Uncap places for all indigenous students, Australia urged

Australian universities would be bankrolled to admit unlimited numbers of indigenous students and reboot “stalled” progress in their participation, under policy proposals from the Innovative Research Universities (IRU) network.

IRU says funding for indigenous students should be uncapped “regardless of where they live”, in an expansion of a 2020 reform that guaranteed university places for indigenous people in regional Australia as part of the Jobs-ready Graduates (JRG) package.  

The recommendation, outlined in IRU’s pre-election policy statement, would sit alongside a broader review of JRG to ensure that its settings were not “adversely affecting student choice” or impeding universities’ contributions to “other government priorities”.

The proposal also coincides with representative group Universities Australia’s release of an updated indigenous strategy, which commits its members to boosting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student numbers.

The growth in participation by indigenous students has declined in recent times. Their enrolments increased between 7 and 10 per cent annually over the five years after domestic university places were uncapped in 2011, but that figure fell below 4 per cent after teaching grants were frozen in late 2017 – although it has rebounded somewhat since.

IRU chair Carolyn Evans said the 2020 unfreezing of funding for regionally based indigenous students was a “good first step”, if relatively modest. “Most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in fact live in urban environments. It makes sense to take the next step along the journey. We believe this is something on which it could be possible for both sides of politics to agree,” she said.

Her network’s statement frames this year’s election, which is yet to be announced, as an “opportunity to reset public policy for a new phase in Australia’s social and economic development”. This follows an apparent souring of relations between universities and the government in the wake of the 2019 election, which the opposition Labor party had been widely tipped to win.

Professor Evans declined to comment about “what happened last time” but said society would be well served by a “bipartisan agreement” about the role of universities. “We would like to be genuinely engaged in discussing these issues with all of the relevant political parties.”

She said the University Foreign Interference Taskforce (UFIT), which had brought university and government representatives together to thrash out guidelines for avoiding security pitfalls, should be used as model for more collaboration. “It does show that we can work collectively and think about what each partner can bring to the table,” she said.

“We’d love to see an opportunity to do that in a really positive and proactive way, as well as the work that’s been done in stopping problematic behaviours occurring.”

The UFIT approach could be harnessed to develop “a coordinated, positive agenda for the role of education and research in strengthening diplomatic and strategic partnerships across the Indo-Pacific”, the IRU statement says.

It also calls on the government to commit to an Australian version of the UK’s Haldane principle, which shields decisions about basic research projects from political interference.

Professor Evans said this could entail “a fairly simple change to legislation” to remove “the ultimate decision-making power of the minister over grants”. She said there could be an argument for “a modest maintenance of that capacity of the minister” but in much more restricted circumstances, such as around issues of national security.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com