Policy rethink urged as non-traditional students ‘become majority’

Minority students comprise at least half of Australia’s higher education cohort, and the people who represent them should acknowledge their prominence by focusing on mainstream issues, a forum has heard.

La Trobe University policy expert Andrew Harvey said almost 50 per cent of Australia’s domestic students belonged to at least one of the country’s official “equity” groups by being from an indigenous, non-English speaking, regional or remote background, having a disability, or coming from a low-income area.

When “unofficial” groupings such as carers, first-in-family and former foster children were factored in, equity students were probably in the majority. Yet their advocates worried more about adjustments to relatively small, dedicated schemes such as the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Programme (HEPPP) than major changes such as the Jobs-ready Graduates (JRG) reform package, which had overhauled teaching subsidies.

Professor Harvey, who directs La Trobe’s Centre for Higher Education Equity and Diversity Research, said HEPPP delivered some A$145 million (£79 million) a year. “The Commonwealth Grant Scheme is A$7.5 billion,” he told the Needed Now in Teaching and Learning conference.

He said that the JRG changes would raise overall tuition fees by 8 per cent, with women paying an average of 10 per cent extra and indigenous students 15 per cent. “These are outrageous statistics.

“When you consider that over half the students in higher education are equity students, those macro issues such as the JRG – they are the things that everybody in equity needs to be thinking about, rather than…indigenous support funding or HEPPP. We are often focused on the smaller things.”

Verity Firth, executive director of social justice at the University of Technology Sydney, highlighted the JRG requirement that students must pass at least 50 per cent of their subjects to maintain eligibility for teaching subsidies.

She said that equity students would be “particularly hit” in their initial year at university. “That is often a very difficult year, if you’ve never had any other family members go to university before you,” she told the conference.

Ms Firth, a former New South Wales education minister, said universities must focus on equity for strategic as well as social justice reasons. “It will help us win the argument about why universities are so important.

“If you’re looking at the driver of public opinion, talking directly to the transforming role of higher education for people from different backgrounds – that is the winner. Be an advocate for that. Make sure [it is] enshrined in the heart of your university’s mission.”

Edith Cowan University (ECU) pro vice-chancellor Braden Hill said equity practitioners needed to focus on tangible progress. “I don’t know how many times I’ve had conversations about how wonderful a welcome to country [ceremony] has been,” he told the forum. “Look at the increasing success rates [or] completion rates. I’d love to see more of a focus on that.”

Professor Hill, an Aboriginal man who heads ECU’s Centre for Indigenous Australian Education and Research, said almost 50 per cent of the university’s students – and significantly more of its indigenous students – were first-in-family. “The only reason I knew about a university is that my grandmother banked at one and she cleaned one.

“When I talk to students there still is a perception that ‘this is not for me’. There is a view that universities are completely foreign.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com