes present in humans. However, this was a smokescreen because there are simply not enough genes to account for the complexity of the human life or human disease. By invoking the theory of transition, this study sought to fathom how to promote a favourable teaching and learning environment for poor students at university in a holistic manner.

This study utilised an empirically supported definition of disadvantage: that of students coming from no fee schools, as classified by the Department of Education based on Household Expenditure statistics of 2002 using the quintile system. The quintile system is based on average measures of income, unemployment rates and educational levels. To date, there is no published research utilising the school quintile system to define disadvantaged students in higher education in South Africa. This paper, which investigates such a sample from a university, is therefore ground-breaking and novel.

Social inclusion policies in the higher education sector are implemented to ensure that all people – irrespective of socioeconomic background – have rights of access and the opportunities needed to participate and, ultimately, succeed. In Australia, and in other countries such as the UK, the USA, New Zealand and South Africa such policies are reflective of a commitment to the government's social inclusion agenda particularly aimed at improving access and participation of those from disadvantaged and low‐socioeconomic backgrounds. Such a commitment arrives at an historic moment in countries like Australia and the UK when there is a concurrent national renewal of quality assurance in higher education with a particular focus on academic standards. The purpose of this paper is to stimulate discussion on the extent to which a national social inclusion agenda may impact academic standards and student outcomes.

The authors argue that contemporary trends such as increasing student diversity, changing pattern of student participation, differentiated levels of preparedness for tertiary education and new modes of learning, will continue to grow and will not in and of themselves affect academic standards. The authors contend that it is the responsibility of higher education institutions to respond proactively to the diverse needs of students whilst ensuring that academic standards are maintained. In this way, the fulfilment of an essentially transformative moral purpose in higher education may also be achieved.

The evidence presented in this paper from various contexts suggests that a social inclusion agenda related to increasing the equity of access and participation of disadvantaged students does not have a negative impact on academic standards and outcomes. However, such commitment to widening participation requires the active “buy in” of a number of stakeholders.

The paper shows that institutions of higher education need to plan for and actively support the development of environments in which all people can realise their potential and are provided with the knowledge and skill sets they in turn will require in order to contribute to society.

Access and inclusion in higher education present different problems to highly selective universities, and to unselective, demand-absorbing colleges. Also, the public policy perspective of the government has its own goals and concerns. This paper examines these differences in the case of Chile. Elite institutions face a problem they interpret as a loss of diversity due to the increasing gentrification of their student body. In the other segment of universities, students ready to work at a college level without support are a minority, and institutions attempt to change the profile of their student body through remedial courses and other palliative measures.

This chapter proposes a new technique based on the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to evaluate the scale efficiency with considering the environmental influences. Using this method, we can get the pure scale efficiency which has eliminated the environmental factors and random errors that might influence the production process. Our approach extends the three-stage-DEA model by Fried, Lovell, Schmidt, and Yaisawarng (2002) to the five-stage DEA model. Afterward, in order to measure the scale efficiency of the China’s universities more accurately, this chapter gives an empirical study on the scale efficiency of the top universities in China by applying the five-stage DEA model. The results show that the efficiency levels of many universities are indeed affected by external environmental variables and random factors. According to the levels of pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency, we divide China’s universities into four types, and we also propose some suggestions for the inefficient universities to improve their scale efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the profiles of Australian, New Zealand and South African accounting faculty members. Additionally, the study investigates whether there are any differences in research productivity of the accounting faculty between countries as measured by peer-reviewed academic journal output.

This archival study uses details obtained from webpages of Departments of Accounting in the three countries to construct a profile of accounting academics.

Significant differences in the profiles of accounting academics were found that can be attributed to the institutional factors that exist in each country. Staffs at the junior lecturer and lecturer levels are more likely to be female, while senior lecturers and professors in all three countries were more likely to be male. While Australia and New Zealand had a similar percentage of staff holding PhD or equivalent academic qualifications, only a small proportion of the South African faculty held PhD or equivalent qualifications. A greater proportion of the South African faculty was professionally qualified compared to their Australian and New Zealand counterparts. New Zealand accounting faculty was more productive than their Australian colleagues, with South African academics being the least productive. Academics holding a doctoral qualification or equivalent were more productive than those that did not.

The research limitations relate to the use of websites as the primary data source. Incompleteness of information, inconsistencies in the type of information presented and a lack of comparability of information across institutions and countries may have led to some errors and omissions. However, given the relatively large sample size of 2,049 academics, this was not deemed to materially affect the final analysis.

The paper provides an important contribution to the literature on accounting academics. It is the first of its kind to present a comprehensive “snapshot” of the profiles of accounting academics at the universities in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

“What we need is a better trained workforce.” “Our managers need to be trained how to manage today’s changing worker.” “Our people’s skills are becoming obsolete at a faster rate than ever.” “If we’re going to be competitive, we need more and better training.” These are just a few of the phrases we hear from executives in all types of organizations. With formalized employee education and training now a $30 billion business annually, America’s business sector continues to spend large sums of money on educating its workers. Nearly 69 percent is spent on training designed and delivered using corporate in‐house resources. Of the remaining, 31 percent or $9 billion invested with outside providers, four year colleges and universities account for the biggest share with $2.9 billion (Carnevale 1990) of what has become a major industry in this country.The purpose of this essay is to examine some of the trends, problems, and opportunities for college and university based management development programs, and to sketch a picture of what the future may hold. Finally, a series of recommendations is offered on how higher education institutions might effectively deal with the challenges of the next decade.

This qualitative study interrogates the barriers that historically disadvantaged higher education students in South Africa face when it comes to access and success. It specifically explores the challenges black students encounter in gaining epistemic access within the South African higher education system.

This research draws upon empirical data collected from a mixed-methods research project conducted at six higher education institutions. It focuses on issues of epistemic access and success within humanities and sciences faculties. The dataset comprises interview transcripts involving 34 student and ten staff cases. Thematic analysis, aided by MaxQDA software, was meticulously conducted to extract and synthesise meaningful themes, crafting comprehensive narratives.

The study uncovers multifaceted challenges, including difficulties in understanding the admission process, financial barriers and language proficiency issues, faced by disadvantaged students when accessing universities and transitioning from basic to higher education. The research emphasises universities taking proactive measures, such as providing comprehensive early support, identifying at-risk students and collaborating with schools to prepare prospective students better. It advocates for the potential of resilience theory in addressing social justice issues related to access and success for these students. Furthermore, the study recommends developing inclusive curricula and underscores the need for universities to actively support disadvantaged students academically and socially.

This research departs from the conventional focus on physical access to universities, introducing a more comprehensive perspective that emphasises epistemic access as a pivotal aspect of higher education. Drawing on empirical data, it sheds light on the obstacles faced by disadvantaged students during the transition from high school to higher education while also exploring their resilience strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether Taiwan’s “Stars Policy” for university admission can fulfill its major aim to promote educational equity. Implemented by the government, the policy relies on student within-school ranks to admit high achievers to top universities or departments, mainly in medicine.

Open data were collected from the government, universities, high schools, and news reports. High schools were identified as having benefited from the Stars Policy if more students were accepted into medical departments in the first year of the policy than one year before its implementation. χ² tests and logistic regression were used to examine how the benefit status interacted with school types and regions.

The results indicated that the Stars Policy benefited 25 high schools, namely, 9 community public schools (not top achieving in a region) and 16 struggling private schools (especially vocational). Contrary to expectations, private schools were three times as likely and private school students seven times as likely to have benefited from the Stars Policy. Schools located in disadvantaged regions did not benefit.

The Stars Policy is unique given its centralized and school-based system. The design, however, increases educational equity in a manner that fails to benefit disadvantaged students seeking admission to the top-achieving medical departments in Taiwan.

Although there has been considerable growth in the higher education systems of Turkey and China in about the last two decades, there is still a room for development in enabling equity in all regions, increasing opportunities and resources regardless of socio-economic status or gender differences. Students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds do not have enough tools to change their fate for the better due to the accumulated barriers they face. Given this background, the chapter discusses how the barriers to equitable HE admissions relate to each other and which one has a greater negative impact over the Accumulated Conversion Barriers Modal we propose defined by personal, discriminatory, institutional, and geographical barriers. The perspectives of Turkish and Chinese HE stakeholders were examined through 21 in-depth interviews that were subjected to content analysis and interpreted in a comparative style using the lens of Capabilities Approach of Sen. We also offer policy suggestions to increase students’ conversion capacities for better outcomes to serve both the national and the international educational contexts owing to the adaptable nature of our modal to other countries experiencing similar issues in their higher education systems.