Abstract
For more than three decades, Australian higher education policy has been guided by a national equity framework focussed on six underrepresented target groups: Indigenous Australians, people from low socioeconomic status backgrounds, people from regional and remote areas, people with disabilities, people from non-English speaking backgrounds, and women in non-traditional areas of study. Despite bringing equitable access to the forefront of university agendas, this policy framework has fostered a somewhat narrow conceptualisation of how educational disadvantage should be addressed. Responding to calls for reform, this paper draws on survey data from 6492 students in NSW government schools to examine the extent to which a new category warrants inclusion in the national framework: first-generation status. We illustrate how being the first in a family to attend university brings distinct equity status and argue for a revision of the national equity framework to recognise and support students who are ‘first’.
Highlights
In recent decades, student equity in Australian higher education has been framed by a discourse of underrepresentation
We found evidence to suggest that prospective first-generation students are more likely to belong to one of the existing equity categories compared to their continuing-generation peers
When examining the raw survey responses, we found that many prospective first-generation students had overlapping, or multiple memberships, with the existing equity categories
Summary
Student equity in Australian higher education has been framed by a discourse of underrepresentation. Located within the broader policy agenda of ‘widening participation’, this discourse first emerged alongside the federal government’s positioning of higher education as an important driver of economic prosperity and a critical mechanism in enhancing social justice (Department of Employment, Education and Training 1990) Framed within this context, the premise behind. ‘underrepresentation’ foregrounds government objectives to reduce inequality in higher education access and participation for marginalised groups, with policy and practice built around a belief that equity will be achieved once proportional representation is met (Harvey et al 2016) This discourse is evident in the national equity framework, which has long focussed on six disadvantaged groups underrepresented in higher education: people from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, Indigenous Australians, people from regional and remote areas, people with disabilities, people from non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB), and women in non-traditional areas of study. In this way, ‘underrepresentation’ names a problem in need of fixing but, in general, only the participation of these six groups is recognised as problematic
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