Abstract
M. Ed.
Many higher education institutions face the loss of subsidy due to the high attrition rate of students. Despite the many advantages of alternate access programmes documented in literature, numerous Engineering Faculty members and members of the management of the University of Johannesburg believed that first time applicants with A and B symbols on their senior certificate were stronger students than those students who had completed an alternate access programme. Furthermore, they felt that the alternate access students took up the places which should have been given to those students with excellent senior certificate results. While many studies have been conducted on alternate access programmes there appears to be no evidence of the academic benefits that students derive from them. This generic qualitative study focused on what students perceive to be the academic benefits of alternate access programmes for their mainstream study. Purposeful sampling was used to select Engineering students from the 2005 and 2006 cohort to participate in focus group interviews and the data gathered during the interviews were analysed and interpreted using an Interpretivist lens. The themes that emerged from the study confirmed that students found the programmes to be beneficial but that they became aware of most of the academic benefits only once they joined the mainstream students in their second year of study. This study revealed the alternate access students were of the opinion that there are a number of academic benefits that they had derived from the alternate access programmes. They were in agreement that these benefits had helped to prepare them for mainstream study and they concluded that the benefits had contributed to their academic success in their mainstream studies. The findings of this study suggest that alternate access programmes have an important role to play in providing students with access, support and success in mainstream studies which in turn leads to the increased throughput of students and higher education institutions retaining subsidy.