Less can be more in measuring SES

If the formula for allocating HEPPP funding does not adequately assess the true SES status of universities' student bodies, are the funds getting to the right institutions? Julia Gillard, in her present role as prime minister and previously as minister for education, employment and workplace relations and social inclusion, has made increasing the participation of low socioeconomic status (SES) students in higher education a high priority for her government. Consistent with this commitment and with the recommendations of the Bradley review, in 2009 the government announced the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP) to assist and encourage universities to increase the level of participation of students from low SES backgrounds to 20 per cent by 2020. In 2010, $56.4 million was allocated according to the proportion of low-SES students within universities. In 2013, this will rise to $168.6 million. HEPPP is important and encompasses two elements. About a quarter of the funds are allocated competitively, where universities undertake specific projects to enhance low SES participation. The remainder, three-quarters of the funds, are allocated on the basis of the SEIFA (socio-economic index for areas) status of students' home address and the proportion of domestic undergraduate students in receipt of certain government benefits. An implication of this weighting is that universities that recruit students from lower SES regions, irrespective of those students individual or family SES status, will benefit handsomely from the HEPPP funds. Measuring SES status is complex - this much is known. In late 2009, DEEWR released a discussion paper titled ***Measuring the Socioeconomic Status of Higher Education Students*** to better explore the measurement challenge. Its authors noted that "educational attainment, occupation, economic resources and other social and cultural resources" can all be considered dimensions of SES. Clearly, these correlate among themselves, and all are correlated with higher education participation and completion. The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) administers the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth. These provide rich detail into the lives of our young, and allow a clearer understanding of individual SES and educational pathways than is available through SEIFA. Recently, NCVER undertook research that compared SES rankings based on a multi-dimensional measure of SES based on rich individual-level data, on the one hand, and SEIFA on the other (Lim and Gemici, 2011, forthcoming). Overall, the research has found that in broad aggregates (states, for example) SEIFA does a good job of monitoring participation in higher education. This gives comfort to bodies such as NCVER that calculate high-level indicators. However, when we look at the correlation between SEIFA categories and our richer measure of SES, the research suggests that SEIFA misclassifies the "true" SES of up to three in four young people, often severely. In other words, the true SES of individuals and families differs greatly within SEIFA regions. Knowing where people live gives us very little reliable information about their individual SES. An example of misclassification would be the child of a wealthy farming family, schooled in an urban boarding school and attending university while living at a residential college. The student's home region may be of low SES status, but the student and their family may have significant financial and cultural resources. Another example may be a student who moves between a rental house on the eastern side of Upper Heidelberg Road in northeastern Melbourne to one on the western side. In terms of SEIFA, they may have moved from the top 20 per cent of SES communities in Australia to the bottom 20 per cent. Such anomalies are common. This begs a few questions - if the formula for allocating HEPPP funding does not adequately assess the true SES status of universities' student bodies, are the funds going to the right institutions? And will institutions seek to "game" the HEPPP process by targeting the upper echelon of students from low-SES regions, rather than doing the hard things associated with improving academic preparation and access for truly low SES students? Further, if the upper SES applicants from low SES regions tend to aspire to attending the high-status "sandstone" universities, might the current arrangements be creating perverse, rather than positive, outcomes? The problem for government is how to get the measurement of SES, and the incentives for universities, right in order to achieve the increased participation of low-SES students. Truly understanding the individual SES of young people requires a fairly intimate knowledge of individuals and their families that, for myriad reasons, would be almost impossible to gather. Also, having the right measures and getting accurate data are two different things. Hypothetically, one could imagine the uproar at the requirement for students to tell their university at enrolment about (for example) issues of family physical and sexual abuse, drug and alcohol addiction or parental literacy - even though these factors have been shown to be significant predictors of low individual SES. An answer might exist within the current arrangements. While not a perfect measure of individual SES, the receipt of the types of government benefits currently included within the HEPPP funding arrangements is a better measure of individual SES than SEIFA. In terms of measuring SES participation in universities, perhaps this is one case where less might well be more. ***Dr John Rice is the chief researcher at NCVER.*** To be alerted to the release of Lim and Gemici, ***Measuring the socioeconomic status of Australian Youth***, subscribe to www.ncver.edu.au/subscribe.html