In yesterday’s Australian Universities Accord interim report announcement, the news that Indigenous Australians will have greater access to tertiary education has been welcomed by leading education experts.
Monash University President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Margaret Gardner AC, released the following initial remarks about the report’s recommendations:
“We also welcome the extension of Commonwealth-funded places to all Indigenous students, not only those from rural areas. In 2022, we saw a steady increase in the number of Indigenous student enrolments across undergraduate, postgraduate and higher degree by research levels. We are committed to building on this success by increasing the participation of Indigenous students even further,” Professor Gardner said.
“We look forward to further discussion around the core purpose of higher education in the creation and transmission of knowledge and how this might be achieved in a sustainable manner. In particular, we support proposals for a Tertiary Education Commission and a unified tertiary system with greater institutional diversity, and a conversation around appropriate funding of the full spectrum of research conducted by public universities in the national interest and to ensure connection to global knowledge systems.”
Speaking at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday, the Education Minister Jason Clare said he would adopt a raft of recommendations from the Australian Universities Accord interim report immediately, with an aim to help close the nation’s “education gap”.
Under the major reforms, Commonwealth-supported places at universities will become available to all Indigenous students. At the moment, funding has only supported those in regional areas. The revolutionary reforms hope to see Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tertiary participation doubled over the next decade.
The government will also abolish a scheme implemented by the Coalition, which withdrew HELP assistance if students failed to receive a 50 per cent pass rate. That initiative led to disproportionately high drop-out rates among students from poorer backgrounds, with this interim report focused, instead, on ways to improve university enrolment and retention rates of young Australians from a range of backgrounds and regional/rural/remote areas across Australia.
