| Summary: | Unplanned pregnancy poses a multiplicity of problems for students and academic institutions.
Using an ecosystemic framework one can uncover the range of costs incurred when a student’s
academic life is disrupted as a result of an unplanned pregnancy. The academic programme is
derailed with serious financial costs incurred by the institution, the family and the individual.
Through-put targets of the institution may be affected, leaving a trail of deficits that are difficult to
manage, together with a bruised public image that impacts negatively on student intake. At a
psycho-social level the individual and family lose standing in the community because of the shame
of an unplanned pregnancy and an illegitimate child, or trauma upon learning of a positive HIV
diagnosis accompanying pregnancy. These concerns provided the motivation for this study, which
was to identify factors that contributed to unplanned pregnancy to reduce its impact and inform
proactive planning. No such study had been conducted on the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s
Westville campus previously. The research was conducted on the Westville Campus of the
University of KwaZulu-Natal under the auspices of the Department of Student Counselling from
August 2003 to December 2003 to investigate why an increasing number of students were
presenting with unplanned pregnancies. This increase is reflected in the statistics below.
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