The University of South Australia has since 1995 offered an access award (the Diploma in University Studies) which is especially designed for disadvantaged adults without the usual academic entry requisites to facilitate their entry to and successful participation in undergraduate awards. As such, the Diploma has no entry requirements save that of educational disadvantage and being older than 20 years of age, although this latter potentially discriminatory restriction was recently removed in favour of a list of descriptors.92
The program was originally designed to be undertaken part-time and by distant education mode, on the assumption that most of its prospective students would already be in full time work and in any case, and as well, would have full time unpaid responsibilities in their families and communities. In addition it was recognised that there are a multitude of other pressures and crises which complicate the lives and disrupt the life plans of disadvantaged adults, and those with whom their lives are connected, such as physical and mental health issues, homelessness, drugs, gambling etc. It also recognises that such adults fulfil a range of paraprofessional roles, both paid and voluntary, in all aspects of the human services and beyond, and that, particularly in rural and remote areas, their contribution is crucial to the services provided by and the efficient operations of the professions which they have no means of entering themselves.93 The distance mode Diploma was designed to provide an award bearing pathway for them into just such a professional qualification, bridging the gap between their experiential life learning and the more formal requirements of study at this level.
This element occurs in the first stage of the Diploma in University Studies94 which recognises and formalises the students’ existing knowledge and experiences in such a way as to make these relevant to university level learning. It also prepares them for successful study at award level by providing them with the skills considered necessary for this, such as critical thinking, reading, essay writing, computer skills, basic mathematics, group work skills, cultural and sociological studies, and the preparation and delivery of oral reports. This first stage is equivalent to one year’s full time study but typically students undertake it part-time or, even if full-time, take more than one year to complete it. This flexibility, while suiting the life-stage and circumstances of the Diploma’s actual and intended students, makes accurate data gathering and analysis of indicators, such as retention, progression and success, extremely difficult, as at any one time the enrolled cohort in stage one will include students who commenced the award across a range of different years.
In the second stage of the Diploma, the students undertake the first year of an undergraduate award selected by them from a range of specified programs, including those offered by other schools and academic divisions, or by negotiation into others more widely across the University. In practice the latter has occurred almost as regularly as the former which also complicates record keeping as there is no one typical pattern, and second stage Diploma students are also in fact undergraduate commencers in degrees which may be located in another part of the University’s academic structure. Diploma students who continue into the second stage of the award are also in effect making the crucial transition from a sub-degree access award into bachelor’s level study, a matter of some significance to this study.
Students exiting from the University on completion of the first stage of the Diploma are granted an advanced certificate, and the Diploma in University Studies on completion of the second. For those who choose to remain beyond completion of the Diploma, places are guaranteed to those students wanting to go on and complete the undergraduate program they have already commenced in the second stage of their diploma studies. In this way the Diploma provides a certain pathway into an undergraduate degree for disadvantaged adults who would otherwise not have been able to, nor almost certainly would not have aspired to enter a higher education award.
Although the intake has been relatively modest, ranging from 23 to 65 commencing95 students each year 1996-2003, demand has been climbing steadily in recent years and escalated to close to 100 in 2004, and the Diploma has achieved successful access for a solid cohort of students throughout this time. Retention and success rates for both commencing and continuing Diploma students have both been below university averages, although there have been large variations in success rates over the years. An internal case study96 on the students’ higher than average attrition rates found that the first intake of students into the (then named) Associate Diploma reported that they found combining work and study responsibilities particularly difficult, with 80% of the non-completing respondents giving the pressure of their wider lives as the major reason for withdrawal; that is, employment, family or financial issues rather than issues internal to the course or the level of support available to them in the University.97 Most of these students were employed full-time, all of them were mature and studying externally, and many had family responsibilities, as well as being disadvantaged in a range of respects.
Several other internal evaluations of the Diploma98 conducted over subsequent years explore relevant issues in some detail, such as retention and success rates of both commencing and continuing Diploma students over time, as well as the number and proportion of them with one or more equity characteristic, each in comparison with university average rates. They also document the range of academic programs Diploma students have entered and, for some, completed at stage two. The most recent of these internal evaluations found no significant relationship between students’ success rates and their attrition rates,99 indicating that students’ withdrawal was due to external life factors not difficulties with the course or the students’ inability to cope with the cognitive level required, consistent with the findings of the original 1996 case study into attrition.
Of interest to this study, is that the successive cohorts of Diploma students have consistently had a high representation of students with equity characteristics, most especially adults from low socio-economic backgrounds and students with a disability. Transition rates from the sub-degree level of stage one to undergraduate level study at stage two range from as low as 39.5% (in 2001) to as high as 69.2% (in 1996), with an average of 58% (1996-2001),100 significantly higher throughout than the national average of 30% for federally funded bridging programs (1996-1999) which cater for similar cohorts and have been designed to achieve similar outcomes.
It was the first stage of this award that the adult re-entry school, Para West Adult Campus, proposed should be made available to a cohort of its own students, taught at the school by school teachers, and face to face, rather by distance mode.