The ages of the 2002 PAL students at Para West ranged from 21 to 56, and there were about equal numbers in their 20s, 30s and 40s, with an average age of 36. The age ranges were the same in the second year of the PAL pilot, although overall they were younger than the single Para West group the year before. The average age overall118 for the four 2003 PAL student cohorts was 32, with over 40 per cent overall in the youngest age range (21-30), just over 30 per cent in the next (31-40), just over 20 per cent in the third age range (41-50), and 6 per cent between 51 and 60 years of age. The youngest 2003 cohort was at Thebarton (also the smallest cohort), with over 90 per cent in the youngest two age ranges, and the oldest at Para West with a little over a third in the oldest two age ranges. Only Marden did not have any students in the oldest age range in 2003.
This is the significant thing…[the UniSA-PAL group] is more like the age range of what we were getting in the adult campus…back in the early ‘90s. (Hamilton staff interview)
And in contrast, [these day the students] are quite young here, like even 16, and they have no idea what they want. (Marden staff interview)
The ages of the students in the Diploma in University Studies over the years that it has been offered have consistently been older than for the University as a whole, which itself has an older student body than many universities. No useful comparisons can be made from the national data on the ages of students in enabling programs across Australia, since such programs do not have a minimum entry age. In 1998, for example, 43 per cent of such students were under 20, an age range not eligible for either UniSA-PAL or the Diploma in University Studies in 2002. Interesting but not surprising is that nearly a third of the students in enabling courses were 25 years and older in 1998 (the most recent year for which national data is available).
In terms of their marital status, the Para West cohort in the first year of the pilot were predominantly single (56.3%), with equal numbers who were divorced and married (18.7%). Together this means that three quarters of the 2002 students had no partner either because they had never married or because they had divorced. The 2003 cohort at the same school was more likely to be married (56%) whereas the Hamilton and Marden students were more likely to be single. Overall more than two thirds of all of the 2003 PAL students were without a partner, and less than a third of them were married. The category “de facto” was not used by any student in either of the years, perhaps reflecting a wider change in social attitudes. No data is available on the marital status of either the Diploma students or those in bridging programs nationally.
In both 2002 and 2003 three quarters of the PAL students at Para West had dependants under the age of 18, which is interesting given that three quarters of the 2002 cohort were also living without partners. Including the small number of 2003 students with dependants over the age of 18, nearly 60 per cent of the students studying the PAL course in 2003 had dependants, with the highest proportion at Para West (nearly 90 per cent) and the lowest at Thebarton (40 per cent). There is no data available on numbers of dependants for either the Diploma students or those in bridging programs nationally.
In terms of their gender, both years of UniSA-PAL students and all years of Diploma in University Studies students are overwhelmingly women. Since 1996, on average 83 per cent of the Diploma students have been women, and 81 per cent of the 2002 PAL cohort at Para West were women. The early school leaver data referred to above is relevant to the predominance of women in both of these pathways into higher education since it estimates that nearly twice as many female as male early school leavers remain lifetime school leavers,119 with more male students than female students using VET pathways back into learning. The 2003 cohort at Para West were 88 per cent women, and there was an average of 86.5 per cent across the four 2003 PAL cohorts, with Hamilton having the most men (28%). In comparison, the students undertaking enabling programs across the country in 1998 included considerably more men, 37 percent of the bridging program students and 46 per cent of the supplementary programs.