The effects of student migration to South African universities on higher education in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to establish the effects on the Zimbabwean higher educational system of student migration into South Africa for higher education. The study was motivated by the rising number of Zimbabwean students migrating to South Africa for that purpose, aided in doing so by their schools and other organisations. Rising migration rates are substantiated not only by the growing number of students departing the country for a foreign university, but by the parents who support their going and the administrators and lecturers in Zimbabwean universities who witness migration‟s impacts on the nation‟s higher education. A qualitative research design was employed for data collection. A review was first conducted of the empirical evidence of student migration rates. Data were collected through conversations and interviews, the interview-guide approach, and recorded cell-phone interviews. The qualitative research design was motivated by grounded theory, narrative qualitative inquiry, interim analysis and interpretive epistemology. These approaches jointly ensured that the data would be most suitable for the study‟s intensions. The study investigated the international and local factors contributing to the out-migration of Zimbabwean students in general and, in particular, into South African higher educational institutions. Interviewees reported that migration was motivated mainly by the condition of the Zimbabwean economy. Findings also clarified the effects of the migration process on the educational system in Zimbabwe. Those effects emerge as challenges that must be addressed in the Zimbabwean higher education system. Policy recommendations for addressing such challenges are provided.