摘要：Higher education institutions in South Africa are plagued with challenges such as poor academicperformance, retention and throughput that need some interventions. The objective of this paper was to examinestudents’ poor socio-economic backgrounds and poor academic performance and how these affect retention andthroughput rates of universities. This paper is based on a review of literature where there was a search for articlesfrom various electronic databases. The findings show that the impediments of poor retention and low throughputfacing South African higher education institutions are as a result of students who are inadequately prepared fromhigh school. It is also revealed that the poor academic performance of students is due to their poor socio-economicbackground. Consequently, most students drop out from university and others take longer time to complete theirdegrees. It is recommended that universities establish peer academic support programs to mitigate these challenges.
