**Abstract**

Higher education in South Africa has been plagued by a number of challenges, which different universities have been struggling to handle for the past two decades. Primarily amongst these challenges are student and institutional preparedness for education encounters. The level of preparedness by both the student and the institution determines the kind of educational encounters they have. This chapter explores this phenomenon within a university in South Africa to understand the level of student and institutional preparedness and articulate a pathway for better educational encounters. Designed as a qualitative case study, data was generated using semi-structured interviews and open-ended questionnaires. The data generated was coded and categorised into themes. These themes were social and cultural capital, cognitive skills, educational architecture and institutional culture. These themes revealed that students lack sufficient social and cultural capital needed for knowledge construction in teaching and learning. They also lacked basic cognitive skills required to decipher the knowledge codes within the disciplines which they belong. The findings also reveal that universities lacked a functional institutional culture, which makes for better educational encounters. The educational architecture was also seen as dysfunctional and disenabling as many students found it difficult to navigate their way through it.

**Keywords:** students, universities, preparedness, educational encounters, support
