Combined Courses of Study

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

5 Conclusion

This paper has presented a comprehensive overview of gender enrolment patterns in combined courses at the bachelor (honours/pass) level between 1997 and 1999. In particular, it evaluated access and participation indicators for the six designated equity groups against relevant reference values and other meaningful benchmarks. Thus the paper fills an important gap in knowledge and provides a sound basis for further research.

Overall, the results of the study suggest that combined courses may be providing women with an attractive pathway into non-traditional fields of study and, in so doing, are positively influencing the historic gender imbalances within these. In so far as the levels of access and participation for women were surprisingly high in the broad field of Engineering, further research might usefully be directed toward examining the factors that are motivating women to undertake combined courses that encompass this field, and the particular course combinations that are attracting their interest. Research along similar lines might be conducted in the field of Science with a view to advancing equity for women in those major fields that continue to have unacceptably low representation rates.

The results also provide compelling evidence that neither the growth in combined courses per se, nor the existent variety of course combinations, have advanced educational equity for groups of male and female students with other equity characteristics. With the exception of males from non-English speaking backgrounds, such students were found to have very low access and participation rates in combined courses at the bachelor (honours/pass) level.

Whilst combined course access rates for groups of females with designated equity characteristics were low relative to national population share, it was apparent that their respective combined course access rates in 1999 either matched or slightly exceeded their equity group’s access rate at the bachelor level generally. Excluding non-English speaking males students again, this pattern was nowhere in evidence for any other group of males with equity characteristics.

In the future, it will be important to monitor and further investigate gendered access and participation equity group trends in combined courses at the bachelor level. It is anticipated that the introduction of a new field of study classification system (Australian Standard Classification of Education, 2001) will assist in this regard, allowing for the collection of more accurate data and the conduct of more finely grained analyses.

With prescribed completion times of 4 - 7 years, an evaluation of retention and success indicators for designated equity group members in combined courses needs also to be initiated in the next one to two years.

Finally, as well as developing an understanding of the underlying factors that motivate or mitigate against participation in combined courses, it must be recognised that the findings of this report will attain heightened significance in the policy arena if dual degrees do, indeed, give graduates a real edge in the market place. Thus it is further recommended that research also be selectively directed toward labour market experiences and outcomes for dual degree graduates.

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