Presented on 5 March 2010 at the Council on Higher Education‟s Second Colloquium on Improving Undergraduate Success held at Birchwood Hotel & OR Tambo Conference Centre, Johannesburg Importance of research driven approaches to improving undergraduate success Judy Backhouse We have a problem In 2008, the South African public higher education system enrolled 799 490 students and awarded 133 241 qualifications. At the undergraduate level, including bachelor‟s degrees, diplomas and certificate programmes, 653 398 students enrolled and 100 684 qualifications were awarded. These numbers translate to graduation rates of almost 17% overall and 15% at the undergraduate level. Cohort studies that we have access to show that around 50% of students enrolling in first general academic bachelor‟s degrees will graduate within 5 years of enrolling and about 60% will eventually graduate, some over far longer periods. This still means that some 40% will spend a long time at university, but will never graduate. Of course success is much more than just graduating. Students go to university with a range of different objectives – to get a better job, to acquire knowledge, to develop new skills, to have interesting experiences. If they achieve these objectives, they may well consider themselves successful. The student who spends one year deciding that university is not for him, has not necessarily failed and the student who struggles miserably through to graduation at great personal cost, has not necessarily succeeded. One report, trying to capture this diversity of understandings defined student success as “academic achievement, engagement in educationally purposeful activities, satisfaction, acquisition of desired knowledge, skills and competencies, persistence, attainment of educational objectives, and postcollege performance” (Kuh et al. 2006).