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.