The winners of all seven categories in the AFR Higher Education Awards 2024, which recognise and celebrate the outstanding efforts of Australian universities during the past year, have now been announced. The categories include community engagement; emerging leadership; employability; industry engagement; equity and access; research commercialisation; and teaching and learning excellence.
EQUITY AND ACCESS
WINNER
University of Newcastle
Pathways and Academic Learning Support (PALS) Centre
Free, flexible and open to all Australian residents, the University of Newcastle’s bridging courses provide an introduction to university as well a foundation of basic learning skills and knowledge to qualify students for a degree course.
Educational equality is a core principle of the University of Newcastle’s Pathways and Academic Learning Support (PALS) Centre. “We have lower participation rates in Newcastle and the Hunter,” says Centre director Associate Professor Anna Bennett. “When this support began, a lot of people in the community hadn’t completed school.”
The university introduced the Open Foundation course in 1974 to help locals from a historically disadvantaged region find their way into higher education. Fifty years later, one in five commencing students at the university have been ushered in via Open Foundation or another of the PALS programs. Sixty per cent of these students are the first in their family to attempt a university course, and they begin with little knowledge of higher education.
Many PALS students are at the lowest end of the economic spectrum, Bennett says. They have to devote most of their time to earning enough money to survive; many have no settled home, some sleep on friends’ couches. Even simply getting from point A to point B can be extremely expensive for them, she adds. Educational disadvantage has affected their job prospects and often hampered their efforts to find well-paid and fulfilling work.
“They do it quite tough,” she adds. “It can be really challenging for them to fit study in their lives.”
Students in the PALS programs simultaneously learn content, foundational concepts and study skills, the university says. To date, more than 70,000 students have taken part in the programs.
About half of the students who begin a PALS bridging course go on to finish it, and of those who finish, 80 per cent go on to take a degree course at the University of Newcastle.
Providing a taster of academic life and an introduction to systems and language of higher learning, the PALS courses take one semester full-time to complete but students can study the course part time and take up to a couple of years to finish.
One of the PALS courses, Yapug, is specifically for First Nations students. A smaller program, it includes culture and specific Indigenous-only supports.
The PALS courses have been designed to provide educational support rather than rigid instruction. “We’re really trying to help people re-calibrate what they might have thought about their academic capability,” Bennett says. “We refer to them as ‘knowledge-holders’ with important experience. They are adults, not the products of problematic schooling.”
Taking part in the high ropes course in La Trobe’s RISE program “On Country” activities for Indigenous students, designed to promote team building.
FINALIST
La Trobe University
Moving the dial on access to higher education for First in Family students
Almost half all La Trobe University students are the first in their families to take the daunting plunge into higher education. Associate Professor Emmaline Bexley, academic director of La Trobe ’s Widening Participation program, says it is an institution-wide priority to assist all disadvantaged students as much as possible.
“They have the capacity to succeed at university but they haven’t had the opportunity to show their potential,” she says. “Many of them have no qualifications at all. We’ve had students who were studying on their phones, or who were homeless. They have faced challenges but they have the potential to succeed.”
Traditionally low rates of university participation in regional areas mean that many local residents have little familiarity with higher education and they might not be close to anyone who has a degree, she adds.
With campuses across regional Victoria, La Trobe has offered versions of bridging courses since the 1990s.
Specifically for indigenous students, the RISE program starts with year 10 school students and includes cultural supports, mentoring and camps to boost a sense of community in the cohort.
The Tertiary Preparation Program, for the wider community, was transformed in 2019 to be both online and asynchronous. There’s no live teaching and students can study at any time and progress through the course at their own pace.
“There’s a lot of flexibility to move in and out of the courses depending on need,” Bexley says. “There’s a gentle landing at the start, but it’s setting them up for a bachelor’s degree course.” Thirty-four per cent of TPP graduates go on to study a degree course.
Bexley says TPP and RISE students learn university skills, such as referencing. “We teach them how to use the library and how to get essay-writing support from the staff there,” she says, adding students who finish the bridging courses are ready for a degree course. “They’re pretty well set up once they get through.”
FINALIST
Central Queensland University
Skills for Tertiary Education Preparatory Studies – STEPS
Launched in 1986 with 22 students, Central Queensland University’s bridging course program is now offered across eight campuses in Queensland and in Geraldton, Western Australia.
Demand is high for the free STEPS program – Skills for Tertiary Education Preparatory Studies – which has been offered online since 2009 and has been designed to support learners to absorb the knowledge and skills needed to take a degree course.
Because the STEPS courses are free and flexible, and now offered online, face-to-face or a combination of both, hesitant students are encouraged to have a go, says Karen Seary, associate dean of CQU’s School of Access Education.
“It’s a real taster,” she says. “Because it’s free, they lose nothing in having a taste. I’ve had people say to me, ‘I need to know that I can do this before I commit my family to an undergraduate degree that will cost me’.”
Over the past ten years, almost 15,000 students have enrolled in the course, according to university figures. About 60 per cent finish the course, and of those who finish, two-thirds go on to university-level study with CQU. The remainder take on tertiary study elsewhere or return to work with new study skills.
STEPS graduates fare as well as other degree-course students at the university, research has found, and they are equally likely to go on to post-graduate study.
The university takes care to assess individual need before STEPS study begins, Sear says. “There’s an initial appointment to talk through their personal situation,” she adds. “A single mother with five children will be given all the time she needs. I think that’s the success of it, the strength of it. We meet students where they are and plan for where they want to be.”
In-need students are constantly monitored and offered support, and there are checks on students when they are not heard from for some time. “We have many students who are autistic, so we work with the accessibility and inclusion team,” Seary says. “And we have women who have been in domestic violence relationships and through STEPS have found their voice; we work very carefully with counselling.”
Many STEP students are mature-age and live in regional centres, she adds. “They are settled in the regions and they wanted to stay. STEPS has contributed hugely to an educated community in all the regions.”