A curriculum is centred around what is taught, why it is taught, to whom it is taught and who is teaching. These are questions of the moment in the higher education landscape since knowledge is always contested in teaching and learning spaces. Community engagement, which is one of the three key pillars in South African Higher Education (SAHE) institutions, occurs in a socio-political and sociocultural context wherein engagement with communities in the university’s locality is deemed essential in teaching and learning. A relatively new concept that was only developed in the late 1990s, community engagement is not regarded as important as the other two key pillars of SAHE (research and teaching) and consequently, does not enjoy the same status and recognition. This study critically explored the epistemological experiences of third-year students undertaking a course in community-based learning (CBL) in the context of community engagement at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). It adopted a qualitative case study approach using Schön’s double loop learning and Bourdieu’s theory on cultural and social reproduction as a theoretical framework. The triangulation of data production methods included a questionnaire that aimed to elicit the demographic profiles of 89 students enrolled in the CBL course, 14 individual interviews, two focus group discussions (FGDs) and a document review of student journals and course material. Thematic content and critical discourse analysis of the data revealed that dominant discourses at UKZN construct the identities of ‘non-traditional students’ from low socioeconomic contexts in a way that suggests that it is difficult for them to gain epistemological access. Strategies are then put in place to transform structures in order to support students to succeed academically, while overlooking institutional cultures. The study demonstrates that while dominant discourses regard ‘non-traditional students’ as lacking epistemological access, transformation will not happen in a context that disregards and alienates students from their lived experiences. While a high percentage of students identified with and shared struggles with marginalised communities, teaching and learning in the university continued to alienate them from their everyday realities. Essentially, the findings suggest that the current education system in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) renders students incapable of navigating between the university and the community regardless of the different conceptions of knowledge yielded by each space. It was further established that dominant discourses in HEIs disregard students’ epistemological experiences that are embedded in multiple contexts and therefore fail to embrace the multi-dimensional realities that students bring to the learning process. This is due to juxtaposed cultural capitals that determine what is valued. Consequently, knowledge produced at the nexus between the university and the community is often not explored and is therefore less understood. The study’s contribution to the existing body of knowledge is a conceptual framework towards a transcendent epistemology in community engagement. It illustrates that students’ lived experiences, which influence and reconcile divergent epistemological experiences, put them in different places within the knowledge spaces in the university and community. The conceptual framework foregrounds the epistemologies produced in the marginal, repressive, liminal and transcendent spaces in both the university and community. The study is significant in the current SAHE landscape as it demonstrates that transformation in HEIs cannot be limited to structural transformation without transforming the institutional cultures and epistemologies that maintain the status quo. It further validates experiential learning through community engagement as knowledge that is fundamental if used constructively.