10 % rise in Commencement and Enrolments, 9 % in Graduations – what are the implications for Indigenous social change ?

In 2014, the participation rate at universities for Indigenous students rose a healthy 10 %. Commencements in Bachelor-level courses have risen by 110 % since 2005. Graduations have topped two thousand and the flow-through seems likely to kick that up to 2,500 in a couple of years, three thousand by 2020.

With age-groups (24-26-year-olds) around eleven thousand, close to 20 % of the 27-28-year-old equivalent age-group is now graduating from universities every year, and this rate is rising about 6 % faster than the growth of numbers in equivalent age-groups.

Two-thirds of Indigenous graduates still are women, and overwhelmingly of urban populations: it is likely that participation of rural and remote populations is declining, and has been since about 2000. So there's a couple of jobs there for Indigenous university programs.

Enrolments at some universities are approaching the thousand mark: Charles Sturt and Newcastle each enrolled more than nine hundred Indigenous students. Griffith and Deakin each enrolled more than seven hundred. 144 Indigenous students graduated from Charles Sturt alone last year.

Twenty eight percent of graduates were at post-graduate level, so that pathway is well under way: graduates with multiple awards are now common-place. So university programs are now freed up to focus on actively promoting and publicising their universities' courses to the male, and rural and remote, populations; and in preparing and supporting students from those backgrounds throughout their studies.

Total graduation numbers are now approaching forty thousand, a decent-size football crowd. That's one in every six women, one in every twelve men, across the country – better still in urban areas. Fifty thousand graduates by 2020 now look pretty certain. And current (and even slowing) growth rates suggest that one hundred thousand graduates are likely around 2030, or soon after. On current population growth rates, they will represent about one in five or six adults – still mostly women, still mostly urban. And mostly likely, from working families.

So what social impact might this mean ?

Hi Joe,

The results speak for themselves, given the opportunity indigenous Australians can and do reach the highest standards in education, this in itself is not remarkable, any persons regardless of race, colour or creed, can achieve given the opportunity. What is remarkable is despite the disadvantage in indigenous communities so many can overcome and graduate from university.
Much more has to be done in remote communities to make education relevant for children from the beginning. Male students have to be made more inclusive within the system to want to achieve. The results are good but there is still a lot to be done.

Paul, the reality is that the best way to help people in remote areas, is to relocate them to less remote areas as the costs associated with providing services in the middle of nowhere simply don't weigh up any more.

Moreso, people's actions are questionable when they choose to raise children in remote areas where there is little to no prospect of them achieving. It's all about the end of the free ride in my view.

As I've said all along, all children worldwide have one common denominator, that being not a single one asked to be born. Parents choose to have children and responsible parents would not bring chikdren into such a surrounding, don't you think!

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

The following Aboriginal website may be of interest to you:

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/education/aboriginal-students-in-higher-studies-at-university

The website tells us that Aboriginal students choosing higher
studies only make up 1.3 per cent of all students and are
likely to be older than their peers. Experts want to see
universities tap into the potential of Aboriginal organisations
to increase student numbers. Lawyer Larissa Behrendt says
that educating Aboriginal children in literacy and numeracy
skills at primary levels would help. Despite increasing
Aboriginal course enrolments and commencements Aboriginal students
completed less courses compared to their non-Indigenous peers.

They cite financial and academic reasons for leaving university.
Many also have children which in turn increases financial
pressure.

Hi Foxy,

About 1.7 % of all Australian female students last year were indigenous: parity would be about 2.5 %. About 1.9 % of all Australian female commencements were Indigenous. Female Indigenous commencement were proportionately higher than those for non-Indigenous Australian males. Check it out: www.firstsources.info - higher education page.

Yes, of course, there's a long way to go, but my point, year after year, is that the figures are improving year-on-year at a greater rate, sometimes at a much greater rate, than those for non-Indigenous Australians.

I remember the seventies and eighties, when graduates numbered barely in the hundreds. So 38,000 seems to me to be something of an improvement. If the men had played their part, we would have the fifty thousand by now. One hundred thousand by 2032 - that should be a new target.

And of course, an enormous amount of work has to be done to connect rural and remote populations - and who should be doing a lot of that work ? Precisely the Larissa Behrendts of this world, the elites at the universities. They are in the box-seat to work their backsides off to form connections, pathways, between rural students and universities (the easier job), and between remote populations and universities (the much harder and much, much longer job). Who else is in the position to do that but Indigenous programs at universities ? Will they ? It's so much easier to pontificate.

I'm sure some programs are really trying - those at Notre Dame, James Cook, Charles Darwin, Deakin, Newcastle, Charles Sturt, Griffith, QUT, University of Southern Queensland - but don't expect much from the sandstones, or their staff.

Joe

Hi Joe

the direction of the numbers is encouraging, though there's still a way to go. The pattern is similar with many other measures of indigenous wellbeing - many are improving, but most are behind the rest of the population.

http://www.pc.gov.au/research/recurring/overcoming-indigenous-disadvantage/key-indicators-2014

Hi Rhian,

Let's remember two factors:

* the median age of Indigenous graduates is around 27 or 28;

* in 2014, there were around 10,000 Indigenous people in each of those age-groups.

2,023 graduates means the equivalent of around 20 % of an age-group completed university award-courses in 2014. That's probably better than the average for Europe.

Okay, that was four factors. But let's also remember another factor:

* around 10 % of the entire Aboriginal population are shut up in remote settlements, 'communities', with poor literacy and numeracy, distant in a multitude of ways from university participation.

If we add the alienated rural populations, this comes closer to 20 % of the entire Aboriginal population. Effectively, those 2023 Indigenous graduates came overwhelmingly from urban areas, studied in urban areas, and will find work in urban areas, with a slight drift to rural and remote areas.

So a paradox (or is it a dilemma?): Indigenous urban populations (and most likely, the children of working parents, and of mixed-marriages)are actively participating in university education, and for women, at 'standard' levels; rural and remote populations are not even as involved in such participation as they were in the 1990s. That Gap is not Closing.

So whose job is it to design and run programs to Close that dreadful and tragic Gap, no matter how hard and no matter how long it takes ?

All relevant data on my web-site: www.firstsources.info

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth, increased participation at universities by indigenous students is good news but where did these figures you quote come from? It would be interesting to see what proportion of these students are undertaking on-line programs.

Rehctub commented that "the best way to help people in remote areas, is to relocate them to less remote areas as the costs associated with providing services in the middle of nowhere simply don't weigh up any more". However, this applies less and less to university education, which is moving on-line and so is available from wherever you can get Internet access. I have been teaching on-line since 2009.

Some school education can also be delivered on-line to remote areas cost effectively (the older the student and the more academic the subject the better this works). Both the NT and Queensland education departments have centres which support remote students. This approach can be used to support individual students at home and to help teachers in remote areas. http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2014/02/australian-virtual-schooling.html

Hi Tom,

If you check out: https://education.gov.au/student-data
and scroll down the left-hand bar, you can get data as far back as 2004. If you check out the ABS Census data, say for 2006 and 2011, you can sort of triangulate with the DEST data, with slight adjustments for the different criteria used.

As for on-line programs, I suspect that, although many interested parties have always been anxious that Indigenous students stay away from campuses, that the proportion studying on-line has varied little in twenty years, and is much more likely now to be of post-graduate students, studying part-time as well. Of course, all students study on-line to an extent these days.

As for Indigenous remote students, I have to respectfully suggest that on-line and external study is utterly useless, something of a con-job used by some universities to pad their budgets, for absolutely no positive results. If people need a lot of preparation, you can't substitute the most whiz-bang on-line stuff for actual face-to-face, on-campus, working-together environments.

But I would suggest that the literacy and numeracy of people in remote settlements is so minimal after decades of phony bilingual education, that on-site preparation, over many years - many, many years - will be vital. If people have effectively missed out on twelve or thirteen years of schooling, no magic wand will suddenly bring their education level up enough to go to university, or perhaps even TAFE. OF COURSE, at some point in that long preparation process, on-campus experience, over weeks, then months, will also be vital: no silly one-day wandering around on an 'Open Day' will make the slightest difference.

So intensive on-site schooling for some years, then transition to TAFE or university, then on-campus enrolment - all with a renewed and hard-working student support effort. The low-hanging fruit, those urban kids coming straight through Year 12, are the easy part.

Now it might be time for university staff to actually do their jobs, since after all, universities get thousands of dollars for each Indigenous student enrolled, supposedly just for student support alone.

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Joe, last week Harry Longworth from the OATSEA Foundation, talked about how they are producing e-learning modules for children in developing nations. The idea is to use games to teach basic literacy and numeracy. They have PNG and Pacific countries in mind, but have also entered the Global Learning XPRIZE competition, which targets Africa: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2015/08/free-apps-for-education-in-africa-and.html

Hi Tom,

I hope that could work somehow. But remote settlements have comparatively enormous financial inputs, the people have more-or-less life-long welfare - in Africa, the people have nothing. In Africa, education is competitive, i.e. not many kids can get any of it, while in remote Australia, school systems pay kids to come to school, provide breakfasts and many other inducements, if only kids will please come to school. African families have vastly better knowledge of the value of education and are vastly more desperate for their kids to get into schooling, since it's much more a matter of life and death.

So unsurprisingly, their kids would sweat blood to try your schemes, while the kids in remote settlements here would be vaguely non-plussed about their relevance. Sure, try them once and if they work, go for it. But the pathways from remote on-site education to on-campus university education and on-the -job TAFE training or apprenticeships will, almost every step of the way, involve face-to-face intensive instruction, along the lines that Noel Pearson advocates.

And first and foremost, the students have to be interested enough. Lifelong welfare is easier.

Joe

A very good privately run kids education program in a third world country is 'Fiji Kids Learning for Life'. Fiji Kids is a small charity presently educating 80 odd children in the Sigatoka Valley of Fiji. The education program extends beyond the child to the family and has been most successful.

http://www.fijikids.org/

I looked up the bureau of statistics a couple of months ago to verify some comments made by an aboriginal representative : worst health, short life expectancy and high infant death rate. All of these areas have improved greatly over the last couple of years. Government funding is enormous. The other points were : worst school attendance and very high juvenile crime rate. Despite increased funding these two areas have not improved. This is unfortunate but not something more money can fix, families have to start taking responsibility, getting the kids to school and off the streets.
Indigenous higher education (for some reason now separate to regular education?) also receives large Govt funding and there is much opportunity for scholarships and almost free education. The availability and affordability of education for indigenous, couldnt possibly compare to that of any other country. If this too was taken advantage of, the handout and welfare for life culture could be gone for the next generations.

Hi Jodelie,

You have to keep in mind that there are nowadays two fairly distinct Indigenous populations - one work-oriented, usually urban; the other welfare-oriented, usually outer-suburban, rural and remote. They have starkly different statistics:

* my bet is that the working, urban population has health, education, crime, etc. statistics very similar to those of other working, urban Australians;

* all of the dreadful statistics that you read and hear about are pretty much confined to the welfare-oriented population: far sicker, more into crime (let's be honest), heavier smokers, more into violence and abuse, far more suicides and murders, and far shorter lives. In fact, their situation ids actually far, far worse than the aggregated statistics suggest, horrible as they may be. Reality is far more horribler.

Welfare is a bit like ice cream - we all might need a bit of it, but far too much of it kills, by suffocation.

Meanwhile, in the cities, we are now getting into the third generation of Indigenous university graduates. The hard-working people who left the missions and country towns soon after the War, who struggled to raise their kids and improve their opportunities, by moving to find work in the cities and larger towns, and whose kids in turn struggled through secondary school and onto better employment than their parents could find, have laid the ground for far better futures for their own children. Effort often pays off.

Let's get something straight: those urban people (the majority of Indigenous people, by the way, in spite of all the myths) don't owe their welfare-oriented 'cousins' a bloody thing. Rural and remote people may like staying dead in the water, there will always be some Government program or other that they can run to. But none of them can say they have never had a chance. Of course, they have, today, now, so no more excuses. They're not half-wits.

Joe