Around the world, more young people than ever before are attending university. Student numbers in South Africa have doubled since democracy and for many families, higher education is a route to a better future for their children. But alongside the overwhelming demand for higher education, questions about its purposes have intensified. Deliberations about the curriculum, culture and costing of public higher education abound from student activists, academics, parents, civil society and policy-makers. We know, from macro research, that South African graduates generally have good employment prospects. But little is known at a detailed level about how young people actually make use of their university experiences to craft their life courses. And even less is known about what happens to those who drop out. This accessible book brings together the rich life stories of 73 young people, six years after they began their university studies. It traces how going to university influences not only their employment options, but also nurtures the agency needed to chart their own way and to engage critically with the world around them. The book offers deep insights into the ways in which public higher education is both a private and public good, and it provides significant conclusions pertinent to anyone who works in – and cares about – universities.

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The use of life coaching as an intervention to support students in higher education has been explored in other contexts in the global north and evidence points to its possible benefits in improving student success and well-being. Although there is new emerging research on the use of life coaching in the South African higher education context, there is a lack of empirical evidence pointing to its benefits. We report some results from a longitudinal study that investigated the use of small group life coaching intervention to support students. The objective of the intervention was to harness first-year chemical engineering students’ agency by proactively equipping them with knowledge and skills that improve their studies and lives. Four years after the intervention, using Archer’s social realist concepts of structure and agency, we evaluated how the life coaching intervention influenced students’ agency during their studies. Data was gathered through one-on-one semi-structured interviews with ten students who had participated in the intervention during their first year and were currently in the fourth year of their studies. The results indicate that the life coaching intervention enabled students to mediate academic and non-academic constraints. Concerning academic constraints, the life coaching intervention helped students manage the transition from high school, including adjusting to a new workload, time management, learning to collaborate with their peers and dealing with experiences of failure. Concerning non-academic constraints, the life coaching intervention helped students clarify their goals, increased their self-awareness, deal with negative emotions, boosted their self-confidence, and become more resilient during the Covid-19 pandemic. We recommend more empirical research to be carried out in different contexts across higher education institutions in South Africa to explore further the possible role that life coaching may play in empowering students with life-long skills, reducing dropout rates and improving chances of success.