Abstract
A proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in South Africa: The case for a flexible curriculum structure” (CHE, 2013) suggests a number of scenario (models) in order to increase the number of graduates nationally. For the past 20 years South African higher education institutions were expected to start implementing a number of new policies and to align their internal functions and structures more optimally towards increased access, student throughput and quality teaching and learning, amongst other policy indicators.
Since 1994, the SA government has been steering a radical transformation and restructuring of higher education, which kicked off with the White Paper on HE transformation (1995), the latter which formally culminated in the Higher Education Act 101 of 1997. Policies are generally developed in response to challenges, problems or inadequate progress in respect of nationally identified strategic goals or targets. Some policies are geared at national quality enhancement, in the process, establishing new national structures with dedicated terms of reference and responsibilities. Policies are thus created to bring about desirable change and are generally regarded as strong symbolic indicators of national intent (Bunting, 2008; Bunting, 2004).
This paper reports on a sample of national and institutional policies and the directives stemming from them. The pertinent emphasis on an increase in the participation and eventually the academic success of undergraduate students in Science programmes is linked to insights brought about by increasingly improved National Senior Certificate (NSC) results, especially over the last decade. The quantitative investigation compares the academic performance of 1563 main stream first year degree students with 2110 extended degree students in seven fundamental science modules at the University of Johannesburg. Mean values were compared and regression provided predictive value of the different modules on performance. The enquiry culminates in speculation on the implications that the above mentioned Flexible Curriculum Structure might bring about and the dataset investigate flexible curriculum in practice at the University of Johannesburg.