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The National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) is building an evidence base to inform decision making in both equity policy and practice in Australian higher education and bridge the gap between the two. The NCSEHE Student Equity in Higher Education Research Grants Program and Equity Fellows Program are important aspects of this work. Since 2014, the NCSEHE Research Grants Program has funded 79 projects, across six rounds, with total expenditure of A$3,020,512. The Equity Fellowship program began in 2016. Since then, 12 Fellowships have been awarded to researchers and practitioners to conduct year-long studies into topics of emerging importance to equity in Australian higher education.

This publication summarises the latest instalments of these two programs over 2019–20. The 2019–20 Research Grants Program funding round focused on the following themes: (1) equity students and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); (2) equity and mature-aged students; (3) digital inclusion and student equity; (4) study-life balance and student equity; (5) 'non-traditional' equity groups (i.e., groups other than low socioeconomic status [low SES]; Indigenous; disability; regional and remote; non-English speaking background [NESB]; women in non-traditional areas [WINTA]; or First-in-Family [FiF] students); and (6) housing and student equity.

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The chapters are: Open textbooks and social justice: a national scoping study / Sarah Lambert and Habiba Fadel; Career guidance for culturally and linguistically diverse migrants and/or refugees / Alexander Newman, Sally Baker, Clemence Due and Karen Dunwoodie; Supporting carers to succeed in Australian higher education / Lisa Andrewartha and Andrew Harvey; Understanding access to higher education amongst humanitarian migrants in Australia / Francisco Perales, Matthias Kubler, Ning Xiang and Wojtek Tomaszewski; STEM pathways: the impact of equity, motivation and prior achievement / Julie McMillan, Sheldon Rothman, Sarah Buckley and Daniel Edwards; Equity through complexity: inside the 'black box' of the Block Model / Jen Jackson, Kathy Tangalakis, Peter Hurley and Ian Solomonides; Australian universities and educational equity for student veterans / Ben Wadham, Melanie Takarangi, Andrew Harvey, Lisa Andrewartha, Brad West, Matthew Wyatt-Smith, Jodie Davis, Elaine Waddell and Ella Moeck.

Housing matters: understanding the housing experiences of undergraduate regional, rural and remote students living outside the family home / Julia Cook, Matthew Bunn, Penny Jane Burke, Hernan Cuervo, Stephanie Hardacre and Jace Blunden; Comfort with discomfort: exploring Wadjella educators' engagement with Indigenous students / Jonathan Bullen, Lynne Roberts, Cheryl Davis, Braden Hill, Tamara Lipscombe and Djandunmarra Cox; Exploring benefits and challenges of online work integrated learning for equity students / Amani Bell, Kathryn Bartimote, Lucy Mercer-Mapstone, Gulwanyang Moran, James Tognolini and Nora Dempsey; Investigating transitions to university from regional South Australian high schools / Sharron King, Cathy Stone and Chris Ronan; A novel approach to mapping changes in student attitudes towards science and mathematics in reaction to changes to their learning environment / John Paul Kennedy, Kate Thompson, Samuel Fowler and Simon N. Leonard; Calculating the costs of supporting people with disability in Australian higher education / Tim Pitman, Katie Ellis, Matt Brett, Elizabeth Knight and Darlene McLennan.

'Ghost student' failure among equity cohorts: towards understanding non-participating enrolments / Bret Stephenson, Beni Cakitaki and Michael Luckman; Higher education aspirations, participation, and achievement of Australian Indigenous males / James A. Smith, Himanshu Gupta, Sam Moore, Jesse Fleay, Garth Stahl, Bep Uink, Andrew Harvey, Peter Radoll, Braden Hill, Rebecca Bennett, Jahdai Vigona and Anthony Merlino; 'On the radar': supporting the mental wellbeing of mature-aged students in regional and remote Australia / Nicole Crawford; 'You going to uni?': exploring how people from regional, rural and remote areas navigate into and through higher education / Janine Delahunty; Supporting persons with disabilities to succeed in higher education / Tim Pitman; Indigenous students' journeys to and through allied healthcare programs / Andrea Simpson; Meaningful jobs for students with disability: from luck to business as usual / David Eckstein; Building a stronger evidence base to support effective outreach strategies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students: increasing impact and university participation / Katelyn Barney. Show less

This is the keynote address of the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) Forum ‘What we know. What we need to know’. The field of Australian higher education has changed, is changing and is about to change, as it is repositioned in relation to other ‘fields of power’. It is a sector now well defined by its institutional groupings, the Go8 [Group of 8], the IRUs [Innovative Research Universities], the ATN [Australian Technology Network] and the rest, and by their relative claims to selectivity and exclusivity, with every suggestion of their differentiation growing. Even within these groupings there are distinctions and variations. Moreover, Australian universities now compete within an international higher education marketplace, ranked by THES [the Times Higher Education Supplement] and Shanghai Jiao Tiong league tables. ‘Catchment areas’ and knowledge production have become global. And the potential of a ‘joined-up’ tertiary education system, of VET [vocational education and training] and universities, will rework relations within Australian higher education, as will lifting the volume caps on university student numbers. In sum, Australian universities (and agents within them) are positioned differently in the field, although not in the stable relations imagined by Pierre Bourdieu in the France of the 1960s. And being so variously and variably placed, institutions and agents have different stances available to them, including the positions they can take on student equity. In this paper I begin from the premise that our current shared stance on this has been out-positioned. Nation-bound proportional representation loses its equity meaning when the Australian elite send their children to Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge. The same could also be said, and has been, about equity representations by region, institution, discipline and degree. What then, also, for a new national research centre with a focus on student equity and higher education, for its research agenda and positioning in the field? What stance can it take on student equity that will resonate on a national and even international scale? And, given a global field of higher education, what definitions of equity and propositions for policy and practice can it offer? What will work in the pursuit of equity? Show less

Since the 1980s, enabling pathways have been one of the main ways that prospective students from low-SES [low socioeconomic] backgrounds have been able to enter into universities. These programs, often known as foundation studies or preparatory programs, provide both access to generalist degrees and enabling experiences to enhance the potential for student success within degree-level studies. This project builds on qualitative research undertaken at the University of Adelaide to explore the experiences of low-SES students in these programs. It returned to participants after they had experienced degree level-studies at their university, to explore their subsequent experiences in light of previous findings. In addition, it sought to explore the experiences of students who didn't quite 'make it', and for one reason or another did not articulate into a degree. Finally, it compared the experiences of these students at the University of Adelaide with those who had undertaken a similar pathway at the University of South Australia, a very different institution with a distinct mission, structure and program.

Given the diversity of participants, the findings from this research were complex and multi-faceted. Every one of the participants remembered their experience of their enabling program with fondness and gratitude, and most expressed some feeling or experience of substantial transformation as a result as well as a sense that their enabling program laid the basis for a very positive and productive study career. However, the interviews elicited some troubling experiences of adversity which do not fit easily into a marketable narrative of social mobility through transformative education.

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This study examined low socioeconomic status (SES) students' access to information about higher education study options, pathways, and careers and the efficacy of that information. It reports in the context of a shift in higher education policy towards including outcomes as a key component of institutional performance. The study asked a single research question: How might the information about higher education study options, pathways, and careers available to students from low SES backgrounds be made accessible, equitable, and effective? The research question was answered through three interrelated inquiries. Inquiry 1 sought to better understand study pathways and careers support as experienced by students and influencers within low SES and other secondary schools. This involved a literature review and analysis of data from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY). Inquiry 2 employed and analysed data from Bennett's (2019a) social cognitive measure of perceived employability, which encompasses 16 aspects of study and career confidence ranging from academic self-efficacy to communication skills. Data from 6,300 participating students at three Australian universities were linked with institutional and national datasets to compare the confidence of university students from low SES backgrounds with that of their peers.

In the final phase, the themes and issues identified by students were compared with the findings from the LSAY analysis (Inquiry 1) and students' self-assessments of career and study confidence (Inquiry 2). Combined, the study findings informed five elements through which students' career and study decision-making might be understood and enhanced: (1) information and guidance provided to students; (2) students' interpretation of the information and guidance they receive; (3) influence of information and guidance on stakeholders; (4) temporal impacts of information and influence; and (5) improvements to students' access to and use of study and career pathways information.

The study concludes that effective career and study guidance is dependent on students' (unequal) access to qualified career practitioners or, in many cases, to teachers with career guidance duties and little or no career and study guidance training. In cases where there is no qualified practitioner, Australian students are mystified by the multiple, state-based pathways they see online or in generic fliers. The result is that many Australian students base essential career and study decisions on information from parents, peers, and social media. Students from disadvantaged groups experience higher rates of postsecondary attrition and deferral and poorer graduate employment outcomes. Despite considerable attention, we find there to be inequitable provision of careers and study information from the early years of secondary school. The study outcomes have significant potential to improve access to effective careers and study information, with a particular focus on students from disadvantaged groups and those who seek to assist them. We urge policymakers and sector leaders to collaborate on both short-term and longer term bipartisan solutions. We advocate for careers information that introduces multiple study and career pathways and that these pathways be valued equally. A number of recommendations are made to advance these aims.

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There have been expansionary policies aimed at widening participation in higher education in developed countries worldwide. In Australia, increasing participation among underrepresented groups is a national priority. This has led to the formation of six official student equity groups whose access, participation, and outcomes in higher education have been specifically targeted since 2008. More recently, the development of alternative entry pathways has been encouraged to boost higher education enrolments among these equity groups. There is, however, relatively scarce evidence on trends in admission to university study through alternative pathways and on the comparative outcomes of students from various pathways.

This study aimed to fill these policy gaps and addressed four research questions: What are the proportions of students entering undergraduate study through Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) and non-ATAR pathways in Australian universities? What are the proportions, numbers, and trends over time - by equity group status - of those who access university education through non-ATAR and ATAR pathways? How are equity students from non-ATAR pathways distributed across courses, and are there observable trends and patterns? Do student outcomes (retention, progression, student experience, academic performance, work readiness) differ based on the type of entry pathway and equity group status?

This study found that, while the ATAR pathway was still the most common pathway to university, there has been a gradual decline in the last decade in the proportion of students accessing university this way. Conversely, alternative pathways, such as the completion of another higher education course, entry via vocational education and training (VET) courses, and other pathways (e.g. access schemes and enabling programs), are increasingly being used by students to gain admission into universities. The growth in alternative entry pathways was stronger for students from all equity groups except for Indigenous students. There were also trends in enrolments by field of study, with disciplines such as engineering seeing a proportional decline in student enrolments while disciplines such as health experienced growth. These enrolment trends were observed for the student body as a whole, and also for the various equity groups examined.

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In Australia, regional and remote Indigenous students are under-represented in both higher education and vocational education and training. Access (or enabling) education programs are important in lifting participation rates and potentially in encouraging mobility between the sectors. However, there is a clear lack of evidence underpinning their development. This report summarises a 12-month research project which sought to explore current practices in Indigenous access courses, particularly in the context of regional, dual-sector universities. The project aimed to understand the practices and experiences of Indigenous access programs, with a view to designing a best-practice framework and implementation statement.

In support of this aim, the research sought to explore how Indigenous learning journeys can respect and grow cultural identity while simultaneously developing study skills, particularly in the context of studying at a regional university. It also aimed to investigate how interpretations of 'success' can be considered from the perspectives of the student, their community and the institution. This research particularly focuses on access education programs. In doing so, it acknowledges that, while access education is only a small slice of the lifelong education journey, it is a critically important one for many Indigenous peoples. In developing a best-practice conceptual framework for Indigenous access programs, the authors consider pedagogy, curriculum and mode of delivery, superimposed by the institutional ethos and drivers for implementation, and framed by local, regional and national Indigenous perspectives.

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Education and career pathway decision making in rural, regional and remote (RRR) areas is crucial for building strong societies and economies across RRR Australia, a point made by recent reviews of RRR education (Napthine et al., 2019; Halsey, 2018). Rather than targeting school students in their education and career pathway decision making, this project developed and piloted a model focussed on working alongside communities to build community capacity to support education and career pathway decisions of school students and adults. Schools currently have limited support from outside the education sector in providing career information and education. There is a need to embed knowledge within communities about careers of today and the future, and the pathways to them, so that this knowledge is readily accessible to those making pathway decisions. This project aimed to establish a model to fill gaps in community knowledge and give confidence to the community members who are key influencers of young people's and others' career and education pathway decisions. The project adopted a placed-based, whole of RRR community approach to targeting and building the capacity of these key influencers.

This project addresses a key question: How can a whole of community approach best equip key influencers to inform and support low [socioeconomic status] SES and RRR student higher education participation? It also addresses two sub-questions: (1) How might a whole of community approach work effectively? (2) How can key influencers best be informed and supported in RRR areas? This project designed, trialled and evaluated whole of community, place-based career and education pathway information programs for adults in three RRR communities who are the key influencers of young peoples' and others' education and career pathway decisions.

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The focus of this Fellowship was to investigate models of successful pathways for Indigenous students into university-qualifying allied health professions. The study investigated the national profile of Indigenous students enrolled in select higher education and vocational education allied healthcare study, as well as the institutional factors linked with success in access and retention. A subset of 10 allied health professions was chosen for inclusion in the Fellowship: psychology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, podiatry, optometry, audiology, dietetics, exercise physiology, speech pathology, and social work. [Vocational education and training] VET program data on health and human welfare studies and services fields of education were also examined. The Fellowship adopted a mixed methods approach to data collection. Quantitative data on the socio-demographic profile of Indigenous students was sourced from the Department of Education, Skills and Employment (DESE) and the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). This data was complemented by qualitative semi-structured interviews and online survey responses provided by Indigenous students and graduates, as well as stakeholders in the higher education and vocational education sectors.

Although the current Fellowship primarily focused on the allied healthcare field, alignments were found with past recommendations made more broadly within the higher education sector, including but not limited to, the Behrendt and NATSIHEC Reviews [available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 109.1216 and TD/TNC 147.671 respectively]. Future growth in Indigenous enrolment share within higher education allied healthcare programs could thus be achieved by continuing to build upon these recommendations, specifically: improving Indigenous governance and leadership within professional bodies, localised target setting by profession and/or institution, strategic expansion of course offerings into regional areas; improved partnerships between the VET sector and higher education providers; credit transfer arrangements for VET qualifications which align with allied health curricula; an education campaign within the VET sector on career transition opportunities; dual enrolments; support for VET articulation from higher education providers; and continued Indigenous Student Success Program (ISSP) funding to support the Indigenous Student Support Centres.

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Enhancing vocational education and training (VET) to higher education pathways and transitions for Indigenous students is important. Dual-sector universities are well positioned to take the lead in strengthening pathways and transitions for Indigenous students by harnessing the opportunities and addressing the challenges they face. A scoping literature review, focus groups and a survey of staff and students highlighted the need for greater community engagement and partnerships, and enabling programs that develop academic preparedness and the strengthening of self-efficacy in students.

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This report details the findings of the 'Enabling programmes for disadvantaged student groups project', which was funded as part of the Australian Government Department of Education and Training National Priorities Pool funding 2014 round with the research undertaken in 2015. The project team conducted a review of current enabling programs and reported on: (1) the extent to which current enabling courses offered by Australian higher education providers are an effective means of increasing access to, participation and success in undergraduate courses for domestic students from disadvantaged groups; (2) the appropriateness of enabling courses as a pathway to university for disadvantaged groups compared to other pathways; (3) the variability in quality between enabling courses that impacts on their effectiveness for disadvantaged student groups; and (4) what, if any, particular practices or means of delivery should be incorporated into enabling courses to enhance their effectiveness for people from disadvantaged groups. For the purposes of this report, 'disadvantaged students' were primarily defined in line with the six officially recognised equity groups of students ('the equity group of students'): low socio-economic status (low SES) students; students from regional and remote areas; Indigenous students; students with a disability; students from a non-English speaking background (NESB); and women in non-traditional areas of study (WINTA).

In relation to their reasons for choosing the pathway they did, both enabling and vocational education and training (VET) students shared similar motivating and driving factors. The distinction between the two was evident in that enabling students were primarily seeking a way to access and prepare for university, while this was a secondary consideration for most VET students who were seeking vocational skills or access to a specific vocation. When asked how their chosen pathway could have been improved, the majority of enabling students were satisfied with the enabling program and how it prepared them for university, while VET students were less satisfied with their pathway and saw room for improvement. By and large, the VET and enabling pathways serve distinct cohorts of students and act in a complementary, not contrasting fashion. It is a case of enabling and VET, not enabling or VET.

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