VC’ s corner
High-scoring students make educators’ lives easy and they make them look good – giving the wider student body and the university a high GPA. It’ s easy to teach outstanding students and it’ s cheap.
But in today’ s economy where employers demand not only bachelor degrees but postgraduate studies as well, universities must‘ massify’ education and provide powerful knowledge and social justice.
This is done by empowering the non-elite, minority groups and the disadvantaged – including refugees, prisoners, the disabled, as well as regional Australians and Indigenous communities.
Higher education access regardless of where you are born or whom you are born to, is critical for a knowledge economy – it drives national productivity; improves individuals’ life chances and transforms their families and communities.
Knowledge is the commodity in the knowledge economy and for those universities whose core business is to provide that to all Australians regardless of ATAR are in the business of nation building – these aren’ t second-rate universities; and we shouldn’ t allow discussion of ATAR distract us from the critical role they play in Australia.
If Australia is to achieve the Bradley targets, it needs to recruit students who have not been socialised into valuing education from a very young age, and typically regional and remote households have failed to do this.
And this is where regional universities, such as The University of Southern Queensland, step in to breach the educational divide.
The role of regional universities is to get to the gatekeepers and influencers within rural and remote communities and work with young people in educationally excluded parts of Australia – in regional schools, Aboriginal communities and with new migrants – and tell them it is possible for them to go to university – any university, regardless of their background. And metropolitan Australia should be applauding this effort, instead of sneering at their regional cousins for doing so, which is done at substantial cost, and with limited funding.
Students from lower socio-economic backgrounds are often the‘ first in family’ to attempt a tertiary education and have often been out of school for many years, with various social issues, language barriers and even the negative attitudes of family members to overcome.
In order to help those students succeed, universities need to first raise student aspirations and confidence levels, give them encouragement and focus, as well as providing academic, social and pastoral support to get them up to standard, so that their intellectual“ grunt” can be liberated.
The Bradley targets were benchmarked at participation rates in OECD countries, and can easily be met if students from all walks of life are embraced.
A preoccupation with‘ who’ people are at a certain time is not fruitful for society; it is not about who they are when they enter a campus, but who they become, and who they are when they leave.
It’ s almost impossible to assess intellectual potential at an input point – a whole range of factors influence a student’ s scores, not the least the school they went to, and the social circumstance of their family.
Output points however, are the result of the academic journey and, despite what some may claim: a Bachelor of Education at one university does indeed equate to a Bachelor of Education at another – professional bodies and TEQSA demand so.
In 2011, the Group of Eight commissioned a report entitled Selection and Participation in Higher Education: University Selection in Support of Student Success and Diversity of Participation.
The report found that strategies based“ solely or predominantly on rank derived from secondary school achievement work against efforts to promote diversity of participation over time, unless additional steps are taken”. A massified and diverse system of education is critical to meet the Bradley targets and to create a smart nation.
If Australia wants to lift university participation rates to 40 per cent, the old colonial-convict snob factor needs to go.
The cut off criteria at some universities is much higher than it needs to be for students to graduate at the right level for professional accreditation and employability.
It’ s time to grow up Australia, and end your unhealthy obsession with ATAR cut-offs. n
Jan Thomas is the vice-chancellor of University of Southern Queensland.
www. campusreview. com. au April 2013 | 35