Abstract:
Higher education and more specifically access to higher education has been a
critical issue in the post-apartheid South Africa. With the aim of increasing
access to higher education in order to achieve equity and redress, more
students have been entering the higher education sector (73% of students are
black and more than 50% are women) and a participation rate of 18% has
been achieved. However, graduation rates remain low and attrition rates high,
therefore the concepts of access and academic success need to be seen in
the same light (Badsha, 2004).
The aim of the present study is to look at a cognitive predictor of academic
success, that is, the PTEEP academic literacy test. The purpose is to
measure the validity of the PTEEP language proficiency test, as a predictor of
academic literacy, on the University of Witwatersrand Humanity students’
academic success.
The research approach for the study may be described as exploratorydescriptive
in nature and was conducted within a quantitative framework. The
participants comprised of 63 students from the 2004 cohort of students that
gained admission to the university by means of the alternative selection
procedure utilized by the Wits Faculty of Humanities. Descriptive and
inferential statistics are employed to summarise and report the sample data in
a meaningful way.
The analysis of the present research focused on the PTEEP test, the specific
PTEEP clusters, and academic success ratings in conjunction with variables
such as gender and specific degrees within the Faculty of Humanities. The
major findings of the present study indicate that there is no significant
relationship between the PTEEP academic literacy test and academic
success, and furthermore the PTEEP academic literacy test does not appear
to be a good predictor of academic performance. These results are
inconsistent with a large body of research indicating the predictive validity of
the PTEEP test. However, the results do suggest that ‘Genre’, a subtest of the PTEEP test, demonstrates a strong relationship with academic success and is
a significant predictor of academic success in this study.
The results indicate the further exploration into cognitive developmental
theory and the role it may play in developing admissions tests. Future
research also needs to include other personal and situational variables over a
longer period of time that could influence cognitive development and
academic success.
