Mass Indigenous university education - a game-changer?

Indigenous people experienced record participation in university education in 2009, improving 10%in one year, to ten and a half thousand enrolments. Commencements actually improved by 12% to more than 4,800, boosted by an 18% improvement in male commencements. These commencements mean that the equivalent of about 40% of the median age-group commenced university study in 2009.

Indigenous Participation of Median Age-Groups

[Source: DEST/DEEWR Higher Education Statistical Collections, 1996-2010]

Since 1990, around seventy thousand Indigenous people have been enrolled at some time or other at university, about a quarter of the entire adult population.

As a percentage of the adult population (about 240,000 Indigenous people are aged between 20 and 59, but it was probably more like 200,000 back in 1995), they would look like this:

Indigenous Participation as percentage of the Indigenous Adult Population (aged 20-59)

[Source: DEST/DEEWR Higher Education Statistical Collections, 1996-2010]

We could also look at these figures in terms of relevant age-groups: the size of the median age-group in 2009 (around 24-26 years, i.e. born in 1982-1984) was about 8,000. In fact, the size of the median age-group did not increase much between 2000 and 2009, it fluctuated between 7,500 and 8,000, but will rise dramatically between now and 2015.

Indigenous Participation as percentage of Median Age-Groups

[Source: DEST/DEEWR Higher Education Statistical Collections, 1996-2010]

Indigenous female students, and graduates, still outnumber Indigenous males by nearly two to one. In fact, Indigenous women, with 2.2% of the population of Australian non-Indigenous men, commenced university study at a greater rate (3,156 to 129,160, or 2.44%).

In 2009, Indigenous students graduated at the rate of nearly four a day, and the equivalent of about 19% of the median age-group. An Indigenous Ph. D. graduated, on average, every fortnight.

Since the watershed year of 2005, Indigenous commencements have moved dramatically away from Indigenous-focussed courses, external enrolments and sub-degree enrolments.

Since 2005, annual Indigenous commencements at universities have increased by 28%. Commencements in Bachelor's courses have increased by more than 35%. Overwhelmingly, these have been in mainstream fields, and on-campus.

But commencements in Indigenous-focussed courses, Indigenous Studies, Health, Education, etc, have more than halved, much more at some universities. In South Australia, such commencements at regional Study Centres have all but disappeared. Commencements at sub-degree level have declined by 70% since 2005.

By the end of this year there will be a total of nearly twenty seven thousand Indigenous university graduates across the country, one in every nine Indigenous adults, overwhelmingly in urban areas where most Indigenous people live and will keep living. The vast majority of these graduates have focussed on mainstream courses, at degree-level and above and around four thousand have post-graduate studies.

In sum, Indigenous commencements, enrolments and graduations have been on 6%-6.5% curves since 2005. But with the demographic boom of the eighties and nineties hitting tertiary age, this quite remarkable achievement is set to improve over the next decade. By 2020, there could thus be between 47,000 and 51,000 Indigenous graduates, perhaps a quarter at post-graduate level.

Not bad for people who in living memory were excluded from secondary education.

Indigenous graduates are likely to be urban-based. Urban Indigenous working people share many characteristics with every migrant group - the first generation works at whatever pays the bills and ensures that the second generation does not have to do the same. So, sociologically, one could say that Indigenous people moved to Australian urban environments perhaps half a generation after the Italian and Greek migrants of the forties and fifties, and about half a generationahead of the Vietnamese migrants of the eighties. In short, mainstreaming is succeeding quite dramatically.

Two Indigenous populations?

But clearly, a large minority of the Indigenous population is as far as it is possible to be from university participation, although some of their children may have opportunities over the next generation. The welfare-oriented population, in remote 'communities', in country towns and in the outer suburbs of most Australian cities, is increasingly taking itself out of the game, and the gap between it and the working populations (professional, trades and otherwise) is growing ever more stark.

Game-changer?

Currently, about one in every seven literate Indigenous people is a graduate, and this will improve to one in five or six by 2020. Graduates have families, relations, friends, and are usually in touch with fellow-graduates. They contribute a billion dollars to the economy each year. What influence are they having, and what influence will they have in ten years' time, when there are twice as many ? After all, overwhelmingly, they will not be living and working in remote communities, but in the towns and cities. They will be central to Indigenous organisations, but the great majority will be working in the mainstream.