Alison Barrett writes:
Amid reports of widening inequality in education and calls for significant cultural and environmental change at universities, the Australian Universities Accord published its interim report on higher education today.
The report, to be finalised in December, makes five recommendations, and says the “overall goal of reform must be growth for skills through greater equity”.
“It is strongly believed that a high-quality and equitable higher education system is now a must-have for Australia and there can be no room for complacency,” it says.
More Australians are likely to require a university qualification for employment by 2050, according to the report, and the higher education sector needs to be stronger to support this growth.
The five priority actions in the report are:
- extend visible, local access to tertiary education by creating further Regional University Centres and establish a similar concept for suburban/metropolitan locations
- cease the 50 percent pass rule, given its poor equity impacts, and require increased reporting on student progress. Under the 50 percent pass rule, students who fail more than 50 percent of their units of study are no longer eligible for Commonwealth assistance.
- ensure that all First Nations students are eligible for a funded place at university, by extending demand-driven funding to metropolitan First Nations students
- provide funding certainty, through the extension of the Higher Education Continuity Guarantee into 2024 and 2025
- through National Cabinet, immediately engage with state and territory governments and universities to improve university governance.
Minister for Education Jason Clare announced in a statement that the Albanese Government will act on the five immediate actions the Accord Panel identified.
Inequitable university outcomes
Participation rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in university are continuing to grow.
However, completion rates for Indigenous students remain very low when compared with completion rates of non-Indigenous students (47 percent completion vs 74 percent).
Pro Vice Chancellor Professor Bronwyn Fredericks from University of Queensland and colleagues urge universities to create safer environments for Indigenous students by ensuring university classrooms are “strongly anti-racist and address any issues of racism within the classroom”.
They also urge university leadership to provide more opportunities for cultural competency training for academic staff, professional staff and students.
This is based on research by the team exploring “what works” in supporting Indigenous students to complete their higher education.
Fredericks and colleagues also emphasise the importance of “Indigenisation of the [University] curriculum”, based on findings that Indigenous students report a lack of Indigenous perspectives in learning material.
Other experiences that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students face include being called out to “speak as the ‘Indigenous experts’ in the classroom” and racism and micro-aggressions from peers and staff.
While uncapping university places for Indigenous students is welcome, more can be done, Fredericks and colleagues wrote in The Conversation recently.
“Encouraging more Indigenous Australians to enrol in a university degree will not be as simple as just uncapping places,” they wrote, recommending that this policy needs to be part of a “holistic approach” that will support Indigenous students throughout their education.
- Consultation on additional policy ideas in the Australian Universities Accord report is open until 1 September 2023.
- Follow The Guardian Australia’s series of articles on education reform: The gutting of Gonski
Previously at Croakey
- Amid concerns about corporatisation of universities, what will it take to create a fairer education system? by Sarah O’Shea
- Time to think widely and ambitiously about the role of universities in society by Nicole MacKee
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See Croakey’s extensive archive of articles on the social determinants of health.
