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The number of university students coming from rural areas has significantly increased in South Africa in the last two decades. While this is a positive sign of inclusive social growth and development, the fact that 70% of South African universities are still located in urban areas creates challenges for a number of these students. This is also compounded by the fact that most rural schools in South Africa offer sub-optimal preparation for post-school activities. As such, the first barrier for most of these students is negotiating various levels of access to higher education (HE), using forms of social and cultural capital that may be incommensurate with urban-based HE institutions. Using an in-depth review of literature on the subject of rural education, transition to higher education, student success and reflections on the professional experience of the authors in student support services in higher education. This study argues that since most South African universities are "urban enclaves", students from rural areas take time to adapt and accumulate relevant sociocultural capital to enable them to thrive and succeed. The transition of students from rural schools to urban-based universities is a socio-cultural as much as it is an epistemological mobility. As such, this "troubled transition" of rural students can be ameliorated through a trans-sectoral or transdisciplinary transitional intervention to simultaneously enable epistemological access and create commensurate socio-cultural capital. However, previous interventions on student transition have been generic and lacked the nuanced intersectional analysis of rurality on student access and success. Transdisciplinary contribution: The study proposes a trans-sectoral or transdisciplinary transitional space in which education institutions (basic and HE) collaborate with government and non-state partners to ensure sufficient and effective transition, especially for rural school learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The location of writing centres in universities has attracted attention from practitioners and researchers in the field of academic support scholarship. These writing centres, known as spaces where students discuss their writing ideas, have become part of the decoloniality discourse in South African higher education. This study adopts a mixed-method approach and builds upon Grimm's theory of transitional space to examine tutor perspectives on the contribution of writing centres' pedagogical practices and physical location to the decolonisation of education at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) and Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT). The findings reveal that the writing centres in these contexts contribute to the decolonial agenda by employing various approaches such as multilingualism and one-on-one consultations that are sensitive to the African context. However, despite these positive contributions, it is necessary to initiate decolonial discussions that address historical past injustices. The study recommends that the creation of decolonised spaces is a complex process requiring collaborative engagement between writing centres and the university community, including management. Writing centres have an integral role to play in decolonising the university space, particularly in the South African context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]