Cubans arrive in the U.S. with more formal education than other Latino immigrants, and they arrive to communities with long standing networks of support. Though their baccalaureate degree attainment is better than their non-Cuban Latina counterparts, Cuban women still lag behind White, non-Latina women. The qualitative study aims to explore the principal influences and non-academic factors that 15 adult Cuban non-native English-speaking women in South Florida attribute to the successful attainment of their baccalaureate degree. There are many differences among the various immigrant Latino communities in the U.S., and Cuban women are largely absent from the research. Nearly 75% of Cuban women who start Miami Dade College with English as a second language course-work drop out within one year of matriculation. Understanding the principal influences and non-academic factors related to the baccalaureate attainment rate of this group may assist educators and administrators in providing the support these women need to enhance their degree completion. The literature says that the baccalaureate degree attainment of Latinos is influenced by age-at-the-time-of-immigration, country of origin, and gender, yet little research was found on the degree attainment specifically of female Cubans who entered the U.S. having already completed most of their education in Cuba. My dissertation explores the journey of 15 Cuban women who arrived in the U.S. as teens during the 1990s and had to learn English as a second language at an urban community college prior to completing a baccalaureate degree. The purpose of the research is to describe the principal influences and non-academic factors that these women attribute to their baccalaureate degree attainment.

South Africa has a low throughput rate in the public higher education sector which leads to severe skill shortages that are urgently required by the country. In particular, the financial skills shortages are severe, especially those of accountants and chartered accountants. Keeping in mind the vastness of the University of South Africa’s (Unisa’s) market share of accounting students in South Africa, it is important to understand the distinct challenges related to retention and throughput of students pursuing an accounting qualification at an open distance learning institution such as Unisa. If one considers the landscape of accounting education in South Africa, the unique challenges faced by accounting students at Unisa and the recent scholarly addresses on retention and throughput of distance education students, as well as the disadvantaging factors with which Unisa students are faced, this study contributes to the theoretical comprehension of students’ retention and throughput rates in accounting education at postgraduate level. The focus of the current study was mainly on non-academic factors affecting the performance of accounting students at postgraduate level, since much research has already been done on academic factors that affect the performance of accounting students. Many studies are focussed on students at undergraduate level; therefore, in this study, postgraduate students studying towards becoming a chartered accountant were chosen. / Financial Accounting / M. Phil. (Accounting Sciences)