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South Africa still faces inequalities with regard to access to higher education opportunities. Foregrounding student voices at one university, the paper compares how students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds make decisions about going to university. The focus is on those who have succeeded, but ideas can be extrapolated regarding those who do not make it. The argument draws on Amartya Sen's capability approach to explore individual stories and the interactions between agency and the intersectional conversion conditions of possibility which shape the capability for university access. Narrative interviews show how students are enabled or constrained in their educational decision-making in relation to selves, schooling, family and income. Some implications are suggested for enhancing access, while not making claims for South African higher education as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to understand how students from low-income rural backgrounds in South Africa experience higher education and the opportunities and obstacles they encounter, the paper draws on two waves of interviews with 30 students currently studying at three large urban universities. Using concepts of capabilities and functionings, monetary resources and 'capitals', the paper outlines common factors which shape rural students' well-being and their agency in accessing an urban university. Student voices indicate the particular importance of being able to exercise the functioning of navigating and manoeuvring through unfamiliar and often intimidating institutions. The discussion also indicates that it is the intersection of rurality and low income which shapes, even if it does not over-determine, their lives at university. It is suggested that universities could do more to support these students' well-being, and to recognise the agency and admirable determination which students bring to the challenges they face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers citizenship formation at universities, drawing on the example of a student leadership project at the University of the Free State, a formerly White South African university, in a higher education context and society where racialised difference continues to influence peer relationships. The paper proposes a multi-dimensional conceptualisation of social citizenship, as described by T.H. Marshall, enriched by the capabilities approach, which adds specific citizenship dimensions of deliberation, acknowledgment of heterogeneity, and agency goals and activities as core elements of being able to be and to do as citizens. This is operationalised by investigating the student development intervention, based on biographical interview data from 50 of the 71 students who participated in the first iteration of the programme. The data is analysed for the three capability dimensions and for student criticisms of the programme, before an overall judgment is made of the programme’s contribution to democratic values and citizenship formation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The generation of a public-good, capabilities-based approach to professional education in South African universities is outlined and proposed as a contribution to wider social transformation. The relevance and importance of understanding what Amartya Sen describes as ‘capability failure' in the lives of people living in poverty is explored and, following from this, how professionals ought to contribute by virtue of their university education, and hence privilege, to making people's lives go better. The key criterion in developing and evaluating professional education is then how professionals are educated to expand the scope of effective freedoms each person has to lead a life she has reason to value, underpinned at all times with respect for human dignity. The process by which a Professional Capabilities Index (PCI) was generated theoretically and empirically is explained and the argument advanced for the PCI as a practical tool for professional education oriented to improving public services for the poor and, hence, the public good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]