Higher education data for 2012 have been released. Once again, they show that Indigenous commencements and enrolments are rising steadily, at around 7 % p.a., to 5,824 and 12,632 respectively.

Indigenous Commencements make up 1.67 % of all Australian commencements. Indigenous female commencements were proportionally higher in 2012 – 2.55 % - than those of non-Indigenous Australian males, as they have been for some years.

Indigenous commencements have risen more than 50 % since 2006, nearly 60 % in bachelor-level courses, overwhelmingly in standard, not Indigenous focussed, courses.

Indigenous Enrolments in post-graduate courses rose nearly 55 % between 2006 and 2012: in 2012, just under two thousand Indigenous people were enrolled at these levels, almost half at Master’s level. There were twice as many Masters’ students in 2012 as in 2006.

1627 Indigenous students graduated from universities across the country in 2012. This takes the total number of graduates up to around 34,000.

More than seven hundred Indigenous students are enrolled at Newcastle University and nearly as many at Deakin and James Cook.

Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Education has almost vanished as an entity –from seven hundred students ten years ago, it enrolled only 22 in 2012. But Charles Darwin University tripled its Indigenous commencement numbers between 2006 and 2012.

Around half of all Indigenous graduates go on to post-graduate study. Nearly four thousand Indigenous people have graduate with post-graduate awards since 2000.

Consistently Indigenous women are participating, and graduating, at twice the rate of Indigenous men.

But clearly, the participation rates are much higher in southern and eastern cities. In New South Wales, Indigenous commencement numbers rose by 87 % between 2006 and 2012, but actually fell in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

The Indigenous birth-rate rose dramatically from the mid-eighties, and the proportion of Indigenous students completing Year 12 also rose very rapidly from about 1999, doubling and then doubling again in South Australia, for example.

The vast majority of Indigenous students finishing Year 12 enrol in standard courses, not Indigenous-focussed courses.

[TBC]

[continued]

It is very likely that, by 2020, there will be fifty thousand Indigenous university graduates across the country, including twenty thousand post-graduates. The vast majority will be in mainstream positions, in the cities.

For full tables, email me on: joelane94@hotmail.com

I should have pointed out that these figures for Indigenous Australians are quite comparable with the figures for US and Canadian Native Americans, and for Maori.

A young-adult female Indigenous age-group would number around 5,800-6,000, so the 3,824 who commenced study make up the equivalent of around 55-60 % of an age-group, and that's how it's been for some years now. Of those commencements, around 600 would be in post-graduate courses (so not first-timers) and another 300 or so might be of people transferring from other courses, or returning to study after some years.

So a net 2,900 Indigenous women - out of an average young-adult age-group of about 5,800-6,000 would have started university study in 2012 - in other words, half of an age-group. For men, it's around a quarter or less. For men in remote 'communities', where high levels of skills are desperately required (and of the 'right' sorts of skills, as Individual has poinge out many times), as well as trades, the figures are probably in the low single-figures. So there is work to do by hot-shot educational 'leaders' when they get back from their next overseas conference.

In the major cities, around 20-25 % of young Indigenous women would be university graduates, overwhelmingly at degree-level and above, and in standard courses.

I'm confident that their ancestors would be proud of them ! And there's more to come !

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

It is very heartening to read such positive results.
Do you have any information on Indigenous youth in
remote areas and how they are faring as far as their
education goes?

Hi Lexi,

Thanks so much for your comment. I have a horrible suspicion that people in rural and remote areas, particularly men, have been turning away from education of any sort over the past ten or twelve years, from upper secondary and from university-level education - and perhaps seeking out phony TAFE courses which they can do over and over, and which are reliably guaranteed to get them nowhere and thereby not put them in danger of having employable skills, and thereby having to front up for employment.

As a consequence, there could be rapidly growing rift between urban and rural/remote populations, and particularly between urban women and rural/remote men, at the ends of a work- and welfare-oriented spectrum.

Urban Indigenous women have been marrying non-Indigenous men for fifty or sixty years, so as more urban women gain education and professional skills, and as rural and remote-area Indigenous men pull back from education, skills and employment, there is even less likelihood of Indigenous women marrying Indigenous men. This is bound to have profound demographic consequences.

Until the men lift their game, that situation is likely to become even more fraught. The ball is in their court, but not forever.

Love,

Joe

Yes, I have witnessed a huge growth in indigenous participation in education. The only perplexing factor is the answer to the question "where are they now?"
The money spent on flying them home every school holiday plus no-limit funding for literally anything does appear to be an imbalance with actual job filling & in any enterprise. There are a large number who make up the ALP quota 8% indigenous employment in the public service but in private enterprise or manufacturing the numbers are as low as ever. The does not appear to be a focus on eventually creating internal revenue, it's all about extracting more funding for chest-beating exercises by integrity bereft lefties.
I only know of a very small number of indigenous who have the go to make their life on their own merit. They are respectable individuals who have the integrity to forfeit the hand-out mentality of leftist Governments & bureaucrats. They see through the bull dust of leftist do-gooders who do nothing but undermine those indigenous who have pride in achieving something that they themselves have acquired. Shoving pointless saturation education down the throat of many intelligent kids & ruining them with smoke-screen promises is just too hypocritical.