Negotiating survival: A qualitative study of postgraduate student experiences in a historically disadvantaged South African University

Postgraduate education continues to expand globally and within South Africa, driven by increasing demands for advanced knowledge, research output, and professional expertise. Despite broader access to postgraduate studies, many students face significant challenges in progressing and completing their qualifications, particularly within rural, historically disadvantaged university contexts in South Africa. This study investigates the experiences of postgraduate students as they navigate these challenges within a historically disadvantaged South African university. Utilising a qualitative research approach, data were collected from 30 participants, comprising 15 master’s students and 15 doctoral students across various faculties, and were analysed using thematic analysis. Informed by Ecological Systems Theory, the study reveals that postgraduate experiences are shaped by interconnected academic, institutional, and socio-economic pressures rather than isolated challenges. The findings underscore several recurring issues, including inconsistent supervisory support, administrative delays, limited access to research resources, financial insecurity, psychological strain, and ongoing struggles for inclusion and recognition within academic spaces. These challenges interact and accumulate over time, affecting students’ academic progress, well-being, and sense of belonging. This study contributes to existing scholarship by providing an integrated understanding of how institutional, interpersonal, and socio-economic pressures intersect within postgraduate experiences in a historically disadvantaged university context. Furthermore, the study introduces the concept of “negotiating survival” to describe how postgraduate students continuously adapt to and navigate structurally constrained environments. The findings have implications for higher education policy and practice, particularly regarding the enhancement of supervision, improvement of institutional processes, addressing resource inequalities, and strengthening postgraduate support systems within resource-constrained universities.