Andrew Harvey

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at Griffith University

Purpose This paper identifies the value of Indigenous processes in developing a reciprocal working relationship between a Pasifika grass roots community organisation, Pasifika Church and an Australian university. The focus is on the capacity of Indigenous methodologies to authentically attain equity, diversity and inclusion, during the development...

Higher education is an important social determinant of health. In Australia, the under-representation of Indigenous males (In this study we use the term ‘males’ rather than ‘men’. This is an attempt to acknowledge cultural lore and be inclusive of males who have been through an initiation ceremony and those who have not had the opportunity to do so...

Globally, there has been an increased focus on the importance of Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS) in research involving Indigenous peoples. This is premised on concepts of self-determination during the planning, generation, and use of Indigenous related data. It is also tied to the importance of privileging of Indigenous knowledge systems in Indig...

Provision of equitable access to higher education has never been simple. Disparities continue despite over 25 years of ongoing and directed efforts in policy and practice to improve participation across equity groups (Burke, Bennett & Bunn, 2019; Harvey, Burnheim & Brett, 2016). Recent policy reviews and research have highlighted the need for urgen...

As the university student body becomes more diversified and students’ lives less linear, student retention carries increased importance for universities, including the conversion of deferrers and the re-enrolment of leave-taking students. This paper is based on a broader research project which explored national patterns of deferral and leave of abs...

Deferral and leave-taking behaviour substantially affects enrolment and retention rates across Australian universities. Almost ten per cent of commencing students defer their university offer every year, while over 20 per cent of continuing students take leave from their university within three years of commencing a Bachelor degree. Our research co...

Australian higher education participation continues to expand, yet in unequal ways. Regional, rural, and remote (RRR) student participation is stubbornly stalled, despite sustained research and policy initiatives to support these cohorts. To address this complex issue, we interviewed 10 RRR principals in Queensland and Victoria to explore specific...

This report explains how and why Indigenous men engage and succeed in higher education.

The vocational experiences and skills of young adolescents could be infused into formal education by identifying career competencies to be taught within the academic curriculum. Such curriculum practices that embed educational and career pathways must also include the perspectives of students and the community, particularly those from marginalised...

Supporting higher education participation across equity groups has long been a directed effort in global higher education practice and policy. However, to date, there has been little improvement in the rates of Australian higher education participation by equity groups such as regional/remote, low socioeconomic, and Indigenous Australian students....

Refugees and Higher Education provides a cross-disciplinary lens on one American university’s approach to studying the policies, practices, and experiences associated with the higher education of refugee background students. The focus is not only on refugee education as an issue of access and equity, but also on this phenomenon as seen through the...

Executive Summary In 2018 we conducted the first major national research into the experiences of military veterans in Australian higher education. That research revealed that veterans typically bring significant strengths to their studies, including discipline, leadership, teamwork, and problem-solving skills. These skills prepare many veterans to...

Research on intercultural interactions in higher education focuses on measuring student attitudes and degrees of cosmopolitanism, but there is little theoretically and empirically informed effort to understand 1) the nature of these campus interactions as ordinary, embodied, and routine, and 2) the cultural and social impact of campus intercultural...

Postsecondary education outcomes of Australian care leavers are not systematically documented. Complexities of a federal system of government, and the early conclusion of corporate parenting responsibilities (usually when those in care reach 18 years of age) have restricted the ability to track educational progress. Historically, a lack of national...

Annual media attention in Australia on the students and schools with the highest scores in the final year of secondary education (Year 12) promotes a narrow and elitist perception of the educational value of such statistical achievement. This in turn leaves disadvantaged students and their schools effectively stigmatised. Various disadvantaged grou...

This report investigates the social demography, learning outcomes and educational experiences of students enrolled in two distinct modes of higher education delivery in Australia – university programs delivered through third party arrangements, and higher education courses delivered by non-university higher education institutions (NUHEIs). In short...

Veterans often face difficulties during the transition from military to civilian life, with relatively high unemployment rates and mental health risks. Higher education represents an important pathway to navigate this transition successfully. Research from the United States shows that veterans bring unique strengths to the classroom, but also face...

This paper explores the experiences of new migrants in Australian higher education, based on interviews conducted across two regional university campuses in 2017. New migrants, particularly from refugee backgrounds, often have limited university access and face specific challenges throughout and beyond their university experiences. Under-representa...

Access to education has long been associated with lifelong wellbeing and poverty prevention. Indeed, education is often described as a ‘passport out of poverty’. For care leavers, higher education access can create powerful social and economic protection, but poverty often creates both material and cultural barriers to this access. The research des...

Student attrition is an area of constant concern for higher education managers and policymakers alike, yet little is known of the outcomes of those who depart higher education prematurely. We examine the educational and financial outcomes of students who start, but do not complete, a Bachelor-level course using data from the Australian Bureau of St...

Military veterans are largely invisible within Australian higher education. There remains little national evidence to confirm how many veterans are accessing and succeeding in higher education, who they are, and what universities could do to improve their access, success, and outcomes. This evidence gap is particularly problematic since internation...

This chapter explores the use of enabling programs by Australian universities to improve participation and success for students historically underrepresented in the nation’s higher education system. It draws on empirical evidence from a national research project designed to undertake a review of current enabling programs offered by Australian highe...

The project explored the university aspirations and experiences of new migrants in low socio-economic status, regional communities, and the extent to which regional campuses support ethnic, socio-economic and religious diversity. The project focussed on Shepparton and Mildura – two Victorian regional communities that host new migrants from diverse...

International Studies in Widening Participation http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/ceehe/index.php/iswp/article/view/81 Young people who have spent time in out-of-home care, including foster care, kinship care, and residential care, rarely access higher education. Those who do enter university often face financial constraints, mental ill health, and aca...

p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"> Higher education institutions are increasingly focussed on improving the capacity and potential of their graduates to gain employment. Attempts to develop employability skills through both mainstream and extra-curricular activities create new demands and expectations for students. Despite these demands, little atte...

There is a pressing need to redress inequities in university completion rates and graduate outcomes. Students from low socio-economic status, regional, and Indigenous backgrounds have lower completion rates than their peers. Graduates from non-English speaking backgrounds and graduates with a disability have consistently worse employment outcomes....

Enabling programs are not-for-degree programs designed to provide the necessary academic and cultural scaffolding for students who do not meet the institution’s usual admissions criteria. The evidence from the study indicates that Indigenous enabling pathways provide an important and effective environment in which the students develop a sense of be...

Ensuring the employability of graduates is fundamental to the modern mission of higher education institutions. Across the Anglo-American world, universities are focussed on improving the graduate outcomes of their students through diverse strategies that include work-integrated learning programs, study abroad experiences, mentoring, and career deve...

This report follows a multi-state, cross-institutional analysis of care leavers in Australian higher education. Those who have left out-of-home care – including foster, residential and kinship care – typically face extreme challenges to participate and succeed in higher education, highlighted both by our multi-state interviews and our national data...

Australians from out-of-home care backgrounds are significantly under-represented in higher education. For those who do transition out of care (‘care leavers’) and into university, little is known about their specific educational needs, academic achievement, and graduate outcomes. Existing research suggests that higher education practitioners can a...

http://www.latrobe.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/725283/La-Trobe-NPP-Globalization-Research-Report-2-June-2016.pdf

In 1990, the Australian Government published A Fair Chance for All, the first national framework for student equity in higher education. A Fair Chance for All declared that all Australians should have the opportunity to participate successfully in higher education, and that this objective could be met by ‘changing the balance of the student populat...

Low socio-economic status (SES) background remains the most prevalent marker of disadvantage and is often compounded by other factors. Regional and Indigenous students, for example, are much more likely to be from low SES backgrounds than other Australians. Despite the massification of the system, the introduction of the Higher Education Contributi...

Participation of students from regional and remote areas of Australia in higher education has remained static over the past 25 years. Regional students have lower rates of participation overall than their city-based peers, and are underrepresented in higher status disciplines and institutions, and at postgraduate level. Although the issues for regi...

This book examines twenty-five years of the Australian framework for student equity in higher education, A Fair Chance for All. Divided into two sections, the book reflects on the legacy of equity policy in higher education, the effectiveness of current approaches, and the likely challenges facing future policymakers. The first section explores the...

This paper advocates an expansion of nested undergraduate courses in Australian universities, where students can exit at multiple points throughout the degree and receive formal qualification for partial course completion. Nested courses are not new in Australian higher education, and the authors examine the prevalence and type of these courses acr...

International research has found that care leavers rarely transition to higher education in the UK, Europe and the USA. In Australia, however, there has been a paucity of research into the under-representation of care leavers in higher education. This chapter reviews the findings of a national research project into the university access and achieve...

Despite institutional strategies to prevent student withdrawal, attrition remains a concern across higher education sectors in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. In the case of Australian universities, attrition rates have remained consistently high since 2002. Some level of attrition is inevitable, but universities can influence...

People from out-of-home care backgrounds are largely absent from Australian higher education equity policy. Compared with the UK, Australia has moved slowly to consider legislative and programme incentives for young people who leave state, foster or kinship care and who wish to access higher education. One major reason for the relative inaction of...

This paper examines the relative merits of early and delayed offer schemes in attracting under-represented students to university. Following the introduction of a demand-driven system and the establishment of national growth and equity targets, Australian universities have increased the number of offers made to students before the release of Austra...

This paper examines the achievement levels of students undertaking the Tertiary Enabling Program (TEP) at La Trobe University. The TEP is an alternative pathway program that traverses multiple institutions, campuses, and disciplinary areas, and is designed to prepare a diverse student cohort for tertiary study. The Program integrates several source...

This paper examines factors linked to first year attrition within the Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree at an Australian university. Drawing on a broad range of institutional data, the authors considered correlations between attrition and several variables. Our research revealed the need to move beyond analysis of geo-demographic factors towards indicat...

Lack of equitable access at the higher levels of university is detrimental to individuals and more broadly to economic productivity and social cohesion. This paper considers the nature and extent of under-representation in postgraduate and higher degree study and proposes responses at both the institutional and policy levels. Particular focus is gi...

Australian universities are increasingly using secondary school recommendations to create early entry pathways, enabling a wide range of capable students to enter university irrespective of their socio-economic background. Given their expanded use, it is important to determine the predictive validity of school recommendations. Drawing on detailed f...

This paper addresses the skills and characteristics required of successful learners, workers and citizens in the knowledge economy. The authors trace the shifting commercial, technological and cultural conditions characteristic of this economy, and highlight the key qualities now required for individual success. Effective learners will increasingly...