What is it with these people who have a mania for putting people into universities just because they are 'poor'? The so-called poor in Australia are also thick: that's why they are poor.

People who are not rich - which passes for being poor in Australia - can access teriary education in many ways, and they don't have to pay for it until they are earning - just like everyone else.

We have enough well off and not so well off dropkicks coming out of universities as it is; most of them should not have wasted their time and our money in the first place.

What Australia needs is more TAFE-trained tradespeople,not would-be intellectuals too dumb to make the grade.

So how do I exploit the system like the tokens who make it through. I'm extremely economically disadvantaged, but also caucasian and Australian born. I haven't lost my legs or capacity to walk, yet have had mental issues. I'd have to pay hundreds for books, yet if I was the right color or couldn't (literally) stand on my own feet, then something would cover that cost for me. Ironically, though schemes to indigenous are generous, they mostly go to waste as most don't bother to properly use the opportunity offered. For years, there was the student union tax, levied upon poor students who if they didn't pay would be denied enrolment and their transcripts, not like they'd have time to use the cheap rowing club or gym as they would be busy working in their spare time to make ends meet. Pity if I'd like an active and healthy lifestyle as well as a brighter future. I didn't go to a government high school, but I read Chris' book and 'he rocks'.

The reality is that anyone in Australia talented enough to get a university degree can get one - if they want it badly enough.

The truth is that a lot of people would rather do something else.

I went to the local library this morning to gleam the regional newspapers.

Here’s a gem from the Cairn’s Post.

Headline – Teaching earns top marks in popularity

Quote “ Mother-of–two … now in her third year of a teaching degree, was accepted into the course despite not finishing Year 12. She said she chose teaching for the stable hours”

Enough said.

Leigh, you have hit the nail right on the head. The sooner we get some Technical schools back into the system and start teaching our kids the benefits of doing something with their hands instead of filling their brains with crap that is of no use to them in the real world, the better.

There are too many kids getting into universities in the first place, only to drop out before the first year is finished. We need a system in place whereby those kids can have access to vocational training with the same assistance given to aspiring university students. Then we won't have this continual cry for migrants to fill skilled positions.

David

I suspect these so-called 'poor' students are probably not capabale of achieving matriculation. Similar to the sub-prime fiasco the politicians are now trying to engineer degrees for those not really qualified.

Observer is right anyone talented enough can get a degree in Australia.

I think the social engineering that's been carried out in our secondary schools by Labor Education Departments and Unions has seen an emphasis away from the traditional courses, especially in years 10 to 12, that once ensured successful matriculation.

I chose the public school my son attended on the basis of it's strenght in Mathematics and Science.

Studing MathsB, MathsC, Physics, Chemistry English and German,
(couldn't find a public school teaching Latin ... in Brisbane)in years 10-12, led my very average year 8 student to Graduate 11 years later from QUT with a Bachelor of Mathematics with Distinction and a Bachelor of Engineering(Electrical and Computer Engineering)-Second Class Honours.

Three of the five Graduates in his cohort had attended public schools, two were from disrupted families suffering all sorts of hardship. Three came from 'poorer' suburbs. All had studied the traditional subjects. Three of the five had studied Latin and the other two German.

Four of the five achieved Distinctions in Mathematics and Second Class Honours or better in Engineering. The fellow who 'merely' passed had attended a private school and was far from 'poor'... in any sense.

Four are working in excellent engineering positions. Two in mining, one in an electricity supply company and one for Australia's premier Consulting Engineering Company. The fifth, the only woman, is completing Mathematics as an Honours Student and is destined for a future in academia.

I could, but won't; but I would love someone to undertake a longitudinal study investigating the relationships between individual Secondary Schools cirriculums and their prevailling pedagogy, and their students later Matriculation and Graduation.

I suspect the results would confirm my ancedotal experience.

If parents became aware of the effect of this traditional pedagogy on their kids' intellects, there'd be a stampede to schools providing the traditional disciplies ... regardless of status.

The shame is when students with natural ability are not permitted to capitalize on it due to their socio-economic circumstance. The fix for this is quite easy, it involves affirmative action style measures targeting the grading of students. Essentially a 'B' say from a public school student can be considered an 'A' for grading purposes. If he/she went to a private school the better learning environment would have produced a better work output, lets recognize that fact. But no, if we allow the 'poor' people equal access to tertiary education, and by that I mean the real degrees, law, commerce, medicine etc then the wealthy will be less able to buy their kids a lucrative and respectable position in society. You'll hear all sorts of arguments against it, but in the end you can't go wrong giving intelligent kids (of any background) access to the 1st tier university places.

Leigh:

"The so-called poor in Australia are also thick: that's why they are poor." I assume you are not the exception that proves the rule, Leigh. What's your favourite charity and I'll make a donation forthwith.

The fact of the matter is that ability and intelligence are evenly distributed over the population and to implement social policy on the basis that the poor are undeserving and have no merit is to condemn the nation to mediocrity drawing only on the rich - be they thick or quick.

If want to give opportunity to everyone and build our country we should scrap HECS for the first degree. The logic of HECS is an 18th century view of higher education. Even so there probably is too much emphasis on degrees etc after all it is the bachelors and doctorates that have got us into the current GFC. A few ordinary commonsense people in organisations is what is needed

Dear Spikey
If "ability and intelligence are evenly distributed over the population" what part of that distribution should end up in university? The top 20 percent? 50 percent?
It seems to me that over the past 40 years the percentage of secondary school students going to University has increased markedly, regardless of socio/economic background, from about 15 percent to 30 percent or more. This has been facilitated by relaxing University entry and performance standards from that applying in my era i.e the mid sixties.
So I return to my original question "what part of that distribution should end up in university?"

Since 1990, some sixty thousand Indigenous people have enrolled at universities across Austrralia. About twenty thousand have graduated, and currently about ten thousand are enrolled.

Indigenous women in particular are breaking the mold: in 2006, 2 % of all Indigenous women aged 17 to 65 (2562 out of 127,880) commenced tertiary study, while only 1.88 % of non-Indigenous men (310,000 out of 5,800,000) did so. (ABS Census, 2006, Cat. No. 2068; DEEWR Statistical Collections website). Yes, non-Indigenous men. Non-. Non-Indigenous.

Now, what proportion of Indigenous people would be upper class ? Or middle class ? To use rather old-fashioned terms, wouldn't you say that Indigenous people tend to be working class, or lower class, or even under-class ? Of course, the great majority of Indigenous people are urban, so this may be one factor favouring such high participation rates. But surely this is something like a positive achievement ? If not, what and when ?

Incidentally, of the 24,000 Indigenous graduates, women make up about 16,000 - two-thirds. Currently, one in every 7.2 Indigenous women is a graduate, across the country - probably more like one in six in the cities.

The indigenous ones get preferential entry, they don't pay a nickel for books, they have all kinds of specially employed support people, programs and dedicated staff bending over backward for them. Pity I'm only of a highly persecuted cultural minority, who'd actually have to pay for every expense of books and stuff, and be left to fend for herself as well as navigate the labyrinthine and complex application for admission process as well as campus bureaucracy.

Sorry, Inner-Sydney based transsexual, indigent outcast progeny of merchant family, you've got it wrong. Indigenous students have to pay for their textbooks and other expenses like anybody else. And like any other students, they have to do the actual work themselves and get themselves through. Sure the support staff have made a huge difference, to enrolments and ultimately graduations. But the bottom line is that the Indigenous people have done it themselves: so far twenty four thousand of them. And perhaps, by 2020, there will be well over fifty thousand Indigenous graduates across the country. Have the decency to give that a brownie point. Don't feel too sorry for yourself, you're not that hard done by.

blairbar: 'If "ability and intelligence are evenly distributed over the population" what part of that distribution should end up in university?'

A meritocratic approach would encourage university enrolments on agreed SES targets. One model is to divide the eligible population into four quartiles. This would mean that, on merit, 25% of all university students should be from the highest SES quartile and 25% would be from the lowest SES quartile.

Currently, the proportions are out of whack. In 1996, only 14.5% of university students were from the lowest SES quartile (cf 25%). This slowly rose to 15.13% in 2001. However, after that, the percentage started to fall again so that by 2005 it was down again to 14.5% (King, Doutre & Macindoe, “Alternatives to Neo-liberal Dictates in Higher Education”, International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2007).

This decline results from government ideology moving away from the concept that higher education is a social investment to be based on merit. Under the Howard government, university education became just another commercial commodity to be accessed through unquestioning faith in the free market including user pays (i.e. if your parents can afford it).

Increased university fees and tighter requirements of student income support have created increasing levels of financial stress among low SES students (e.g. Australian Vice Chancellor ’s Committee 2007). This approach subsidises and advantages high socio-economic groups at the expense of all taxpayers, including low income families.

Without alternatives for student selection and income support, the decrease in low SES enrolments will continue, and disadvantage that bears no relationship to merit will be further entrenched.

While you may be right in your assumption that "over the past 40 years the percentage of secondary school students going to University has increased markedly" it is not true that this is "regardless of socio/economic background".

Relaxing University entry and performance standards has not worked in the national interest i.e. education as social investment based on merit. Witness the lowered entry requirements if your family can afford to pay exorbitant amounts to enable you to scoot past the merit queue.

Will the poor have access to help to access entry in all courses, or just the less sought-after courses such as a BA etc, so that the most lucrative areas are preserved for the most well-off students?

Can a commitment be offered that a poor student will not need to pay for books, and have various supports, as I said indigenous and various other special groups get support and at times that support is independent of their SES as even a well-off nesb or indigenous student is able to access special supports, traditionally intended to lift up their most impoverished cultural or racial peers.

Thanks for your reply Spikey. However you have not quite answered my question. Namely "what percentage of the final year students should go to Uni?" When I attended university in the mid sixties there were roughly 4 modes of entry in Qld; Open Scholarship (all fees paid plus allowance..top 25 students), Government scholarships (all fees paid plus allowance but with a bond period to the particular State or Federal Department),Commonwealth Scholarship (all fees paid plus allowance but means tested) and private entry (all fees paid by student).
But all means of entry were based on external examinations, the number of students allowed entry was fixed, and consequently only a small percentage of (say) 17 or 18 year olds entered Uni.

This entry system as you know has changed markedly. I would still argue that a much greater percentage of students from a lower socio-economic background now attend Uni than in the sixties. While Commonwealth scholarships were means tested there were simply a lot fewer students from a lower socio-economic background doing Senior so the Commonwealth scholarships still went to a low proportion of these students.
I am more concerned about the lowering of entrance and performance standards. It is a hollow victory if you end up with a higher percentage of students from a lower socio-economic background attending a Uni with poor entry and performance standards. Where is the social payoff there?
Regards
Blair

blairbar,

The percentage of university entrants should be at least comparable with average OECD levels.

It's comforting for you to feel that "...a much greater percentage of students from a lower socio-economic background now attend Uni than in the sixties". But what are the facts?

There is scant data covering the period 1960 to 2009. But the hard research from the 1980s demonstrate that your thinking is wistful but romantic. Marginson shows that there has been almost no change in the proportion of university places held by the bottom SES quartile 1989-2006, i.e. no change in relative share of places.

The facts are that low SES background persons (bottom 25%) are one third as likely to participate in higher education as high SES background persons (top 25%). And Low SES participation rates drop even further in postgraduate studies (10%) and in G8 and high demand courses (law and medicine).

You put your finger on one of the main reasons for low participation - low completion rates at Year 12 level. Low SES students are also more likely to have lower perceptions of the attainability of a university place; less confidence in the personal and career relevance of higher education; more likely to experience alienation from the cultures of universities; less capacity to pay university fees; and less income support while studying.

All of these factors are capable of being changed by governments with will.

Once enrolled, low SES students do almost as well as medium SES and high SES in succesful completions.

As for your concern about the alleged "lowering of entrance and performance standards", I counter by alleging that entrance and performance standards are different, not lower. And that's how it should be. And that's how it is pretty much everywhere else in comparable countries.

Hi Spikey and Blairbar,

Low SES are only one-third as likely to participate at uni as high SES ? Thank you !

So what SES class (to use an incredibly out-dated term) do you think most Indigenous people would be ? Low SES ? Yet, since 1990, just over half of the equivalent of all Indigenous twenty-year-olds have commenced study at uni at some time: sixty thousand commencements, while about 115,000 Indigenous people have turned twenty since then (DEEWR Statistical Collections website, ABS Censuses). Actually, I think 60 % is not bad on a world scale, not quite parity but taking class into account, not bad for a group which was excluded from secondary schooling in living memory.

By the way, the median age-group for Indigenous graduates is about thirty. Currently it numbers six thousand across the country. In 2007, about 1500 Indigenous people graduated - the equivalent of a quarter of the median age-group. That is set to increaee, as far more Indigenous kids are finishing Year 12, and as their numbers rise (by up to 70 %) over the next twelve years or so.

Currently, about one in seven Indigenous women are graduates, but that will rise to about one in five by 2020, one in four by 2030. Of course, by then, most Indigenous students will come from the middle class and upper class. That might take a bit of getting used to, by non-Indigenous people.

Thanks again, Spikey: I have been looking for that figure.

Loudmouth

I'm not sure what statistics you are using and abusing. You claim that "since 1990, just over half of the equivalent of all Indigenous twenty-year-olds have commenced study at uni at some time: sixty thousand commencements..." This is a preposterous claim.

In 2006, there were 8,854 Indigenous students in higher education in Australia (compared with 941,008 students who are not Indigenous).

http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/higher_education/publications_resources/profiles/students_2006_selected_higher_education_statistics.htm

The number of commencing domestic students increased by 4.2% from 270,236 in 2006 to 281,625 in 2007. The number of commencing overseas students increased by 13.7% from 111,463 to 126,709 over the same period. The number of commencing domestic students undertaking study with Public Universities increased by 2.4% from 258,302 in 2006 to 264,575 in 2007, while commencing overseas student numbers increased by 5.5% across the same period (from 108,792 to 114,724).

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students represented less than one percent (0.9%) (9,370) of all students in 2007. The number of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander students reported by Public Universities increased by 5.4% from 8,739 in 2006 to 9,215 in 2007. The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students commencing at Public Universities increased by 4.2% from 3,792 to 3,953 for the same period.

http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/higher_education/publications_resources/statistics/publications_higher_education_statistics_collections.htm#studpubs

Likewise your claim that "about one in seven Indigenous women are graduates, but that will rise to about one in five by 2020, one in four by 2030" is so far from the truth I have to conclude that you are being mischievous.

Dear Spikey
I know you are very intelligent but I did not know you were a mind -reader ("It's comforting for you to feel"). I guess if I need any more mind analysis I should drop you a line.
"But the hard research from the 1980s demonstrate that your thinking is wistful but romantic."
I was specifically referring to the sixties as you acknowledge so what is the relevance of data covering the period from the 80s onwards? One only has to look at a high school yearbook from high schools that enrolled students from Grade 7 onwards to see the dramatic decline in enrolments from Grade 8 onwards.
In Qld during the sixties there were three external examinations; Scholarship- Grade 8(if you passed- no school fees), Junior-Grade 10 and Senior-Grade 12. Most students had left by the start of Grade 11. Apprenticeships and entry to the Public Service only required school attendance to Scholarship or Junior. The only financial support available for Grades 11 and 12 were from scholarships mainly teaching.
So the overwhelming majority of students from low socio-economic backgrounds left school before Grade 11. They and/or their families needed the money from paid employment.
"As for your concern about the alleged "lowering of entrance and performance standards", I counter by alleging that entrance and performance standards are different, not lower"
If the standards are not lower for entrance and performance at Universities how then do you explain why so many Graduate employers eg in Government and Business demand either Honours or Post Graduate qualifications when selecting applicants? A Pass degree now has little positive effect on a graduate's employment opportunities so students now spend longer at university than they did in the 60s and 70s.

Blairbear,

I'm always willing to help when people let their subjective feelings about the good old days get out of whack with the facts.

You are conflating (a) increased rates of completion of secondary school with (b) modes of selection for places in higher education and (c) increased access to higher education for demographic cohorts. They are three different processes and data sets and are not closely correlated.

"If the standards are not lower for entrance and performance at Universities how then do you explain why so many Graduate employers eg in Government and Business demand either Honours or Post Graduate qualifications when selecting applicants?"

This does not turn on standards. It's largely a matter of supply and demand and rising expectations. In your day, primary teachers, nurses, police etc did not require tertiary qualifications. Now they do. This does not mean that standards have risen, but that the hurdles have been raised as a means of controlling the flow.

If you advertise a position which previously you would have given to a Year 12 student and find that you get lots of Bachelor degree holders, It's only natural (but not necessarily better for your business) that you will go for the higher qualified person.

"students now spend longer at university than they did in the 60s and 70s." You'll forgive me if I ask for some hard data to substantiate your claim together with a simple analysis of the causes if you can. You could also look at the dramatic shift in the proportion of students who work off-campus to enable them to complete their courses.

Sorry Spikey, I'm not sure what your point is: the Indigenous commencement figures are readily available, if a bit tedious to collect. But here are the figures for 1992-2001, for example:

Gender
1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
Commencing Students
Males
1,018 1,241 1,296 1,386 1,376 1,556 1,453 1,542 1,296 1,247
Females
1,673 1,743 1,940 2,237 2,248 2,472 2,544 2,598 2,214 2,319
Persons
2,691 2,984 3,236 3,623 3,624 4,028 3,997 4,140 3,510 3,566

It's a simple matter to look up the data for each year, but I'll let you do that :)

I'm certainly not abusing the figures: they are there for all to find. What interests me is why you should think that the figures COULDN'T be accurate. I regret to say that that says a lot about your attitudes to Indigenous people, Spikey.

As well, you cite total commencements and enrolments - anybody in the business knows that around 30 % of all students are overseas students, so when you take them out of the figures, Indigenous commencement make up about 1.4 % of all domestic students and 1.2 % of all enrolments. From the Census of 2006, one can calculate that Indigenous people make up 2.0 % of all Australian adults aged 17 to 65. So, 1.4 % of all commencements, and 2 % of the total adult population - 70 % of parity. Not too bad an effort for a disadvantaged group, don't you think ?

And with 16,000 graduates out of an female adult population 20-65 of 115,000, yes you are right, it's not one in seven Indigenous women who are graduates, it's one in 7.2. I apologise.

Jo

Sorry Spikey, I meant to also include data on the number of Indigenous people who had turned twenty between 1990 and 2007, and the number of commencers in that period. This can be found from the Census - during those years, the size of an Indigenous 20-yr-old age-group varied each year from about 6100 to 6500 - they were born in years of very low birth-rate, actually.

In fact, DEST/DEEWR figures routinely under-report commencements, enrolments and graduations, by a factor of 1.2-1.3, when put up against Census figures. So those commencements could have been as high as 75,000-80,000.

So in those eighteen years, 113,000-114,000 Indigenous people turned twenty, and just over sixty thousand (perhaps as many as eighty thousand) Indigenous people commenced studies at universities. Of course, some were post-graduates who had enrolled before, and some had enrolled at other universities before, or had re-enrolled after taking a break. My point was simply that commencements (about 63,000) were equivalent to more than half of the 20-yr-old age-group (114,000).

The implication is, of course, that from now on, more than half of all Indigenous people will - at some time or other - enrol in tertiary education. Do the maths. That certainly has been the case in South Australia since the late eighties.

I hope this clarifies what you obviously find an unbelievable situation.

Joe

Loudmouth

I’ll not comment on your motives for misrepresenting Indigenous students' participation in higher education. But your understanding of the statistics, “there for all to find”, is tenuous to say the least.

ABS 4221.0 - Schools, Australia, 2008 released on 17 March 2009, show that in 2008, there were only 4,779 Indigenous school students enrolled in Year 12 in the whole of Australia, compared with 2,206 enrolled in 1999. Your claim that 3,510 Indigenous students started in higher education in 2000 after there were only 2,206 students in Year 12 the year before (not all of whom would have succeeded at tertiary entrance level) starts to raise eyebrows.

The apparent retention rate of Indigenous male students – that is numbers in Year 12 as compared with numbers in Years 7/8 at the relevant starting year - increased from 30% in 1998 to 43% in 2008, and for Indigenous females increased from 35% to 50%. That is, four out of ten male and 5 out of ten female Indigenous students now go on to Year 12. In contrast, for non-Indigenous male students the increase was from 67% to 70%, and from 79% to 82% among non-Indigenous females.

That means that the pool of available Year 12 Indigenous students is already much smaller pro-rata than the pool of non-indigenous students. Notwithstanding some significant improvement in the past decade, Indigenous students continue to represent less than one percent of all higher education students - well below what it should be on an equitable demographic basis.

Next there is a world of difference between the rates for the key indicators – access, participation, continuation, progression and successful completion rates. They all require careful analysis. No single figure will cover them all.

Third, examine the fields of study of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, noting proportions enrolled in prestigious courses such as law and medicine. Fourth, also look at course levels – not just under-graduate and post-graduate but also bridging and basic courses.

Finally, look at rates in particular institutions and States: the NT and WA are radically different from those in urban Victoria and NSW.

Hi Spikey,

The majority of Indigenous tertiary students do not come straight from secondary school, and in fact, I suspect that the majority still do not have Year 12 - they have often completed tertiary preparation through TAFE, or come in as mature students. This pattern is changing rapidly and a sort of tipping point may have been reached in about 2004-2005.

Are you suggesting that there is something dodgy about DEST's commencement figures ? I workes for many years in Indigenous tertiary student support, and my wife worked for 23 years as manager of support programs and, if anything, what we always found was that enrolments were higher at our respective campuses than the university records showed and therefore that DEST recorded, by a factor of around 15-20 %. Often the more 'political' students refused to tick the box 'Indigenous etc.' out of suspicion of what the universities might do with the information. So if anything, the official numbers under-count.

So I am confident that the DEST figures are conservative when they record about 1.4 % of commencements, and 1.2 % of enrolments and graduations as Indigenous, when the Indigenous ADULT population makes up about 1.8 % of Australian adults.

Indigenous women's commencement rate by the way is better than non-Indigenous men's. Sorry, Spikey, that's how it is. Amazing, isn't it ?

You are right that Indigenous students are under-represented in the high-prestige courses like law (not as much as people think) and medicine, engineering and the sciences generally as well. But isn't that what you would expect from low SES groups, the working class generally ? (Sorry to use such a political term).

And yes, you are right - the participation rates are far higher in the more urbanised states, where Indigenous people are far more likely to have English as a first language, are literate, have work experience in their families, and are inter-marrying. And who have lost their land more or less forever.

Joe

There's something I don't understand: presumably On Line Opinion is open to all twenty million Australians, or at least the fifteen million Australians who are old enough to participate in a meaningful way. Yet nobody, not one person in fifteen million seems to see anything positive about Indigenous people, the vast majority of whom are either working-class or welfare-class, punching so far above their weight, doing so much better than the white working class: 75 % of the participation rate of the Australian middle class compared to barely 33 %. Our good friend Spikey makes reasonable queries, I try to respond to them, and nobody, not one other Australian out of fifteen million, seems to give a stuff either way.

Are we all so racist - not in a nasty KKK way, but in the sense of low expectations - that we can't even believe that Indigenous people can succeed in tertiary study ? Well, folks, they can and they are. And they will keep doing it.

And so much for cultural differences, by the way.

Joe Lane

Joe,

Your practical experience - and your wife's - showed that "enrolments were higher at our respective campuses than the university records showed and therefore that DEST recorded, by a factor of around 15-20 %". You explained this by students refusing to tick the box 'Indigenous etc.' out of suspicion of what the universities might do with the information. So if anything, you say, the official numbers under-count.

Yet you happily put the DEST university figures of 1.4 % of commencements, and 1.2 % of enrolments against the Indigenous adult population which makes up about 1.8 % of Australian adults. Surely your claim about under-estimating tertiary figures would also apply to Census data? What proportion of Indigenous people fail to tick the box on Census night (for whatever reasons)?

Don't apologise to me about Indigenous women's commencement rate being better than non-Indigenous men's. It's not amazing at all. The same applies to non-Indigenous students too (though men still dominate in some faculties).

I don't challenge your data as a put-down of Indigenous people. Just the reverse. If we're going to mount good arguments about the need for more resources and better opportunities for Indigenous Australians (as I have for years) it's crucial that we get the facts absolutley right.

While I'm not surprised to find low SES groups (Indigenous or not) bunched in the low status courses (and you accurately give some of the reasons in rural areas) I don't EXPECT that as cast in stone. People have a habit of living down to low expectations. We can learn something from the dramatic increase in the past 20 years in the proportion of women entering law courses (up from low 20% to over 55% now).

I agree with you that low expectations - including the belief that Indigenous people can't succeed in tertiary study - are a major impediment. I personally know and work with outstanding Indigenous scholars. The improving overall statistics are promising but there's still much room for improvement.

Thank you Spikey,

Concerning your comment about a possible under-count in the Census data: you may be right but it is also likely that Indigenous people are more likely to identify on the Census in what they may consider to be a condition of anonymity. And of course, if there is an under-count of Indigenous people in the Census, then there is an under-count of Indigenous graduates in the Census: one follows from the other.

Better resources ? It really depends what is done with those that are already available. In the case of Indigenous students' support at universities, there seems to be a rort going on at the moment whereby universities are diverting support funds towards the teaching of Indigenous Studies to non-Indigenous students. I'm not opposed to that, but I certainly am opposed to the misuse of support funds allocated academic and other support for Indigenous tertiary students.

I fully agree that there is a long way to go, but surely we should concede that Indigenous people have already climbed - talk about blood, sweat and tears ! - quite a way up the ladder. The inference is surely that if many Indigenous people can do it, then so can others. Perhaps TAFE has a role here - instead of the multitude of Mickey Mouse courses and piddly modules that are foisted on Indigenous people in the name of 'Indigenous Education' (though they certainly help to pad the numbers, 50,000 indeed !), Indigenous students (and students from other low SES groups, of course) could be prepared for entry into both trades and tertiary study much more effectively through a re-energised TAFE sector.

And I would respectfully dispute with you that what Indigenous women have achieved, in terms of parity with non-Indigenous male students, is indeed amazing - certainly far better than (I'm sure) most readers would have thought. Certainly better than either male or female non-Indigenous low-SES performance.

Joe

Joe,

You say: "... if there is an under-count of Indigenous people in the Census, then there is an under-count of Indigenous graduates in the Census: one follows from the other."

That can only be a guess on your part. My intuition runs the other way: Indigenous graduates are more likely to be proud and assertive of their achievements. Many of the Indigenous graduates I know are keen to put themselves out there to say to others, this can be done. As you say: " The inference is surely that if many Indigenous people can do it, then so can others." So I can't see them ticking the wrong boxes on the Census.

Better resources ? I'd like to see all of your suggestions and more. I think there's a need for
1. quality support for Indigenous students at universities
2. the teaching of Indigenous Studies to non-Indigenous students
3. improved enrolment rates for Indigenous students in law, medicine, engineering and course design and delivery being top-notch
4. a re-energised TAFE sector - but not falling for the old trick of diverting Indigenous and other low SES students into the low status TAFE sector while the privileged high SES students get to enrol in the prestigious courses in higher education - educational apartheid!

And I respectfully disagree with you that "what Indigenous women have achieved, in terms of parity with non-Indigenous male students, is indeed amazing - certainly far better than (I'm sure) most readers would have thought".

I think its a matter of combining aspiration, talent, hard work and winning access to opportunity. I'm heartened, but not amazed (what was that about expectations again?)

Not only is there a wide gulf between educational standards between selective high schools full fee private schools and high schools in working class suburbs there is also a great variation between employment outcomes for graduates from the different universities. In Victoria graduates from the lower standard universities find it harder to get employment and earn less than their counterparts from Melbourne, Monash & RMIT.
Increasing the number of university students is more about lowering unemployment statistics than it is about improving the employment prospects of students. Most Melbourne Uni graduates will find their degree opens the door to better employment choices and higher incomes, but graduates from La Trobe Bendigo or Wodonga, Uni Ballarat, Monash Gippsland, will find they have a large HECS debt and limited prospects of work in their chosen profession. This situation wil be repeated in other states.
A decade ago a study of graduate outcomes showed that people from lower SES groups studied the lower remunerated and older technology disciplines. The researcher speculated that this was from poorer knowledge of the labour markets.

Thank you, Spikey, I think we are in full agreement.

Here are some other data:

* Indigenous tertiary enrolments at degree level and above increased by 57 % between 1997 and 2007. Postgraduate enrolments went up by 92 %.
* Indigenous commencements at degree-level and above went up by 43 % between 1997 and 2007. Lower-level commencements fell drastically.
* Most importantly, continuing enrolments (second-year and later) at degree level increased by 69 % and P-G continuations increased by 165 % between 1997 and 2007.

Pity the Bradley Review didn't pick this up. But I guess we all have our agendas.

Joe