Building the evidence to improve completion rates for Indigenous students

This research project has focused on success factors for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university completion rates. While the number of Indigenous students participating in Australian higher education continues to grow, Indigenous student completion rates remain very low relative to non-Indigenous students. The national data indicates that, while Indigenous students typically can take longer to graduate, the nine-year completion rates for Indigenous students remain around 47 per cent - significantly below the 74 per cent for non-Indigenous students. Some universities have higher Indigenous student completion rates than the national average. However, research-based evidence of these universities as 'success models' is limited. The project involved a mixed-methods approach (combining qualitative and quantitative methods) to identify and analyse the multifaceted dimensions and range of strategies used at four [Group of Eight] Go8 (universities A, B, C, D) and one non-Go8 university (university E) to support Indigenous student completions. In compliance with ethical clearance, the universities are not identified within this report. The five universities were chosen because of their high completion rates compared to the national average.

Key findings from the project were: (1) Indigenous centres/units at universities are key for building a sense of community and belonging for Indigenous students; (2) the physical space of Indigenous centres/units is particularly significant to provide a space where Indigenous students can connect with each other, with staff and with their own cultural identities; (3) ITAS (Indigenous Tutoring Assistance Scheme) is an important strategy to assist Indigenous students to complete their degrees; (4) faculties need to collaborate further with Indigenous centres to support Indigenous students to complete their degrees; (5) more Indigenous perspectives in the classroom are needed to support Indigenous students' learning outcomes and to provide examples of engaging with Indigenous knowledges and cultural contexts in teaching and learning; (6) Indigenous students experience racism in the classroom and more work needs to be done to address this; (7) more cultural competency training of staff and students is needed to ensure faculties and classrooms are culturally safe spaces for Indigenous students; (8) non-completed students reported a range of factors influencing their decisions to leave university, including negative experiences living at college, mental health concerns and 'burnout', poor fit of the degree with their interests and a lack of a cohort of Indigenous students; and (9) compared to national Indigenous enrolments, the selected institutions enrolled higher percentages of Indigenous students who were younger, studying internally, studying full-time, from metropolitan postcodes, from high [socioeconomic status] SES postcodes, admitted on the basis of their secondary education, and/or studying in the Society and Culture or Natural and Physical Sciences broad fields of education. They were more likely to disclose their [Australian Tertiary Admission Rank] ATAR and, when they did, their ATAR was likely to be higher. The findings of this project inform eight high-level recommendations under the following two broad categories: key stakeholder recommendations; and Australian Government recommendations.

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