Design Principles for the Creation of an Integration Programme into Higher Education for Disadvantaged Students Developed using a Design Based Research (DBR) Approach

Sustainable development goals are explicitly aimed at being a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all” and “to leave no one behind” (UN, 2024). One of the main areas of inequality in Africa is access to, but more importantly, success in higher education (HE). The problem of poor student success rates is not a new phenomenon in HE. One big aspect of this problem is the challenge around the transition and integration of first-year students into higher education (CHE, 2013; Tinto, 2012; van Zyl, 2010). In the past, South Africa’s HE sector was designed to serve a narrow group of people and exclude all others. Since 1994, the residual effects of this historical situation have often resulted in situations where poor black African students found themselves able to enter the institutions of higher learning but unable to achieve what Wally Morrow (1994) termed “epistemological access” (real access to the knowledge distributed by universities). Higher education success is a doorway to higher levels of social mobility, financial success and status within society. Therefore, the question of how to effectively assist students from under-served parts of society to not just enter university but successfully integrate into it and succeed is crucial in the pursuit of equity and progress.