Academic resilience among rural and non-rural undergraduate students in South African higher education: A quantitative comparative analysis during times of crises

Academic resilience is shaped by the interaction of personal, relational, institutional, and contextual resources over time. This article reports on the quantitative component of a larger mixed-methods study and offers a focused comparison of rural and non-rural undergraduate Education students in South African higher education during times of crisis. Rather than presenting the Academic Resilience Scale as a scale-development or full psychometric validation study, the article uses the Academic Resilience Scale as a context-sensitive quantitative instrument to examine how academic resilience differs across student contexts. Purposive and snowball sampling were used to recruit undergraduate Education students enrolled between 2020 and 2023 at three South African higher education institutions. Of the 343 students who completed the Academic Resilience Scale, 67 were identified as coming from rural areas, while the remainder represented non-rural contexts. The Academic Resilience Scale examined dimensions including student-lecturer relationships, academic and administrative stress, institutional support, engagement and communication, perseverance, social support structures, and technology-related challenges. Findings indicate statistically significant differences between rural and non-rural students in student-lecturer relationships, institutional support, engagement and communication, and social support structures. No statistically significant group differences were found for academic and administrative stress, perseverance, or technology-related challenges. The study contributes to rural education and Global South resilience scholarship by showing that academic resilience is patterned through institutional, relational, and contextual resources, rather than individual perseverance alone.