Why Indigenous University Students Are Doing So Well

After the Second World War, Aboriginal men across Australia seized employment opportunities on the many new infrastructure projects in rural areas. As soon as they could, they brought their families with them. Life in shacks and sheds around country towns was harder than on the missions but at least their kids had access to better education. Within a few years, whole families moved into larger towns and then, from the late 1950s, to the cities. Standard secondary education became a possibility.

By the 1970s, so did tertiary education. By 1980, there were around two or three hundred Aboriginal tertiary graduates across the country, mostly teachers and nurses.

By the end of last year, those numbers had grown to 36,000. They will grow to 50,000 by 2020, and to 100,000 by the early 2030s. What impact might they have on indigenous society?

Federal Education Department statistics just out (at https://education.gov.au/selected-higher-education-statistics-2013-student-data ) show that, across Australia, indigenous university commencements, continuations, enrolments and graduations all hit new record levels in 2013:

Commencements: up 7.7 per cent from 2012, to a record 6275 students.

Continuations: up 10.2 per cent to a record 7506 students.

Enrolments: up 9.1 per cent to a record 13,781 students.

Graduations: up more than 14 per cent to a record 1859 graduates.

(A full database, going back twenty years, is available on the website www.firstsources.info on the “Twenty-First Century” page.)

Notable trends

Significantly, indigenous students are now overwhelmingly studying mainstream, rather than indigenous-focused (such as Indigenous Studies, Indigenous Culture and Indigenous Health) courses. Most of their courses are degree level, and of all indigenous commencements in 2013 19 per cent were at postgraduate level, which is now up to 989. Since 2005, annual postgraduate commencements have risen 92 per cent. Degree commencements have doubled since 2001.

The numbers of indigenous students enrolled in sub-degree-level courses has plummeted since 2005 by more than 70 per cent. In 2013, fewer than 2 per cent of all indigenous students were enrolled in sub-degree courses. Indigenous-focused courses tend to be at sub-degree level.

In 2013, 1859 indigenous students graduated, 97.7 per cent of them at degree level or above. More than 20,000 indigenous students have now graduated since 2000. Some 4377 have graduated at postgraduate level since 2000.

Total graduate numbers are now about 36,000, out of an adult indigenous population (those aged between twenty and forty-nine) of about 250,000—one in seven. Two-thirds are women, so about one in every five indigenous women is a university graduate—one in every four in the cities—and the gender disparity is slowly increasing.

Clearly, universities’ publicity and recruitment programs need to focus more on encouraging male indigenous students coming through secondary schools, and young indigenous men, to lift their sights and to enrol in tertiary courses, and thereby to provide them with more positive pathways in their lives.

Indigenous women in Australia are commencing tertiary study at about the same rate at non-indigenous men, and at about 90 per cent of the rate of non-indigenous women.

Some universities have experienced a doub­ling of indigenous commencements since 2006. Universities in New South Wales as a whole have increased their commencement numbers by 110 per cent. Commencements at the University of NSW more than tripled between 2006 and 2013. Victoria and Queensland both had a rise in commencements of around 90 per cent since 2006.

In contrast, in Western Australia as a whole, commencements declined by more than 3 per cent, pulled down by a decline in Curtin’s commencements of 20 per cent, and Edith Cowan’s of 11 per cent. At Macquarie, indigenous commencement numbers have risen only 17 per cent since 2006, and at Murdoch, only 18 per cent. Last year there were no new students at Batchelor Institute: so much for all those dreams of an indigenous university.

Universities which tried to specialise in indigenous-focused courses seem to have suffered major declines in their indigenous participation. It’s possible that some universities have enrolled no new students in indigenous-focused courses in some years, and that all first-time commencements in some years have been in mainstream and degree-level courses. Coupled with savage cuts to indigenous support services as their funds are diverted to the teaching of “Indigenous Culture and History” to non-indigenous students, this does not augur well for the future involvement of these universities with the indigenous community. But I suspect that this is not something they concern themselves about.

Some universities had large commencement numbers in 2012 but poor continuation numbers in 2013. One can’t help feeling that some universities boost their indigenous numbers with large intakes of poorly prepared students (perhaps Special Entry students, and perhaps enrolled externally and interstate as well), and tolerate high dropout rates. The older universities tend to be more circumspect about their intakes, with few Special Entry students, lower than state-average enrolments, but much lower attrition rates—the University of NSW, the ANU and the University of Western Australia, for example. But since 2005, some universities have had outstanding commencement, enrolment and graduation numbers, and average or high retention as well: Charles Sturt, Flinders and ANU are good examples of such broad success.

An attempt at analysis

Why has there been such an improvement in indigenous university participation and performance since about 2005? Why have total enrolments almost doubled? Far better student support services for indigenous students in mainstream courses—who were somewhat anathematised in the years before 2005 (“Blacks should do Black courses”)—seems to have been the key.

Indigenous participation at universities stagnated between 1995 and 2005. The push to offer indigenous-focused and sub-degree courses, and to channel indigenous students into them, stalled. Similarly, the effort to keep indigenous students off-campus by offering courses externally seems to have withered away.

But since 2000, universities’ Indigenous Studies schools have wound down sub-degree courses such as associate diplomas. So the numbers of indigenous students in indigenous-focused awards have been cut to pieces from two sides.

As well, some universities have allowed the transfer of student support funds from Canberra across to the Indigenous Studies area, in order to cater for the teaching of Indigenous Culture, Indigenous Health and so on to non-indigenous students, for whom such courses are often compulsory. As a consequence, indigenous student support staff numbers at some universities have been cut and services wound back. Some universities seem to have effectively abandoned indigenous student support.

Yet by 2013, the great majority of indigenous students were studying on-campus, in mainstream courses, at degree level and above, and in much greater numbers. How so?

Increases in commencements have followed the rapid rise in the number of indigenous students completing Year 12 since 2000. In some states, this increase has been ten-fold. When such students enrol at universities, overwhelmingly they choose to enrol in on-campus, mainstream and degree-level courses.

So how to explain this sudden rise in Year 12 completions and hence university commencements, enrolments and graduations? We need to go back a couple of steps.

The sudden increase in the numbers of indigenous students completing Year 12 coincided with a rise in birth-groups born after 1981. The birth-rate had been constant through the 1970s, and coupled with a relatively mature age (late twenties) at tertiary commencement, this meant that university commencement numbers tended to stay low through the 1990s and into the next decade.

But from about 1981, indigenous birth-rates started to rise slowly, starting in the big cities, and accelerating through the 1980s by around 35 to 40 per cent. Indigenous birth-groups born in the 1970s numbered (adjusting for different Census totals) around 8000 nation-wide, while the numbers in birth-groups in 1990-91 were more like 11,000. The size of birth-groups continued to increase through the 1990s to around 13,000. So larger age-groups contributed to rapid growth in Year 12 numbers after 2000.

As well, the median age of indigenous comm­encers declined to around twenty-six and less, partly as a result of the diminution and disappearance of sub-degree indigenous-focused courses, which tended to enrol students at much higher ages. So, higher birth-rates and a concertina effect due to the decline in median age have encouraged rapid growth in commencement numbers.

The much larger age-groups of the 1990s are due to peak in university-age between 2015 and 2020. And a bigger wave will hit university-age in the 2030s, the children of this boom generation.

But how come Year 12 numbers have increased many times since 2000, and the size of the relevant age-group has risen, but only by 50 per cent? Is there something “different” about that sudden increase in births since the early 1980s?

We also need to explain, after steady-state birth numbers through the 1970s, why they rose consistently through the 1980s and into the 1990s. Here’s my conjecture.

Across Australia, after about 1960, indigenous families started to move to the cities for work opportunities. The children of those young families grew up in the cities and accessed much better educational opportunities. As the children of those families left school and found work, as their parents had done, they of necessity worked and socialised with non-Aboriginal people. Inter-marriage with non-indigenous partners quickly became very common for working indigenous people: perhaps 80 per cent of young indigenous people were inter-marrying by the 1980s, and this has risen to over 90 per cent in some cities, according to research led by Bob Birrell.

Inter-marriage has the effect of massively increasing the number of children with indigenous ancestry, even if births in each family don’t rise. Instead of two indigenous people marrying and having one family with, say, two children, if two indigenous people marry two non-indigenous people, and each family has two children, then effectively, two indigenous people have four children. So widespread inter-marriage can massively boost total indigenous birth-rates. It’s no coincidence that the Northern Territory has the lowest inter-marriage rate and the lowest indigenous birth-rate—and the poorest university participation rate.

And the children of a working indigenous person and a working non-indigenous person, with such major role-models, would, according to this scenario, be more likely to focus on careers early and go on to Year 12 and beyond. And so it has been. A large component of the increases in indigenous secondary completion and university participation has thus been a function of an increased birth-rate, especially an increased birth-rate of urban, working parents.

Conclusion

Annual growth rates of 8 and 10 per cent would be difficult to sustain, as the birth-rate relatively levels out. I’m always expecting annual increases to drop down towards 6 per cent, but they haven’t done so yet. But using 6 per cent as a benchmark increase rate, then annual commencements, enrolments and graduations can be expected to double in twelve years, by 2025.

By that time, total graduations may almost double, to around 65,000 to 70,000, in an indigenous adult population (aged twenty to forty-nine) of around 330,000—in other words, a fifth of all younger indigenous adults (perhaps one in every four living in cities). What impact might such a high proportion of relatively well-educated, professional people have on indigenous society as a whole? Not immediately, but after some years of professional experience, say by the 2030s? To what extent can the increased educational level of indigenous graduates contribute to Closing the Gap? Is it, in any way, their problem?

Conversely, to what extent will the non-participation of welfare-oriented populations, and remote and rural populations—basically their self-alienation from the opportunities of mainstream society, in which those graduates will be embedded—lead to an even greater divide between the two indigenous populations, one working and the other existing on lifelong welfare, by whatever name? It is possible that university participation in rural and remote areas has actually declined 2000. The Gap may not actually be Closing.

And the processes involved are not going to stop. By 2034, indigenous graduate numbers could grow to 100,000, one graduate in every three city-based adults, but only one graduate in every twenty remote-based adults (and most of those originally from the cities, doing what they can to serve their people).

Universities’ support services should now know where to concentrate their publicity and recruitment work. Clearly, indigenous students do best on-campus rather than off-campus, and in mainstream courses rather than segregated, indigenous-focused courses. Retention also tends to be higher, all things being equal, in higher-status courses, such as Medicine and Law, and lower in indigenous-focused courses. So there is not much value in trying to steer, or channel, indigenous students into Indigenous Studies and related courses any more.

And most importantly, the efforts of indigenous recruitment, preparation and support programs must be focused tirelessly on the combination of:

• co-ordinating publicity and recruitment programs with education staff in rural and especially remote schools;
• recruiting male indigenous students in far greater numbers;
• re-developing rigorous and effective preparation courses for rural and remote, and especially male, prospective students, followed up by intensive and effective support throughout their studies.

If they can prise federal funding for all of that back and once again gain the ear of senior management and persuade them to support such efforts, it may be feasible to start Closing the Gap from both ends. But if universities’ indigenous support programs are kept starved of their funds, the Gap between an urban, working indigenous population and a predominantly remote and rural welfare-oriented indigenous population will widen rapidly: one will seize the benefits of participation in Australia’s open society, the other will continue to seek the solace of self-exclusion.