Kresge awards $2.9 million to improve data analysis at South African universities
- Awards to 4 universities and a higher education institute aim to foster student success.
TROY, Michigan, Nov. 11, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Kresge Foundation has awarded $2.9 million to four South African universities and an education institute to improve student success through improved data analysis.
The four-year grants in the Siyaphumelela (We Succeed) initiative were announced Friday, Nov. 7, by Rip Rapson, Kresge's president and chief executive officer. The announcement came at a symposium hosted by Inyathelo on South African higher education and philanthropy in Cape Town, South Africa. The grants go to:
- Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University – Port Elizabeth
- University of the Free State – Bloemfontein
- University of the Witwatersrand – Johannesburg
- University of Pretoria – Pretoria
- South African Institute for Distance Education – Johannesburg
The universities will receive $400,000 each. The South African Institute for Distance Education will receive support to serve as the initiative's backbone. The universities were competitively selected and may also be eligible for bonus grants by securing goals within the initiative.
"Universities across South Africa are grappling with how to improve persistence and graduation rates for their black students in particular," Rapson says. "These universities will work together with SAIDE to develop their data analytics capacity to find and share solutions and interventions based on solid information to improve student success."
The grants will help the universities build their capacities to use data to better integrate institutional research, information communication technology, academic development, student services and academic departments. Beyond the improvements sought for the three universities, Kresge hopes to see new approaches to data become mainstream for higher education in South Africa.
Kresge developed Siyaphumelela after research and engagement with South African higher education leaders, government agencies and experts in data and student success. Kresge also sought to build on existing trends in South Africa.
Diane Grayson, director of institutional audits at the South African Council on Higher Education, calls Siyaphumelela "an exciting intervention to substantially strengthen South African universities' capacity to undertake evidence-based decision-making."
Grayson says that Siyaphumelela aligns with the South African Council on Higher Education's Quality Enhancement Project and other efforts aimed at improved student success.
Since the end of apartheid in 1994, enrollment at South African universities has doubled, but graduation rates have remained stubbornly low for black students.
Recent research shows that only about half of South African students who enter universities graduate, and only about one-fourth do so in the minimum period of time. Moreover, only about 14 percent of black South Africans between the ages of 20 and 24 enter university at all.
Bill Moses, managing director of Kresge's Education Program, makes the point that, although little appreciated by the public, data analytics is playing a key role in improving education in the United States.
"MOOCs – massive, open, online courses – might have grabbed the attention of the public, but data analytics is the force that has the potential to reshape postsecondary access and success," Moses says.
Data are key to such U.S. student success efforts as Achieving the Dream and the recently announced University Innovation Alliance, comprising 11 leading public universities. Both organizations have received Kresge support.
Siyaphumelela has taken techniques and lessons learned from these efforts and examined how they might be used in South Africa.
SAIDE will facilitate data coaching by Achieving the Dream staff at Siyaphumelela universities. Other activities will include helping grantees set common goals and metrics, coordinating the sharing of data, sponsoring an annual student-success conference and establishing a student-success website.
The goal is to develop a data-based understanding of student-success issues and replicable models for addressing them, Moses says. "Just as important, we'll have a cadre of educators adept in data analytics ready to help shape the course of higher education in South Africa."
Kresge works to expand opportunities in America's cities through grantmaking and investing in arts and culture, education, environment, health, human services and community development efforts in Detroit. Its Education Program seeks to promote post-secondary access and success for low-income, first-generation and underrepresented students in the United States and South Africa. The foundation's grantmaking in South Africa is its sole international program.
Since 2005, Kresge has invested more than $26.7 million in South African higher education.
Contact
W. Kim Heron, The Kresge Foundation
Phone: +1.248.643.9630
Email: wkheron@kresge.org
About Kresge
The Kresge Foundation is a $3 billion private, national foundation that works to expand opportunities in America's cities through grantmaking and investing in arts and culture, education, environment, health, human services and community development efforts in Detroit. In 2013, the Board of Trustees approved 316 awards totaling $122 million; $128 million was paid out to grantees over the course of the year. In addition, our Social Investment Practice made commitments totaling $16 million in 2013. For more information, visit kresge.org.
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