Combined Courses of Study

Equity group access and participation at the bachelor (honours/pass) level

4.2 Combined course students from non-English speaking backgrounds

Over the last decade, the higher education sector’s performance against the various equity indicators in respect of students from non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB) has frequently contrasted its performance in relation to students with other designated equity characteristics. By 1993, for example, the participation rate for students from non-English speaking backgrounds was equivalent to that of the wider student population, and it has remained high since. Also, by 1994, their participation at the degree level equated with that of the wider student population (NBEET, 1996) and, by 1995, they were deemed ‘massively over represented’ at higher course levels (Postle et al, 1995, p.71). Contrary to the gendered patterns of participation apparent within other equity groups of students with equity characteristics and, indeed, across the student body as a whole, the proportion of NESB male students in the sector has typically been larger than that of NESB female students. Additionally, some evidence suggests that non-English speaking females are more likely than females with other equity characteristics to enrol in non-traditional fields of study (Dobson, Sharma and Ramsay, 1998).

It has been recognised elsewhere that early progress toward equitable outcomes for students from non-English speaking backgrounds at least partly resulted from a definitional change that caused this group’s membership boundary to shrink (NBEET, 1996). More recently, large national gains on all equity performance indicators have seen this group of students achieve parity with the wider student population and the need to maintain their status as a designated equity group has consequently been questioned. The extent to which the NESB group’s assumed homogeneity at the definitional level is masking disadvantage/advantage within constituent sub-groups, however, remains unclear (Postle et al, 1995; Cologon, 1996; DETYA, 2000b).¹¹ Equally, the extent to which changes in migration patterns might explain changes in the enrolment patterns of the NESB group is not always clear.

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4.2.1 Background data

The number of students from non-English speaking backgrounds in the higher education sector began to decline in 1997 and has continued to do so since. Thus between 1997 and 1998, total enrolments moved down from 31,448 to 29,275 and, in 1999, again declined to 26,168 students. Students from non-English speaking backgrounds were the only group of students with a designated equity characteristic to record a negative growth rate (-10.6%) between 1998 and 1999.

In 1999, students from non-English speaking backgrounds were predominantly located in New South Wales (44%) and Victoria (28%), with urban institutions in both states accounting for the bulk of enrolments. Across the institutions included in this study, NESB enrolments in combined courses at the bachelor (honours/pass) level accounted for 8.7% of all NESB student enrolments. The relative percentage of NESB students enrolled in degree-level combined courses was higher in Victoria (12.9%) and the Australian Capital Territory (14%) whilst, in New South Wales, such enrolments comprised approximately 7% of all NESB enrolments.

As noted previously, students from non-English speaking backgrounds, as a group, have performed well against the established indicators for quite some time, and the 1997 national indicators for access (5.2%, compared to the reference value of 4.8%), and participation (1.05, compared to the reference value of 1.0), provided further confirmation of equitable outcomes for the group as a whole. High levels of access and participation were also evident at the state/territory level in 1997, with the exception of the Australian Capital Territory. Here, the access rate for students from non-English speaking backgrounds was 3.3%, compared with the reference value of 4.3%, and their participation was 79% of what would be expected on the basis of population share.

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4.2.2 Access to combined courses for students from non-English speaking backgrounds

In 1997, a total of 769 students from non-English speaking backgrounds commenced a combined course of study at the bachelor (honours/pass) level and a similar number commenced in the following year. A moderate increase in commencing students from non-English speaking backgrounds then occurred in 1999 when new enrolments totalled 801 students. The percentages of NESB females and males commencing combined courses of study in 1999 were reasonably comparable, with the former making up 49% of all NESB combined course commencements and the latter 51%.

With the possible exception of NESB females in 1999, the national NESB access rates for combined courses at the bachelor (honours/pass) level (see Table 7) compare favourably with the current national reference value of 4.8%. Moreover, the combined course access rates for both males (6.3%) and females (5.4%) in 1997, and for males in ensuing years, are higher than the rate recorded across all course levels in 1997 (5.2%). Overall, then, the national data suggests that combined courses represent an attractive and viable choice for students from non-English speaking backgrounds in general, and for males in particular. The access rate for all NESB students at the bachelor (honours/pass) level in 1999 (3.7%) lends weight to this conclusion.

From Table 7, it can also be seen that Queensland and Western Australia were the only states to consistently record higher than expected access rates for both NESB males and females between 1997 and 1999. As well, New South Wales and Victoria - with larger numbers of NESB students in combined courses - recorded access rates for NESB males that were well above their state reference values in each of the three years. High access rates for non-English speaking background females in South Australia in 1998 and 1999 are also noteworthy, although they pertain to very small numbers of students.¹²

As might be expected, institutions with high access to combined courses for students from non-English speaking backgrounds were almost invariably city-based. In 1999, for example, those with high access rates for both females and males included the University of New South Wales (F = 12.8%; M= 18.8%), the University of Technology Sydney (F = 8.9; M = 13.4), RMIT University (F= 26.3; M = 8.9), the University of Melbourne (F = 8.1; M = 8.3), the University of Queensland (F = 4.3%; M = 5.1%), Curtin University of Technology (F = 9.7%; M = 10.2%) and the University of Western Australia (F = 4.9; M = 7.2).

High access rates for NESB females relative to state reference values were also evident at James Cook University (2.8%), Victoria University (7.4%) and the University of South Australia (5.8%), whilst Griffith University (2.7%) and the Queensland University of Technology (2.9%) had high access rates for NESB males.

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Table 7 Commencing combined course non-English speaking background students at the bachelor level (Access)

	NESB students (no.)						Access (%)
	1997		1998		1999		1997		1998		1999
	F	M	F	M	F	M	F	M	F	M	F	M
Institution
Macquarie University	11	4	**	**	38	27	3.6	2.8	**	**	8.3	9.6
Southern Cross University				1			0.0	0.0	0.0	4.8	0.0	0.0
The University of New England	1	1	2	4	6	3	1.0	1.4	0.7	4.0	1.3	1.4
The University of New South Wales	57	53	47	45	42	53	19.8	17.5	16.3	16.5	12.8	18.8
The University of Newcastle	3	3	1	2	1		0.4	1.3	0.2	0.9	0.1	0.0
The University of Sydney	36	14	33	32	36	25	9.3	5.9	8.3	9.9	8.3	7.8
University of Technology, Sydney	22	15	35	95	36	80	7.6	8.7	10.2	16.3	8.9	13.4
University of Western Sydney	7	4	3	4	7	6	5.0	3.7	3.1	6.9	3.5	4.6
University of Wollongong	1	1	1	1	3	1	1.0	1.5	1.2	2.3	2.5	1.2
Deakin University	26	11	14	15	8	4	3.1	2.7	1.7	3.8	1.2	1.6
La Trobe University	2	3	4	3	5	1	2.3	2.1	2.7	2.2	3.6	0.8
Monash University	68	52	67	58	51	45	7.5	6.9	7.5	8.3	6.6	7.4
RMIT University	3	18	5	11	5	7	12.0	13.1	20.8	11.3	26.3	8.9
The University of Melbourne	70	102	50	67	48	59	9.9	11.6	7.2	9.2	8.1	8.3
University of Ballarat					1	1	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.7	1.2
Victoria University of Technology			5	3	19	6	n.a	n.a	4.2	4.1	7.4	4.5
Griffith University	13	9	4	7	9	7	4.7	4.2	1.4	3.6	2.4	2.7
James Cook University	1	2	1		3	1	1.7	4.8	1.6	0.0	2.8	1.6
Queensland University of Technology	9	12	14	8	10	11	1.6	2.9	2.6	2.3	1.8	2.9
University of the Sunshine Coast							n.a	n.a	n.a	n.a	0.0	0.0
The University of Queensland	30	14	33	13	25	20	5.6	4.8	6.4	4.5	4.3	5.1
University of Southern Queensland					1	1	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	1.1	1.4
Curtin University of Technology	5	1	9	7	9	13	10.0	2.4	17.3	8.0	9.7	10.2
Edith Cowan University	1	2	1	5		5	6.7	8.0	7.1	11.9	0.0	8.2
Murdoch University	2	2	2				2.7	3.7	2.3	0.0	0.0	0.0
The University of Western Australia	14	15	9	13	8	19	9.2	5.8	5.9	5.1	4.9	7.2
The Flinders University of SA					1		n.a	n.a	n.a	n.a	3.4	0.0
The University of Adelaide		1			1	1	0.0	16.7	n.a	n.a	25.0	12.5
University of South Australia	1	5	11	2	13	4	4.5	5.4	18.0	1.5	5.8	1.4
University of Tasmania	1	2	2				0.9	2.2	2.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Northern Territory University	2	1					6.1	2.9	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
The Australian National University	11	17	9	5	5	5	2.4	3.8	2.8	1.7	1.5	1.6
University of Canberra	2	6	4	4	3	2	4.5	10.2	3.4	4.4	3.3	2.9
Australian Catholic University	***	***					***	***	0.0	n.a	0.0	0.0
National	399	370	366	405	394	407	5.4	6.3	5.0	7.0	4.5	6.1
New South Wales	138	95	122	184	169	195	5.9	7.0	5.9	11.3	5.4	8.9
Victoria	169	186	145	157	137	123	6.4	7.7	5.1	7.1	5.3	6.2
Queensland	53	37	52	28	48	40	3.6	3.8	3.6	3.1	2.7	3.3
Western Australia	22	20	21	25	17	37	7.5	5.3	6.9	6.0	4.5	7.3
South Australia	1	6	11	2	15	5	3.4	6.1	18.0	1.5	5.8	1.6
Tasmania	1	2	2				0.9	2.2	2.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Northern Territory	2	1					6.1	2.9	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Australian Capital Territory	13	23	13	9	8	7	2.5	4.6	3.0	2.3	1.8	1.8
Multi-State	***	***					***	***	0.0	n.a	0.0	0.0

1 Access is the percentage of students from non-English speaking backgrounds in the combined course commencing student population at the bachelor level. The access reference values (1996 census) are: NSW (6.7%), VIC (5.5%), QLD (2.6%), WA (3.9%), SA (2.5%), TAS (1.0%), NT (2.3)%, ACT (4.3%) and Australia (4.8%).
2 Not applicable (n.a) indicates that no students commenced a combined course of study in that year.
3 Data unavailable **
4 Data omitted ***

4.2.3 Participation in combined courses for students from non-English speaking backgrounds

In 1997, there were a total of 1,919 students from non-English speaking backgrounds participating in combined courses of study at the bachelor (honours/pass) level throughout Australia. In 1998, the number participating increased to 2013 and, in the following year, increased again to 2231. The sizeable increase in the combined course growth rate for NESB students between 1998 and 1999 (10.8%), fuelled primarily by an increase in enrolments in New South Wales, clearly contrasts the negative growth noted earlier in respect of the total NESB student population in the sector. Across the study period, males accounted for the majority of combined course enrolments amongst students from non-English speaking backgrounds (51% in 1999).

The national participation data for students from non-English speaking backgrounds in combined courses at the bachelor (honours/pass) level between 1997 and 1999 (see Table 8) highlights two important differences. First, it can be seen that NESB male participation ratios have consistently exceeded both the participation reference value of 1, and the 1997 all course level ratio of 1.05. Second, the data clearly shows that NESB females have experienced a steady decline in their share of combined course enrolments since 1997 and, in contrast to NESB males, have been under-represented in such courses in the last two years. Despite this decline, the rate of participation for NESB females in combined courses at the bachelor (honours/pass) level in 1999 was higher than the corresponding rate for all NESB students at this level in the same year (0.77).

Participation ratios at the state/territory level in 1999 indicate that relative to their representation at the state population level, males from non-English speaking backgrounds have high levels of participation in combined courses within New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia, and very low levels elsewhere. NESB females also participate in combined courses at a higher than expected level in Queensland and Western Australia, as well as South Australia.

Finally, the 1999 institutional participation ratios indicate that male students from non-English speaking backgrounds are particularly well represented in combined courses at the University of New South Wales (2.14), the University of Technology, Sydney (1.62), the University of Queensland (1.99), RMIT University (1.42), Curtin University of Technology (1.90) and Edith Cowan University (2.77). Four of these institutions also had high NESB female representation in combined courses in 1999: the University of New South Wales (1.92), RMIT University (3.75), the University of Queensland (2.09) and Curtin University of Technology (2.42). Additionally, the University of South Australia had a high combined course participation ratio (2.88) for females from non-English speaking backgrounds.

¹¹ Martin (1994) acknowledged that the inability of the NESB indicators to detect disadvantage at the sub-group level reduced their utility and dictated cautious interpretation of any results obtained on them.

¹² A substantial increase in the overall number of students commencing combined courses in South Australia in 1999, rather than a decrease in NESB female commencements, explains the large difference in the sizes of the access indicators for NESB females in 1998 and 1999.

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