A surprising omission

There appears little space for regional and rural issues in the Bradley Review, says Dianne Bills and Trevor Gale. The Bradley review is now in full swing, fuelled by a late flurry of submissions from institutions, associations and individuals with interests in the Australian higher education sector. Some, such as Carolyn Allport (NTEU), believe that the review won’t offer much beyond a revisiting of 1980s Dawkins reforms (The Australian, 23.08.08). Allport may well be right, although the discussion paper and consultation process have created opportunities for certain ‘failings’ to receive an airing after a considerable period of silence. The participation of disadvantaged groups in higher education is a case in point. Four of the 35 questions in the discussion paper are directly focused on Australia’s abysmal record (since Dawkins) in enrolling and graduating indigenous peoples and those from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Interestingly, equity matters have been more evident in the press about the Bradley review than their weighting in the discussion paper might warrant. Student equity has become sexy again. It is, nonetheless, a selective attention to equity. Since being named in 1990 as ‘equity groups’ in the federal government’s ‘A Fair Chance for All’ policy, people with disabilities, women in certain disciplines, and people from non-English speaking backgrounds are now more equally represented in university student populations and are off the Bradley review agenda. It is an understandable omission given the numerical definition of equity in government policy. Also absent from the discussion are new groups not named in 1990. International students, for example, are now a significant component of university populations in Australia but we have not asked questions about which of them are missing and what representations we should have in order to meet our global equity commitments. And the discussion paper does not address the under-representation of males in particular programs, particularly males from low socioeconomic backgrounds. But perhaps the most surprising oversight in relation to these equity matters is the negligible reference to people from rural and regional areas (including isolated and remote); surprising because they are a named equity group in the 1990 policy and also because their representational participation has decreased in the intervening years. In 1991, rural and regional students represented 20 per cent of the higher education student population. In 2005, the figure was 17.7 per cent. On a related theme, Ian O’Connor and Gavin Moodie (CR, 22.07.08) point out that while the participation rate in education of young people residing in Australia’s cities is 59 per cent, outside of these cities it is only 39 per cent. To be fair, the discussion paper does make mention, in passing, of the impact of geography on participation. But it is a crude and dismissive account. Educational disadvantage for rural and regional students is equated with being geographically challenged and as aggravating the disadvantage experienced by indigenous and low SES backgrounds. There is no sense of a distinctive rural and regional educational disadvantage and there is no hint of it in the discussion paper questions designed to solicit responses from the sector. Moreover, in what discussion there is in the body of the paper, rural and regional are conflated to suggest a social, cultural and geographic homogeneity that does not exist. As a consequence, the complex social, cultural and economic factors affecting the participation of diverse groups of rural and regional people in higher education are invisible. For many students living outside Australia’s cities, participating in higher education can demand significant social and cultural readjustment as they move from small schools, towns and communities to an urban environment where little can be taken for granted. Catching public transport, living independently, negotiating large, intimidating and unfamiliar institutions, creating new social lives, can all be strange and daunting experiences. There are additional unsettling effects of losing contact with family and longstanding community support and social networks. These are social and cultural adaptations typical of any resettlement. They will be experienced differently by individuals and also by different groups; for example, by regional compared with other rural groups, by indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, differentially informed by gender and SES status. They constitute both anticipated difficulties and the lived experiences of rural and regional people. Indeed, regional students with local access to higher education often report that not having to leave home is an important factor in the decision to continue education. These issues pose difficulties in the transition to higher education and often deter people from making the ultimate decision to continue. Additional and less visible factors are those that have an impact on educational aspirations and achievement from a very young age. Parental encouragement, the perceived relevance of higher education, fewer adult and peer role models, lack of information about career options, restricted curricula in small schools, pathways that diverge too early, lack of confidence, restricted exposure to multiple social and cultural opportunities; these are social, cultural and intellectual barriers to higher education aspirations and access that interrelate in complex and little understood ways on rural and regional groups. For most, the financial costs of relocation and independent living are as much a disincentive as social costs. The submission to the Bradley review by the Federal Council of the Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association of Australia makes this point. With income support increasingly difficult to obtain, low and middle-income rural and regional families face considerably higher costs educating dependent children than urban families of equivalent socioeconomic status. Rural students increasingly report extreme financial difficulties associated with working part time, and studying and there are declining levels of subsequent enrolment among those who defer in order to work and qualify for income support. A little recognised fact is that living expenses double the cost of a higher degree for rural and regional students who cannot continue to live at home. Rural and regional students deserve consideration in their own right and as a heterogeneous grouping rather than as singularly united by their great distance from higher education institutions. Nor should geographic isolation be understood as a condition that simply intensifies the educational disadvantage of other groups, even though it can do so for these groups. The participation of rural and regional students in higher education is an issue that requires attention to particular and distinctive issues. There is still opportunity for these matters to find a place in the Bradley review, but it will require a more robust and contextualised understanding of equity that is cognisant of the cultural diversity within and among equity groups. Dianne Bills is adjunct research fellow in the Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies and Trevor Gale is director of the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education, both located at the University of South Australia.