Indigenous university student success, 1980-2013

Why the upturn ?

Indigenous participation at universities is booming now, but it stagnated between 1995 and 2005. This was a period in which the number of Indigenous people of university age, those born between, say, 1965 and 1981, was also stagnating, and even declining. And at some universities, there was even an insistence – even by Indigenous staff – on tacitly channelling Indigenous students into Indigenous-focussed courses and away from mainstream courses. But this push stalled.

Similarly, the effort to keep Indigenous students off-campus by offering courses externally or on-line, at study centres and to isolated individuals, seems to have withered away as people in rural and remote locations found welfare and bogus TAFE courses more attractive than university study. Indigenous people have many options, and resist being 'channelled', even by their 'own'.

Since 2000, universities' Indigenous Studies schools have wound down sub-degree courses such as Associate Diplomas. So the numbers of Indigenous students in Indigenous-focussed awards have been cut to pieces from two sides.

The decline of support programs

As well, some universities have allowed the transfer of federally-provided student support funds across to the Indigenous Studies area, in order to cater for the teaching of Indigenous Culture, Indigenous Health, etc., to non-Indigenous students, for whom such a courses may now be compulsory. As a consequence, Indigenous student support staff numbers at some universities have been cut and services wound back while Indigenous Studies schools have significantly expanded their numbers, thanks to a 'new' source of funding, and a new captive clientele.

So how to explain this situation, since after all, in 2013, there are now many, many more Indigenous students, the great majority studying on-campus, in mainstream awards, at degree-level and above ?

The remarkable upturn in school completions …. and in birth rates

Increases in commencements have followed the rapid rise in the number of Indigenous students completing Year 12, from 1999-2000. In some states, this increase has been ten-fold since 2000. When such students enrol at universities, overwhelmingly they choose to enrol in on-campus, mainstream and degree-level courses.

So, in turn, 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 seventies, and coupled with a relatively mature-age of 28-30 at commencement, this meant that university commencement numbers tended to stay low through the nineties 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 eighties by around 35-40 %: Indigenous birth-groups born in the seventies numbered (adjusting for different Census totals) around eight thousand nation-wide, while the numbers in birth-groups in 1990-1991 were more like eleven thouand. The size of birth-groups continued to increase through the nineties to around thirteen thousand. So larger age-groups contributed to rapid growth in Year 12 numbers after 2000. Ergo, growing numbers of Indigenous university students, nowadays commencing studies at a much younger median age of 24-26.

Those much larger age-groups are due to peak at university-age around 2020. And a bigger wave will hit university-age around 2030, the children of this boom-generation.

But you've noticed ! Why ?! How come Year 12 numbers have increased many times since 2000, and the size of the relevant age-group has risen substantially, but only by 50 % ? Is there something 'different' about that sudden increase in births since the early eighties ?

We need to also explain why, after steady-state birth numbers through the seventies, did they rise consistently through the eighties and into the nineties ? Here's my conjecture:

Work and inter-marriage

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. As the children of those families left school, usually at fifteen, and found work, as their parents had done, they of necessity worked and socialised with non-Aboriginal people. Working people tended to marry working peope, but inter-marriage quickly became a very common social practice for working Indigenous people: perhaps 80% of young Indigenous people were intermarrying by the eighties, and this has risen to 90 and 95 % in some cities.

Inter-marriage was not the only factor – 'both parents working' played a bigger role - but it has had the effect of massively increasing the number of children with Indigenous ancestry, even if births in each family don't rise materially: 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 - hey presto ! four children. Double the birth-rate. So widespread inter-marriage can massively boost total Indigenous birth-rates.

It's no coincidence that the state with the largest Indigenous population and the largest cities, New South Wales, has very high rates of inter-marriage, up to 95 %, and very active Indigenous participation in higher education, while Northern Territory has the lowest Indigenous employment rate, inter-marriage rate AND the lowest Indigenous birth-rate. And the poorest university participation.

Earlier urbanisation

And the children of a working Indigenous person and a working partner, with such major role-models, would, according to this scenario, be more likely to be focussed on careers early, and to go on to Year 12, and beyond. And so it has been. Most of the increases in Indigenous university participation since 2005 has thus been a function of an increased birth-rate since 1981, especially an increased birth-rate of urban, working parents, which in turn was a consequence of the massive urban migrations in the sixties and seventies.

One must add, as an aside, that the urban migration wasn't a simple, or single-shot process: one has to go back to the immediate post-war labour situation for Indigenous people: with the huge backlog of rural infrastructure projects (roads, railways, rural electrification, forestry, reservoirs and dams, pipelines, public housing), Indigenous people quickly seized opportunities that were much more long-term than the seasonal work that they had relied on: they could now find work which allowed them to bed down in country towns, and eventually bring their families to live with them and access the basic facilities there, so that their kids could get better schooling than ever before.

From small towns, railway siding villages and hamlets, people found work and moved to larger towns, and many families, or at least their teenage members, eventually moved into the cities. But this process took some time, ten and twenty years or longer. However, during that period, young Indigenous people had the benefit of basic, standard education, they were not constrained by either the lack of any education at all in the fringe-camps or by the 'culturally-adapted' curriculum provided at schools on government settlements. The vast majority of Indigenous children still left school at fourteen or fifteen, and very few finished Year 12 - in fact this was the case right up to the nineties. The percentage of Indigenous children going on to Year 12 was still in single figures until then. Now it seems to be well over 50 % and still rising.

So the children of Indigenous descent now coming through secondary school may well be the great-grandchildren of those pioneers who moved to country towns for better work opportunities, and for better educational opportunities for their own children, the grandparents of today. It's certainly been a hard, slow grind but it will just as certainly pay off in the next decade or two.

To recap:

• 1945-1955: Indigenous men sought more permanent work opportunities after the War, in country towns, and brought their families there as soon as they could, for the superior education opportunities for their kids;

• 1955-1965: young people and families moved to the cities for better opportunities for work and education;

• 1960-1980: young Indigenous people found labouring and semi-skilled work alongside other Australians;

• 1960-1985: young Indigenous people established families in the cities with strong experience of work and opportunity-seeking;

• 1999-2005: rapid increase in the number of Indigenous students completing secondary school to Year 12;

• 2006-present: record commencements etc. at university by Indigenous students;

• 2013: between thirty and thirty six thousand Indigenous graduates (however defined).

Projections and implications

Annual participation growth rates of eight and ten per cent would be difficult to sustain, as the birth-rate relatively levels out – at least for another decade or so. I'm always expecting annual increases to drop down towards 6 %, but they haven't done so yet. But using a conservative 6 % as a bench-mark increase rate, then annual commencements, enrolments and graduations can be expected to double in twelve years, by 2025. And again by 2037, 23 years away – but of course, we can easily remember 23 years ago, 1991. So, 2037 is not so far off.

By just 2025, total graduations will probably double, to around 65-70,000, in an Indigenous adult population (aged 20-49 years) of around 330,000 – in other words, a fifth of all younger Indigenous adults (perhaps one in every four living in cities, one in every two or three urban women).

With close to half of all young urban Indigenous women (or women of Indigenous descent) graduating and finding work as professionals across a vast range of careers, how will that impact on Indigenous society generally ? If not by 2025, then by 2030, 2035 ? As we know, if women are educated well, entire societies are bound to be transformed, as women make their way, and their own choices, in an open society.

And to what extent can the increased skill-level of Indigenous graduates contribute to Closing the Gap ? Universities tend to be in large towns and cities, and not only attract urban populations, but create and support professions which tend to be urban-based: the great majority of Indigenous students and graduates will be from urban backgrounds, and to urban positions they will most likely go. They don't owe remote 'communities anything, so the question becomes: if people in remote areas don't take their destinies in their own hands, if they keep thinking that whitefellas will do it all for them, and give them whatever they want (i.e. 'self-determination'), will the Gap get Wider ?

In other words, to what extent will the non-participation of welfare-oriented populations, and remote and rural populations - basically their 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 and publicity efforts by stretched university student support staff seem to have withered somewhat. The Gap may not actually be Closing.

And the processes involved are not going to stop. By 2030-2034, Indigenous graduate numbers could grow to one hundred thousand, one graduate in every three city-based adults, versus barely one graduate in every twenty remote-based adults (and most of those originally from the cities, doing what they can to serve their people).

Clearly, universities' support services should now know where their publicity and recruitment work should be concentrated. Degree-level and post-graduate courses are clearly within their capabilities. Clearly, Indigenous students do best on-campus rather than off-campus, and in mainstream awards rather than segregated, Indigenous-focussed awards. Retention also tends to be higher, all things being equal, in higher-status courses, such as Medicine and Law, and lower in Indigenous-focussed courses. So there is not much value in trying to steer, or channel, Indigenous students into Indigenous Studies and related courses any more.

Another crucial task, one completely neglected, is how to massively increase the proportion of male students and graduates: but Indigenous male students tend not to have the high levels of maths and sciences that stereotypically-male courses require, and relatively few may want to study to be teachers or nurses. Obviously, this is a task primarily for the school system, in collaboration with effective tutorial schemes and with university outreach and preparation programs, if such exist.

And most importantly – the efforts of Indigenous recruitment, preparation and support programs must be focussed tirelessly on

• co-ordinating on-going publicity and recruitment programs with education staff in rural and especially remote communities;

• in recruiting male Indigenous students in far greater numbers and in designing attractive recruitment programs, as well as continuing to badger primary and secondary schools to be more vigilant about ensuring Indigenous students keep up with Maths and science;

• and re-developing rigorous and effective preparation courses for rural and remote, and especially male, prospective students, followed up by intensive and effective support right through to graduation, followed by employment placement mechanisms (which have been talked about for twenty five years now).

One thing is for certain: Indigenous futures are going to be far more diverse even than they are at present.