Social justice in Australian higher education policy : an historical and conceptual account of student participation

This article provides a synoptic account of historically changing conceptions and practices of social justice in Australian higher education policy. It maps the changes in this policy arena, beginning with the period following the Second World War and concluding with an analysis of the most recent policy proposals of the Bradley Review. Concurrently, it explores the different meanings ascribed to social justice, equity and social inclusion over this time span and what these have meant and will mean for students, particularly those from low socio-economic backgrounds. It concludes that a relational understanding of social justice – ‘recognitive justice’ – is yet to inform student equity policy in higher education, although this is now what is required in the context of the planned shift from mass to universal participation.

Sector lobbies independents : don't wreck equity program

The Coalition’s plans could destroy new-found unity over equitable access to higher education, the rural independents have been warned.

Income support best way of fixing equity : Go8

The Go8 has broken ranks with other university groups in suggesting that base funding shouldn’t have an equity component.

Equity improvements queried

More disadvantaged students applied for university last year. But not enough, according to the experts.

Demand drives up TERs and threatens equity

Strong demand could help the government’s participation targets while simultaneously undermining equity targets.

Has VET's time for equity come?

The collective consciousness has not yet focused on equity in VET, but there are some serious issues that need to be addressed.

Pink batts stole my kids' education

Pink batts, local mayors and cash handouts under the federal government’s economic stimulus package had robbed the higher education sector of a much-needed funding boost, according to Opposition education Christopher Pyne.

If not education, then what?

Parental education is not a good proxy for measuring socioeconomic status, writes Trevor Gale.

When equity is just not enough

In many ways, student equity is a numbers game. But Trevor Gale argues we need to develop new ways of understanding higher education if we are to develop a more sophisticated approach to equity.

Three challenges for equity

If the higher education sector is to take seriously the federal government’s 20/40 targets, then there are three main challenges that need to be confronted, writes Trevor Gale.

The equity year that was

It could be dubbed the “year of equity” in higher education, says Professor Trevor Gale. And it came in four roughly overlapping periods

Let them eat cake : mobilising appetites for higher education

The Australian Government has set two targets for the nation's universities: (i) increase the proportion of people from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds attending university, to 20 percent of all undergraduate students by 2020; and (ii) increase the proportion of 25 to 34 year-old Australians holding a bachelor's degree, to 40 percent by 2025. Both targets will require an increased effort by governments and universities to enable and encourage more people to access higher education, particularly more from low SES backgrounds. It will also require them to think differently about the problem. Three new concepts are now redefining the equity dimensions of higher education. Despite aspirations to expand the system, students' appetites for university are no longer a given. While universities are seeking to enrol different students in greater numbers, the challenge now is how to give greater voice to this difference. And the limited mobility of students from low SES backgrounds, including those in outer metropolitan and regional areas, is now the most significant indicator of their limited access to higher education and to social mobility. The paper outlines these new conceptions of student equity and how they are informing the research of the National Centre.

Towards a southern theory of higher education

Crudely, social inclusion in Australian higher education is a numbers game. While the student recruitment departments of universities focus on ‘bums on seats’, equity advocates draw attention to ‘which bums’, in ‘what proportions’, and, more to the point, ‘which seats’, ‘where’. But if the counting of bums is crude, so is the differentiation of seats. Just distinguishing between courses and universities and scrutinizing the distribution of groups, is a limited view of equity. The most prestigious seats of learning give students access primarily to dominant forms of knowledge and ways of thinking. In terms of access, it is to a diminished higher education, for all. Further, undergraduates – particularly in their first year – are rarely credited with having much to contribute. Higher education is the poorer for it. In this paper I propose an expanded conception for social inclusion and an enlarged regard for what is being accessed by students who gain entry to university. Drawing on Connell’s conception of ‘Southern Theory’, I highlight power/knowledge relations in higher education and particularly ‘southerners’: those under‐represented in universities – often located south of ENTER (Equivalent National Tertiary Entrance Rank) cut‐offs – and whose cultural capital is similarly marginalised and discounted. While increasing regard for the importance of Indigenous knowledges is beginning to challenge the norms of higher education, we are yet to generalise such reconceptions of epistemology to include knowledges particular to people from regional and rural areas, with disabilities, and from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Nor have we really engaged with different ways of thinking about the physical and social worlds that are particular to these groups. To take account of marginalized forms of knowledge and of thinking will mean thinking differently about what higher education is and how it gets done.

Challenging Australian higher education : three places to begin

I want to begin by thanking Professor Johnson for this opportunity to rehearse and indeed expand on the comments I made earlier this year at the Universities Australia meeting of Vice‐Chancellors in Brisbane. My comments then and now are in part speculative, given that they comment on what might be, although they are also cognizant of what we already know about student equity issues in Australian higher education and of the research data currently available, including research undertaken by the National Centre but also research available more widely, nationally and internationally. Informed by this work, the central thesis that I want to put to you today and to open up to discussion is that if the Australian higher education sector is to take seriously the federal government’s 20/40 targets, then there are three main challenges that need to be confronted.

First, that expansion of higher education provision and of a particular mix, will need to be done in the context of limited excess student demand, certainly compared with previous periods of expansion by the sector. Second, that the 20/40 targets have brought into sharp relief the problems with our current set of definitions and measurements of students: of equity groups (including socioeconomic status) but also student achievement and aspiration. And third, that universities will need to confront the teaching and learning that is higher education. This is the very thing – or at least one of them – for which we would hope school students would aspire.