The purpose of the study was to explore rural university access programme students' experience of mathematics anxiety in academic settings. Mathematics anxiety has been found to have an adverse effect on students' confidence, motivation and achievement. The quantitative study was exploratory and descriptive in nature. The participants were 655 university access programme students doing a mathematics foundation course at the Qwaqwa campus of the University of the Free State (UFS), South Africa. The participants completed a 20-item questionnaire and 650 (99.2%) questionnaires were found to contain valid responses and were analysed by a professional statistician at UFS. The questionnaire was tested for reliability using the Cronbach's alpha coefficient and was found to have a reliability score of .804, thus indicating an acceptable reliability coefficient. The findings revealed that all students sometimes, often and always experience mathematics anxiety in academic settings. Therefore, it is important for teachers and authorities in education to observe its prevalence and to implement strategies towards the alleviation of the effects of mathematics anxiety.