Race, representativity, and the (im)probability of being a Black African professional psychology graduate: an institutional case study

Abstract

The process of transforming South African psychology requires several coordinated initiatives. One initiative likely to unlock the transformation process in exponential ways is through attaining race-based representativity in the South African psychology workforce. Using graduation data, this article reports on the pace of racial transformation and representativity among professional psychology graduates from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Since its inception in 2004, the University of KwaZulu-Natal has made concerted efforts to transform the racial, gender, and socio-economic diversity of its student and staff body. The institution has produced at least 469 professional psychology master’s degree graduates in clinical, counselling, educational, industrial, and research psychology during this time. However, only 43.9% of these professional psychology graduates have been Black African, while the average year-on-year increase in Black African graduates was only 9.7% between 2005 and 2020. A forecasting model predicts that the University of KwaZulu-Natal is only likely to achieve national race-based representativity among its professional psychology graduates in the 2026 graduation cohort, and provincial representativity in the 2028 cohort. This article discusses why race-based representativity remains foundational in transforming professional psychology, and how and why the pace of racial transformation among professional psychology graduates at the University of KwaZulu-Natal has been relatively slow, despite transformational efforts and successes at an institutional level.