Internationally access to the benefits of higher education is not fairly or evenly distributed across the community. While this situation has been recognised as undesirable in a wide range of countries, approaches to remedying it vary considerably, particularly with respect to the extent to which governments themselves have taken an active role in encouraging or requiring action to achieve greater equality of opportunities and outcomes.29
As noted above, for over a decade the Australian higher education equity framework has required all publicly funded universities to plan and report annually on efforts and progress towards greater equality of higher education access and outcomes for groups in the community for whom this has not been, and for many continues not to be a realistic option. These groups were first identified on the basis of their under-representation in higher education in the 1990 report upon which the framework was originally based, A Fair Chance for All,30 at the same time as the planning and reporting requirements were first put into place. The institutional equity planning and reporting requirements are formalised as part of the annual profile agreements reached between all universities in the UNS and the federal government department responsible for administering their federal funding,31 with ongoing monitoring and evaluation of equity activity and progress at the national and institutional level occurring by this means. The identification of these targeted equity student groups has remained unchanged for the last decade, with definitions and quantitative equity performance indicators adopted in 1995,32 and despite the dissatisfaction with the postcode definition of students’ low socio-economic status expressed through national consultations in the 1995-6 higher education equity review process.33 However in 2003 DEST commenced a formal review of the identification of the disadvantaged student groups and equity performance measures34 as part of the Government’s response to the recent Ministerial review of higher education referred to below.35
The intentions of this national equity framework, and the assumptions about higher education which it reflects, are foreshadowed in two earlier key national inquiries36 held during the decade and a half before its explicit expression and formal introduction in 1990/91. These policy precursors, and the wider reform agenda set out in the late 1980s in the Green and White Papers,37 are outlined in the report of the 1995-6 review of higher education equity progress Equality, Diversity and Excellence38 as well as in the literature,39 as is the nature and operation of the framework itself.40 Of interest to policy analysts as well as to educational practitioners, is the underlying assumption (not made explicit until Equality, Diversity and Excellence41) that this under-representation is not due to different levels of ability or potential but rather has been socially constructed. Implicit in this assumption, as well as in the framework itself (again made explicit in the same 1996 report42) is the belief that having been socially constructed these inequalities of educational opportunity and outcomes can be reversed, or at least reduced by explicit intervention, not least by the education sector and educational institutions themselves. Most recently this has been reiterated as a policy expectation by the 2003 Ministerial report Our Universities: Backing Australia’s Future.43
Until the 2003 review, the national Australian higher education equity framework had been largely unchanged for over a decade, with no formal government response to the 1996 report of the review of progress against its original goals which was jointly conducted by the then National Board for Employment, Education and Training and the then Higher Education Council, and which was based on an extensive consultation process throughout the sector. Most recently however the federal Government’s response to the Ministerial inquiry into all aspects of higher education, Our Universities: Backing Australia’s Future,44 has put into place the review of the equity student groups referred to above, including commissioning the research by James et al.45 This review will consider the identification of the equity student groups and effective equity performance measures, as well as a new funding formula for the allocation of the annual Higher Education Equity Program (HEEP). Other equity changes announced by the same report include a significant increase to the HEEP from 2005,46 with the introduction of new institutional eligibility requirements to target the annual allocations, increased funding to both the Additional Support for Students with Disabilities program and the Indigenous Support Fund, the establishment of an Indigenous Staff Scholarships program and an Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council, and the introduction of the Commonwealth Learning Scholarships program targeted at regional and rural, low socio-economic, and Indigenous students.47
The development of the higher education equity framework, and its policy precursors, were themselves built upon the massive changes to higher education which occurred in two consecutive twenty-year periods, 1955–75 when the proportion of the 17-22 year age cohort in higher education quadrupled,48 and 1975-95 when it again nearly doubled.49 It is evident from a range of sources and most recently from the data presented in the 2002 Ministerial Discussion Paper Higher Education at the Crossroads, that while many more people from the identified equity groups are now participating in higher education, their numbers expanding to keep pace with the increased size of the sector, the under-representation of the largest group has barely changed.50 As summarised by James,51 Australians from lower socio-economic backgrounds have roughly half the likelihood of participating in higher education as Australians from medium and higher socio-economic backgrounds.52 And since poverty is an equity characteristics shared disproportionately by people in rural and isolated parts of Australia, by Australia’s Indigenous communities, by women, and by newly arrived immigrants and refugees, poverty remains the critical determinant of higher education disadvantage for the majority of the members of the under-represented groups originally identified in A Fair Chance for All.
As they are given formal policy expression in the milestone documents referred to above, the reasons for concern about this intransigent under-representation include recognition of its human rights and social justice dimensions, but also that the development and expression of the talents and potential of the entire community is in the national interest. This duality of concerns, reflecting both individual rights as well as national vitality and community well-being, is apparent right throughout the formal policy discourse; from its 1963 expression by the Martin Committee in terms of the requirements of a modern state for “a well-educated population capable of making reasoned judgements against a background of change”, to the 1996 reformulation of the objective for equity in higher education as the achievement of a student profile which fairly reflects the diversity of our community in order that the higher education system may better “contribute to Australia’s social, cultural, political and economic vitality and strength”.53 It is similarly reflected in the higher education literature, with more recent commentaries emphasising the new imperatives for skilling the Australian community in terms of the knowledge economy and economic globalisation.54 Most recently the 2002 Ministerial Discussion Paper Higher Education at the Crossroads55 introduces the access and equity section with the following quotation from the literature:
In Australia, there are a number of reasons to be concerned with the current differential rates of access to higher education. First, there is the objective of social justice and the equal rights of all Australians to enjoy the personal and economic benefits that education, particularly higher education, might confer. Second, it is increasingly recognised that Australians with low educational levels are vulnerable and at risk of being marginalised in a knowledge-based society in which labour markets require sophisticated skills and the capacity to access and interpret new knowledge. Finally, at a national level it is now widely believed that the skilling of the Australian community is a major priority for ensuring the nation’s overall economic standing in a competitive global marketplace.56
As noted above, adults from low socio-economic backgrounds have been identified as the most disadvantaged and under-represented group of all. Changes to the funding of higher education since the 1995-1996 national equity review might be expected to have impacted negatively on access to higher education for people from low socio-economic backgrounds, particularly the significant increases to and banding of HECS fees, the lowering of the repayment threshold, and the increased numbers and range of fee paying courses, including undergraduate courses.57 Opinion is divided amongst researchers and commentators on the impact these changes have had on access for low socio-economic students and prospective students, unfortunately rarely addressing the specific impact on adults from low socio-economic backgrounds by disaggregating data by age. For example, in their 2003 paper Chapman and Ryan conclude that “HECS did not act to discourage university participation in general or among individuals from the lowest wealth groups.”58 However as the researchers have recently pointed out,59 this study concerned participation rates rather than access rates, the latter being a more direct and sensitive indicator of change, and it did not include mature aged prospective students. Andrews’ 1997 study concludes that the changes to HECS introduced in that year may have reduced applications from mature aged students whereas the original introduction of HECS did not appear to have affected applications from this group.60 Centre for the Study of Higher Education research by James et al in 1999 found that at least twice as many of the least advantaged school students believe that the cost of attending university may stop them from doing so.61 James’ more recent 2002 study concludes that “the perceived cost of higher education appears to be a major deterrent for students of lower socioeconomic backgrounds”, 62 more recently warning that “Higher fees would be a significant deterrent for people from lower socio-economic backgrounds and rural and isolated areas (regardless of whether or not deferred payment is an option, since there is some evidence of debt-aversion among these groups).”63 The April 2002 Ministerial Discussion Paper acknowledges that “The perceived costs of higher education may be a factor in some people’s decision not to participate.”64
The recent report Our Universities: Backing Australia’s Future provides a blueprint of the changes to higher education which the federal Government will introduce in response to the Ministerial inquiry. This report states that the Government will “establish a partially deregulated system of higher education in which individual universities are able to capitalise on their particular strengths and determine the value of their course offerings in the market place.”65 In response it is expected that few universities will be able to resist the pressure to introduce fees to a much larger number and wider range of their undergraduate courses. There is concern that the most under-represented group, adults with low socio-economic backgrounds, will be the most directly and negatively affected by this trend, as discussed in the literature on equity and fees66 and raised in some of the submissions to the 2002-3 Ministerial review of higher education.67 In response to the 1996 budget which introduced significant increases to and the banding of HECS fees, the University of South Australia conducted an internal study68 to identify the impact of these changes on prospective students with equity characteristic in the year of their introduction, 1997. The results indicated that it was low SES adults who applied and enrolled disproportionately in courses in the lowest fee band and were disproportionately absent from the middle and especially the highest band when compared to their program choices the previous year before these changes were introduced. Similarly and in more recent research, Chapman and Ryan found a reduction in the proportion of students from the lowest wealth quartile in the most expensive third HECS band, from 11 per cent in 1993 to 8 per cent in 1999, but concluded that this change was not statistically significant.69 Yet if their representation in courses in this band had continued to increase at the same rate during this period (1993-1999) as in the previous period (1988-1993), they would have been represented at 14-15% by 1999, approaching double their actual representation that year.
Nevertheless there has been no improvement in the share of higher education places for students from low socio-economic backgrounds despite much policy and program attention to this end. And the changes to the funding environment can be concluded to be at the least challenging to this intention. In this context the efficacy of strategies aimed at improving access for low SES adult prospective students assumes even greater importance. The federally funded Higher Education Equity Program (HEEP) provides annual grants to institutions to support their individually designed and executed equity initiatives, some of which are aimed at increasing access for disadvantaged adults. As mentioned above, alongside mature age entry provisions, at the whole of sector level federally funded bridging programs have been the most significant strategy aimed at improving access for low SES adult prospective students, but outcomes of such courses have been a matter of concern at the institutional and national level. Students enrolled in such courses are not required to pay HECS fees. Given the changes to the national university funding regime referred to above, it is not surprising that the number of such courses and of the students enrolled in them has grown substantially in the last decade or so, approximately 180 per cent 1989 to 1999.70
Although the majority of courses which are funded under the federal Enabling Program are taken before commencing an award course, as a bridge into it, there are two types of courses funded in this way, bridging and supplementary. Bridging courses are aimed at improving access, participation and success rates for students who would not otherwise gain access to higher education or, if they did, would not be well prepared by their previous educational experiences to succeed in their studies at this level. Supplementary courses are provided alongside and concurrently, rather than before students enter their award courses, to address specific learning needs experienced by particular types of disadvantaged students entering higher education study. In both cases, courses which are part of a formal award course, or for which credit can be given towards one, do not qualify for funding under this program. The University of South Australia’s access award, the first stage of which makes up the UniSA-PAL course which is the focus of this research, has not on this basis met the Enabling Program’s definition of a bridging course and so has not received funding under this program.
While in general terms there is an expectation that students in bridging programs will have one or more of the equity characteristics,71 those most likely to benefit and for whom bridging is most relevant are those whose school level education is incomplete due to early school leaving or other disruptions. Indigenous students and adults from low socio-economic backgrounds generally can be expected to be well represented in this overall category, given the circumstances of their lives and the nature of their engagement with the schooling system. Indeed, as indicated by the data in the 2001 DETYA (now DEST) paper “The Enabling Program”, a large number of courses funded by this program have specifically targeted Indigenous students in recent years. 1999 data at the national level, and from the same paper, show that 39% of the students in enabling programs were from low socio-economic backgrounds, unfortunately not disaggregated by age; 38% were Indigenous; 27% were from rural areas; 5% had at least one form of disability; and 2% were from non English speaking backgrounds. While this data indicates that such programs are catering for the students for whom they were intended, their retention and success are substantially below average rates, and only a very small proportion actually transition to award level study; for example, only 30 per cent of the students commencing bridging studies in 1996 moved into an award level course between 1997 and 1999. Since this is their primary purpose, it was because of these poor outcomes that DETYA prepared the discussion paper on the Enabling Program and sought input from institutions regarding potentially more effective alternatives or improvements to this mechanism, with the aim of more successfully opening up access to disadvantaged prospective students, including adults from low socio-economic backgrounds.
It is in this national policy and program context that the pilot and the research to evaluate it were conducted, with a view to identifying whether the course UniSA-PAL does provide an effective access pathway into higher education for disadvantaged adults, and if so, whether it could be replicated more broadly.