According to recent reports, approximately 40% of college students in South Africa drop out of school during their first year. While there are a variety of reasons why these students are dropping out at alarming rates, officials in South Africa are still trying to determine how to go about reversing this trend.

At present, only about 15% of South African college students wind up graduating from college within the expected amount of time. Officials there would like to change this, and they continue to look for reasons to explain the state of higher education in this still developing nation.

Finances

Money, of course, seems to be a root cause of student dropout rates. A large majority of college students come from poor families, and they have parents who are not college educated. The lack of money and various pressures at home seem to combine to eventually force students to drop out of school.

Even though South Africa has a financial aid system in place that provides assistance to about 120,000 students each year, the amounts that are awarded usually do not cover all of the expenses that students have. In addition to paying for tuition, books, and fees, most students are also trying to scrape together enough money to pay for living expenses as well as other basic necessities.

The majority of South African families only have a monthly income of between $60 and $240 (US). Because of the lack of financial support from their parents, many students have to obtain full- or part-time jobs in order to make ends meet. In some cases, the burdens simply become too much and they wind up quitting school to focus on earning money.

Other Contributing Factors

Money may be the primary reason why the dropout rate is so high in South Africa, but for many students there are other reasons that play a significant role.

Some students do not make the best career choices when they first start attending college. This may, over time, start to make them feel like they are fighting a hopeless battle, which in turn causes a lot of them to just quit. For other students, there are sometimes a variety of different domestic issues that force them into quitting school. These issues may have to do with parents, siblings, or spouses, but the end result is the same when students start feeling pressure to focus their attention elsewhere.

Another prominent reason for the high dropout rate is student pregnancy. Women who become pregnant during college often choose to stop attending classes. In other cases, students wind up dropping out because they simply have trouble focusing on their studies. These students spend too much time partying and not enough time going to class, doing homework, and preparing for exams.

Some South African universities are taking steps to try to resolve the high rate of student dropouts. They are implementing a network of academic support personnel that are on hand to help students who are having difficulty in school. It is believed that this will help to keep more students in school and will lower the dropout rate over the next few years.