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.