Combined Courses of Study

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

4.5 Combined course students with disabilities

Statistical data for students with disabilities was collected nationally for the first time in 1996, following the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs’ decision to trial the definition and equity indicators Martin (1994) had previously recommended. Annual statistical returns have since shown a steady growth in the overall number of students with disabilities in the sector. Some of this growth has no doubt been achieved through legislative reform, but West (1998) also recently pointed to the positive influence of specific targeting and program activities at the institutional level.

Data concerning the representation of students with disabilities across the higher education sector is extremely limited. Martin’s (1994) exploratory profiles of 1993 data for two institutions gave some indication that students with disabilities were perhaps attracted to the broad fields of Arts, Humanities, Social Science and Law, Legal Studies, as well as Science. A detailed analysis of commencing undergraduate student enrolments across the sector in 1996 (Dobson, Sharma and Ramsay, 1998) provided substantially more information. These authors ascertained, for example, that students with disabilities were less likely to move directly from school to university and were more likely to enrol on a part-time (internal) basis than were other students. Relative to other undergraduates, it was further established that commencing students with disabilities were more likely to enrol in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences broad field of study and less likely to enrol in the fields of Business, Administration, Economics and Engineering.

The Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs later released its first comprehensive review of the sector’s performance against all disability indicators in 1997 (DETYA, 1999) and pertinent findings regarding the access and participation indicators are summarised below.

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4.5.1 Background data

When data for students with a disability was first collected in 1996, a total of 11,656 such students were recorded as being enrolled in the Australian higher education sector. By 1999, there were 18,084 students with a disability, a third of whom were commencing students. In this same year, students with disabilities comprised approximately 3% of all students in the higher education sector.

Across the institutions included in this study, students with a disability in combined courses at the bachelor (honours/pass) level comprised 7.5% of all such students enrolled in 1999. Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory had comparatively higher percentages of students with disabilities enrolled in degree-level combined courses, with 11.0% and 20.5% respectively.

The analysis of equity indicators for students with disabilities in 1997 (DETYA, 1999) showed a national average access rate of 2.4%, relative to a national reference value of 4.0%. In addition, a participation ratio of 0.61 was reported, indicating that the representation of students with disabilities in higher education was 61% of their representation in the general population. In this context, DETYA (1999) noted that although students with disabilities were still a long way from achieving parity with the wider student population, performance on both indicators had improved markedly since 1996.

At the institutional level, only four universities had levels of access that were higher than the national reference value in 1997 (Southern Cross University, the University of Wollongong, the Flinders University of South Australia, the University of Canberra) and, equally, very few had participation rates that exceeded the reference value of 1. In addition to Southern Cross University, the University of Wollongong and the Flinders University of South Australia, students with disabilities were adequately represented in 1997 at the University of Southern Queensland.

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4.5.2 Access to combined courses for students with disabilities

In total, 287 students with disabilities commenced a combined course of study at the bachelor (honours/pass) level in 1997 (161 females and 126 males). Both the total number and gender composition of commencing students was similar in the following year and then quite a dramatic increase, particularly in female enrolments, occurred in 1999 when new enrolments totalled 384 students. Females thus accounted for 59% of all students with a disability who commenced a combined course at the bachelor (honours/pass) level in 1999.

The combined course access indicators for students with a disability are presented in Table 15. Bearing in mind that the national reference value for such students is 4%, the national averages reported in the table for both females and males with a disability clearly indicate that such students have much lower access to combined courses than might be expected on the basis of population share. Having said this, the national combined course averages do compare favourably with the 1997 all-course level national access average (2.4%) and the 1999 average for all bachelor-level commencing students with a disability (also 2.4%). Indeed, in reference to the latter, female students can be seen to have higher access to combined courses (2.6%) than they do at the bachelor level generally. Thus, whilst it might reasonably be assumed that combined courses would attract fewer students with disabilities because they entail heavier workloads, it would seem that this is not necessarily the case.

The 1999 access averages for the states/territories and individual institutions vary widely, both because the number of combined course students with disabilities is often small and because some institutions have small combined course student enrolments overall. In this context, the averages for females in the Australian Capital Territory (4.8%), New South Wales (3.2%) and Queensland (2.6%) are noteworthy: the first because it exceeded the national reference value, and the others because they matched or exceeded the national combined course female average. In addition, the Australian Capital Territory (3.1%), New South Wales (2.8%), Queensland (2.4%) and South Australia (2.3%) had combined course averages for males with disabilities that either matched or exceeded the 1999 national combined course average.

Institutions with high combined course access rates in 1999 for females with a disability included the University of New South Wales (4%), the University of Western Sydney (4.5%), University of Wollongong (11.7%), Victoria University of Technology (5.1%), James Cook University (5.7%), Edith Cowan (5.6%), and the Australian National University (5.2%). High combined course access rates for males with a disability were evident at Macquarie University (5%), as well as a number of institutions where commencing student totals in combined courses were low.

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Table 15 Commencing combined course students with a disability at the bachelor level (Access)

	Students with a disability (no.)						Access (%)
	1997		1998		1999		1997		1998		1999
	F	M	F	M	F	M	F	M	F	M	F	M
Institution
Charles Sturt University							0.0	0.0	n.a	n.a	n.a	n.a
Macquarie University	9	5	**	**	16	14	2.9	3.4	**	**	3.5	5.0
Southern Cross University	1	1				1	3.4	5.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	3.3
The University of New England	3	4	4	3	4	5	2.9	5.7	1.5	3.0	0.8	2.4
The University of New South Wales	9	6	6	2	13	5	3.1	2.0	2.1	0.7	4.0	1.8
The University of Newcastle	8	6	13	3	22	9	1.2	2.6	2.3	1.3	3.3	3.5
The University of Sydney	2	2	6	2	15	10	0.5	0.8	1.5	0.6	3.4	3.1
University of Technology, Sydney	11	3	5	11	6	10	3.8	1.7	1.5	1.9	1.5	1.7
University of Western Sydney		1	2	2	9	4	0.0	0.9	2.1	3.4	4.5	3.1
University of Wollongong	12	5	7	3	14	3	12.1	7.6	8.2	6.8	11.7	3.7
Deakin University	13	8	4	1	1		1.6	2.0	0.5	0.3	0.2	0.0
La Trobe University		1	2	3	2	2	0.0	0.7	1.4	2.2	1.4	1.5
Monash University	24	23	31	17	22	18	2.6	3.0	3.5	2.4	2.9	3.0
RMIT University	1	1	1	2		2	4.0	0.7	4.2	2.1	0.0	2.5
The University of Melbourne	21	29	15	17	7	14	3.0	3.3	2.2	2.3	1.2	2.0
University of Ballarat	1	2	4	4	3	3	1.1	2.5	3.3	5.1	2.1	3.5
Victoria University of Technology			4	2	13	5	n.a	n.a	3.4	2.7	5.1	3.8
Griffith University	4	4	8	7	12	10	1.5	1.9	2.8	3.6	3.1	3.8
James Cook University	5		2	1	6	1	8.3	0.0	3.2	2.0	5.7	1.6
Queensland University of Technology	8	8	12	7	11	7	1.4	1.9	2.2	2.0	2.0	1.8
University of the Sunshine Coast						1	n.a	n.a	n.a	n.a	0.0	4.0
The University of Queensland	7	8	17	11	15	9	1.3	2.8	3.3	3.8	2.6	2.3
University of Southern Queensland	1	3	2	2	1	1	4.5	15.8	3.7	5.9	1.1	1.4
Curtin University of Technology					1		0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	1.1	0.0
Edith Cowan University	2				2		13.3	0.0	0.0	0.0	5.6	0.0
Murdoch University	2		5		2	1	2.7	0.0	5.8	0.0	2.3	2.0
The University of Western Australia	2	1		3	2	1	1.3	0.4	0.0	1.2	1.2	0.4
The Flinders University of SA						1	n.a	n.a	n.a	n.a	0.0	4.5
The University of Adelaide					1		0.0	0.0	n.a	n.a	25.0	0.0
University of South Australia		1	3	4	2	6	0.0	1.1	4.9	3.0	0.9	2.1
University of Tasmania	6	1	2	3	2		5.6	1.1	2.0	3.5	1.7	0.0
Northern Territory University	1		1	1	1		3.0	0.0	3.4	5.6	4.0	0.0
The Australian National University	5	2	8	9	18	11	1.1	0.5	2.5	3.0	5.2	3.4
University of Canberra	3	1	4	6	3	1	6.8	1.7	3.4	6.7	3.3	1.4
Australian Catholic University	***	***			2	1	***	***	0.0	n.a	7.1	7.7
Total	161	126	168	126	228	156	2.2	2.2	2.3	2.2	2.6	2.3
New South Wales	55	33	43	26	99	61	2.4	2.4	2.1	1.6	3.2	2.8
Victoria	60	64	61	46	48	44	2.3	2.7	2.2	2.1	1.9	2.2
Queensland	25	23	41	28	45	29	1.7	2.3	2.8	3.1	2.6	2.4
Western Australia	6	1	5	3	7	2	2.0	0.3	1.6	0.7	1.8	0.4
South Australia		1	3	4	3	7	0.0	1.0	4.9	3.0	1.2	2.3
Tasmania	6	1	2	3	2		5.6	1.1	2.0	3.5	1.7	0.0
Northern Territory	1		1	1	1		3.0	0.0	3.4	5.6	4.0	0.0
Australian Capital Territory	8	3	12	15	21	12	1.6	0.6	2.8	3.9	4.8	3.1
Multi-State	***	***			2	1	***	***	0.0	n.a	7.1	7.7

1 Access is the percentage of students with a disability in the commencing combined course student population at the bachelor level. The access reference value, based on an estimate of the percentage of 15-64 year olds with disabilities that might be expected to participate in higher education, is 4%.
2 Not applicable (n.a) indicates that no students commenced a combined course of study in that year.
3 Data unavailable **
4 Data omitted ***

4.5.3 Participation in combined courses for students with disabilities

The number of students with disabilities participating in combined courses at the bachelor (honours/pass) level has increased rapidly. From a base of 783 students in 1997, total enrolments grew by 33% in the following year to reach 1045 students. Further growth in 1999 took the total to 1315, of whom 60% were females and 40% were males. Enrolments in New South Wales accounted for much of the growth that occurred between 1998 and 1999. In terms of the domestic Australian combined course student population, students with disabilities accounted for 2.8% of all combined course enrolments in 1999.

Participation ratios for students with disabilities in combined courses at the bachelor (honours/pass) level are presented in Table 16. Clearly, there has been some improvement at the national level in the extent to which students with a disability are represented in the combined course student population. With participation ratios of 0.75 for females in 1999 and 0.62 for males, against the reference value of 1, it is equally apparent that both genders are still a long way from achieving equitable representation in combined courses at the bachelor level.

Although the 1997 all-course level benchmark of 0.61 casts the national combined course participation indicators for both genders in a more favourable light, the participation ratio for all students with disabilities at the bachelor (honours/pass) level in 1999 (0.70) points to a clear gender difference in combined course representation. Against this bachelor-level benchmark, it is apparent that females with disabilities are currently better represented in combined courses than they are at the bachelor level generally, whilst males are comparatively under-represented.

At the state/territory level, the Australian Capital Territory again stood out in terms of its representation rate for females with disabilities in combined courses (1.28) and also because males with a disability were better represented here than they were elsewhere (0.89). In contrast, females and males with disabilities were very poorly represented in Western Australia (F = 0.42; M = 0.25) and females in South Australia (0.40).

Relative to population share, the representation of students with a disability in combined courses in 1999 was very high at the University of Wollongong (F = 2.61; M =1.39) and the University of the Sunshine Coast (F = 3.42; M = 2.24). The representation rate for males with a disability was also high at the University of Ballarat (1.13), where the rate for females (0.93) also approached the reference value. Equally, the Australian National University had a combined course representation rate of 1.38 for females with a disability and 0.92 for males. Females with a disability were also well represented in combined courses at the Victoria University of Technology (1.39) and James Cook University (1.66).

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