Establishing a Link between Support Offered for Foundation Provisioning and in Mainstream

Foundation provisioning is one strategy that the South African Higher Education Institutions(HEI) have developed in order to enable access to the previously marginalized student population and to address the articulation gap. However what’s worrying is that students admitted in mainstream programmes are also from the same previously marginalized population and experienced the same articulation gap. A qualitative approach within a case study framed this study using a survey in the format of an open ended questionnaire. Data was sourced from hundred and seventy three of the three hundred sample of students, which equals fifty eight percent of the sample in four faculties in order to determine; a) challenges faced by students in both mainstream and foundation; b) benefits as articulated by students in both mainstream and foundation programmes. The study used Activity theory as an analytic framework to explore the benefits and challenges of being a foundation student as opposed to being a mainstream student. Activity Theory seems more appropriate for this research, as it caters well for the complexity and diversity that may be presented by the two systems. The results show that there are common challenges of academic literacy, workload and career choice. However no clear strategy exists for alignment of content between the two groups. The study recommends that there be rethinking on curriculum alignment, to ensure that the students exit with the requisite skills. All these students require substantial curriculum space and time for positive development. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n11p18