Student success is challenging to define and delineate, particularly in terms of what exactly matters and contributes to it. Student success is often a high priority for institutions of higher education, their leadership, and those involved in the academic project, due to the high demand for evidence-based strategies that improve student learning and success. Many authors have proposed definitions for student success over time. Kuh et al. (2006) made major contributions in the field and 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’. York et al. (2015) later found that the terms ‘academic success’ and ‘student success’ are used interchangeably in literature and proposed an amended, theoretically grounded definition with six constituents: Academic achievement, satisfaction, acquisition of skills and competencies, persistence, attainment of learning objectives, and career success. Thus, many factors impact student success, and there is no simple recipe to ensure success for all students. Students come to university with past life and educational experiences; they are also products of their family of origin and cultural, social, political, and educational environments. Some are better prepared for the challenges associated with studies in higher education than others.

This paper presents the perspectives of a group of former Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP) students at a research-intensive university in South Africa on the topic of what contributes to student success. STEM ECP students (from the Faculties of Science, AgriSciences and Engineering between 2010 to 2016) were randomly selected and invited to participate in the study. Twenty-five of these students responded and agreed to participate, with representation from all three faculties, all seven cohorts, graduates and non-graduates, as well as all relevant gender and race groups. Online interviews were conducted by an independent interviewer who used a set of semi-structured questions with the following research questions as guide: how did the ECP opportunity impact students’ lives during and after their studies at the institution, what aspects of the STEM ECP were valued most, what attributes students developed because of the ECP, and what can be improved? Interviews were recorded and transcribed, and a process of ‘analytic progression’ was used to analyse the data.

The participants in this study shared their lived experiences as former ECP students, including what factors contributed to success during their time of studies (and even beyond). They confirmed some of the abovementioned constituents of student success, but their narratives also provided a student voice for what matters towards enhancing student success: manageable transition to higher education, effective support structures, experiencing a sense of belonging, positive classroom experiences and meaningful interactions with lecturers, solid knowledge and understanding of foundational subjects, developing a wide range of skills for success in higher education (e.g. time management, learning to collaborate, academic literacy, etc.), and a strong sense of identity and stable personal circumstances. The lessons learnt from this study are insightful since they may help improve student success strategies in general.

Keywords: Student success, the student voice, STEM degree programmes.