The Imperatives for Disadvantaged Students Support in HE in the COVID-19 and Post-COVID-19 Era

This chapter seeks to describe and compare the support structures made available to disadvantaged students before and after COVID-19 in order to ascertain whether are better off or worse. The aim is to outline the new challenges and propose interventions that still need to be established to ameliorate the continued hardships faced by disadvantaged students. Data was drawn through documentary analysis of reports from the Universities in South Africa April to May 2020 Engagement and Research Reports. Patterns of emerging issues were identified for interpretation and reduced into disenable themes for discussion. Three themes emerged: online teaching and learning, student infrastructure support and psycho-social support. This study established that socio-economic and academic disadvantages for students originating from rural communities remain entrenched challenges thwarting the initiatives of HE online learning in South Africa. The findings affirmed the reality of the need to revamp universities by challenging the circumstances around disadvantaged students. Disparities in the distribution of resources to disadvantaged students remain a significant challenge. Rural areas are marginalised and exposed to poor and insufficient accessibility of social and sustainable conveniences. Therefore, the government should ensure adequate provision of educational facilities most especially to the formerly disadvantaged institutions and the students from low socio-economic backgrounds. Universities should take stock of decolonisation endeavours and pre-COVID-19 academic developments and realign them within the online teaching and learning environment.