The proposal for the adult re-entry school to offer the first stage of the University’s Diploma in University Studies came from Para West Adult Re-entry Campus, and more specifically from its Principal, Phillip Cashen.153 Based on its ten years of offering adult re-entry education to adults in one of the most disadvantaged regions of both the State and the nation, the school’s dissatisfaction with the traditional year 11 and 12 SACE curriculum offering had led it to seek a range of alternatives. In the school’s view, the SACE requirements did not allow them the flexibility they sought to identify and respond to their community’s educational needs. While the vocational education and training sector offered many relevant opportunities which the school pursued, it saw no reason why its prospective students should not share the opportunities available from higher education with the communities in less disadvantaged parts of Adelaide
The curriculum structure of stage one (year 11) of the SACE is not seen as appropriate for adults, being “more process than learning.”154 While the content in year 12 is seen as more “curriculum centred” and therefore more acceptable for adults, overall the PAL course is regarded as “more appropriate for adults…(because)…it doesn’t make them jump through a whole lot of subject specific hoops.” And the time required to complete the SACE is another major barrier for adult students. Although adult SACE students can get status for stage one, many of them need the preparation at this level, especially in maths and science, in order to cope with their stage two studies. The time commitment involved in returning to and completing years 11 and 12 is seen as particularly prohibitive and unrealistic for adults, many if not most of whom study part-time, not only in this school but by all of the adult re-entry schools.
Some of them feel that they have really run out of time…they can’t invest two or three years in year 11 and year 12 with no guarantee that the year 12 results are going to be good enough to get them where they want to get. Time is really a pressure for some of them.
The SACE pathway is potentially two years at year 12 …because it’s too hard for them to finish in one year for most of them…and possibly even a year of preparation in year 11. So that’s a potential three year plan, and they haven’t got time for that, these people. So the beauty of this [UniSA-PAL] is the single year and off you go [to university] with a good chance of success [once you get there]. And that’s the appeal.
And it is not just that adults find it difficult to make a commitment to such a large amount of time for an uncertain result. From the school’s point of view, the longer the time involved in any course, the less chance there is that they will succeed and the higher the attrition.
The longer the commitment, the less chance of success. The ideal is probably a semester (while) a year is manageable.
So from the school’s point of view, the UniSA-PAL pilot offered them, and their disadvantaged students, a direct pathway into as well as an effective preparation for university level studies, without the rigidities and extended time commitment demanded by the SACE’s more conventional senior secondary curriculum, and an appropriate curriculum for adults in terms of its cognitive level. PAL is “a much more direct preparation (giving them) the skills they need to be successful in their uni pathway.” The collaborative partnership arrangements with the University also fitted well with the school, offering as it did other opportunities for development and engagement for its staff and the school as a whole.
As outlined in section 4.1 above, the University had designed its Diploma in University Studies in 1994155 as a credit bearing access pathway into degree level study for disadvantaged adults without the usual academic prerequisites for gaining entry to a university. While the level of demand for the program has remained steady over the years, it has never been as strong as might be expected from the socio-economic profile of the State and the numbers of South Australians who have left school without completing their secondary education. The problem was how, and where, to communicate with those in the community who might benefit from the program and for whom higher education had always seemed an unobtainable if not irrelevant option. The issue is twofold: firstly, how to find and make effective contact with those who might be interested in benefiting from this access pathway; and secondly how to briefly yet effectively communicate the nature of the opportunity when the course structure is atypical with its real value embedded in its unusual structure.156 The changes to the funding of higher education, and in particular the increases to HECS and the lowering of the repayment threshold, has raised the tangible and psychological barriers to higher education even higher for adults from low socio-economic backgrounds, making these endeavours even more difficult. In addition, the relatively high attrition of commencing Diploma students seems at least partly due to their isolation, both because they are studying at a distance and because they are traversing a remarkable pathway as isolated individuals, distancing themselves from their families, peers and communities by the very experience of doing so.
To the University therefore, there were many potential benefits from the proposal to offer the first stage of the Diploma as a course taught by an adult re-entry school. Firstly prospective students in the wider community already recognised Para West as a site providing a second chance for people such as themselves for whom initial experiences of education had been unsatisfactory and very often negative. It was in and part of their community and had none of the remoteness and threat posed by their conception of a university. Secondly the students would undertake the course in a supportive and successful adult learning environment, and one in which they would learn and develop and face the challenges of this course together, as a cohort. Not only would they be taught in face to face mode, without the many challenges of the distance mode, but the contact with their teachers and the amount of support and interaction available in the school setting would be considerably more than is available in a university setting, despite the extra contribution which the staff involved with the Diploma have always made to their students.
Another attraction in terms of increasing effective access for disadvantaged adults was that the students studying in the school setting would not have to pay HECS until and if they entered university level study. This is a significant issue for adults from low socio-economic backgrounds and so the opportunity to find out whether they in fact want to and are capable of higher education level study before taking the daunting step of accumulating a HECS debt would reduce this barrier to access. There was also the possibility that the cohort support which the students would give each other might continue after they entered the University to begin a degree, regardless of their choice of program, thereby reducing their isolation and providing a ready-made support system which might counteract the challenges of this transition. Finally the pilot had the potential to tap into a stream of disadvantaged students who might not otherwise consider university study, even by means of the Diploma pathway, and located as the school is in the disadvantaged northern area of Adelaide this met several of the University’s corporate priorities.
The response to the availability of the UniSA-PAL course has justified some of the University’s hopes. Given the time taken to get the required approvals within the University and to finalise the formal agreements with the Minister for both the initial and then for the extended pilot, Para West in the first year and then the four schools in the second were able to put into place only minimal advertising about the availability of the UniSA-PAL course at the end of 2001 and 2002 respectively. This occurred many weeks later than the schools would normally require, particularly for a new offering and in the case of the PAL course a completely new sort of course for them and for their prospective students. Nearly 300 people responded to the availability of the course in 2002 and 2003 combined, and over 130 proceeded as far as being interviewed, 113 enrolling initially157 and 106 actually commencing at the beginning of the 2002 and 2003 school years. This level of demand and commencing enrolment is a spectacular result given the inadequate timelines and the resulting brevity of the information campaign to inform prospective students of the availability and nature of this new opportunity, especially since the prospective students for the PAL course face similar practical and psychological barriers as those for the Diploma in University Studies. Further in response to enquiries and unsolicited interest during the 2003 school year, three of the schools decided to offer one of the subjects158 part-time in the second semester of 2003, two of them in the evenings, to an additional group of students and as a feeder into the course in 2004.
There is huge interest in it and what turned some off was the full time nature [of the course]. Now I’ve got eight who have said yes to this part time course and I haven’t [even] advertised.
And unlike the annual marketing efforts which the University has had to dedicate to communicating with its prospective students about the Diploma in University Studies, after only one year Para West experienced an interest in UniSA-Pal stimulated by word of mouth communication between its students and its community.
[This year] a lot more of our [prospective] students know about it [the PAL course]. A lot more of our client group are talking about the course or will come and just drop by and see me and say,” I’m a bit interested in this for next year.” All that – spreading like osmosis – is happening.
This level of almost spontaneous demand for the UniSA-PAL course suggests the need for another pathway in addition to the Diploma to meet the demand for higher education entry for disadvantaged adults. The students who have responded to the availability of and undertaken the PAL course are, it seems, a different cohort in some respects from those who enter the Diploma in University Studies.
These are students who would never have entered those [other university access] awards159. There are 80 students [in the PAL courses] that we would never, ever have attracted [otherwise].
This perception that the students who are entering the PAL course differ in some significant ways to those who take the Diploma access avenue is relevant to the discussion of future developments in section 6.7 below.