From:	Tanya Serisier [tanyaserisier@hotmail.com]
Sent:	Friday, 30 March 2001 5:06 PM
To:	eet.sen@aph.gov.au
Subject:	UNSW Student Guild Submission Part II
Hello,

This is the second part of the submission for the UNSW Student Guild. The first part would have been sent to you by Sergio Fiedler ( s.fiedler@guild.unsw.edu.au <mailto:s.fiedler@guild.unsw.edu.au>). Due to technical errors, they had to be sent separately, and a third part will be sent from this address following. All contact and other details, however are still the same and this part of the submission deals with the issues of access and funding.

The submission has bee prepared by Sergio Fiedler and Tanya Serisier. Sergio can be contacted at (02) 9385 5454 or at s.fiedler@guild.unsw.edu.au <mailto:s.fiedler@guild.unsw.edu.au>

I hope that this doesn't confuse things too much,

Yours Sincerely

Tanya Serisier (On behalf of the UNSW Student Guild) 

  _____  

Access

As an institution, UNSW claims to be committed to providing an equitable ‘education service’, and part of its current educational strategy is providing this. The key areas identified are; women, non-English speaking background, students with disabilities, rural students, isolated students, students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and indigenous students.

While the university claims to be making progress in these areas, the performance is at best mixed, and varies widely for the different groups represented. We would argue that this is partially because these problems cannot be combatted at an institutional level solely, but have to do with federal government policy not just in the higher education sector. While this is part of the reason, blame must also be laid squarely with the university itself who have not paid sufficient attention to the different and varied reasons for many of these groups being under-represented in higher education, and particularly at UNSW. This has led to a lack of appropriate measures for students from disadvantaged groups. Another major factor that allows the university to claim they are doing well is that there are no absolute benchmarks and the university only has to measure itself by its own (quite low) standards.

Women

UNSW is one of the few universities where women still constitute a minority of students, although their success and retention rates are higher than at many other institutions. 

A large part of the reason that women are in a minority at UNSW is because of the university’s focus on ‘non-traditional’ fields of study for women. In the most male-dominated courses, such as engineering, the university only aims for 20% female participation, which is not even approaching equity. The university largely relies on fields such as social work and humanities to bridge the gap. Further, the generalised statistics that the university uses by creating a category such as ‘engineering’ does not show the vast disparities that exist between different fields of engineering, where courses such as computer and chemical engineering compensate for courses like mining engineering which may only have one woman commence study in a year.

Further, in these fields atmospheres of harassment and generally inappropriate behaviour often prevail. This can range from female students complaining that they will be stigmatised if they come to class in a dress, to a lecturer starting the lecture by putting up an overhead of a semi-clad woman to ‘get students attention’.

Indigenous

By the universities own records, indigenous enrolments have significantly dropped over the past few years. Fortunately, this has not been accompanied by as severe a drop in retention or achievement rates.

With the appallingly low level of Indigenous involvement in tertiary education, it is important for retention and achievement rates to remain high. 

However, if most Indigneous youth have no chance of accessing the university in the first place, and UNSW has one of the lowest enrolment rates of Indigenous students in NSW, this is much less relevent.

While the pre-medicine and law programs offered by the university are a step in the right direction, much more can be done, such as integrating the Indigenous students centre more fully. (At UNSW, the centre is not even on-campus, but is across the road).

Low Socio-Economic Status

Like most of the other fields of disadvantaged students identified by the university, this category is one where they have failed to meet their goals for enrolment. This is despite the fact that the goal is only 11% of the total enrolments. 

Students from low socio-economic areas and families face massive difficulties in reaching university, particularly an ‘elite’ and prestigious university such as UNSW. Students from poorly funded public schools in low-income areas are often taught to not even aim this high. Not many students from the Western suburbs of Sydney expect to attend UNSW or Sydney University.

This category is also the only category, despite students with disabilities, where the university do not meet any of their goals for academic success or retention either, despite the incredibly low number of students in the first place. In both cases, the reasons are pretty much the same. The university is not set up for students who caome from low socio-economic backgrounds, or for disabled students.

For working-class students, if they do manage to make it to university, the costs can be extremely prohibitive. The university expects all students to have independent access to a computer and the internet. They also expect students to pay for lecture notes, texts, lab coats, lab notes and many other ‘hidden extras’ of studying. This is apart from HECS and student fees which include a ‘Miscellaneous Fee’ that goes straight to the administration.

Also, students will find that in many science and engineering degrees when they are allocated tutorials, work commitments are not a valid reason to change classes. This means that a student who cannot survive on Youth Allowance and must work, who has only one class on a Friday can not get that class changed to a Thursday so that they can work. Also, work commitments are not a reason for late assessments, as a part of official university policy. For many students who work in volatile and fairly unregulated casual employment they may face a choice between having no money or failing a subject.

The university also fails to provide much information on intersections between this category and their other target areas. For relatively wealthy families, gender or ethnic background do not provide much of a barrier to accessing higher education. For working class families, however, these factors become much more important.

The expectations listed above demonstrate that UNSW is not set up to accomodate working class students. Once again, however, these are not problems that can be solved at an institutional level alone. A livable income on Youth Allowance or the reintroduction of Austudy at a sufficient level would mean that working class students could focus solely on study and not have to choose between books and food. Better funding for public schools would mean that students from these backgrounds could more realistically set their sights on attending UNSW, rather than perpetrating the current two-tiered system where poorer students attend regional universities if they attend university at all.

Some Examples of those left out

The university’s approach to the issue of access is fairly limited and just to point this out, we would like to illustrate two examples of groups not considered by the university.

Queer or Non-Heterosexual students

This category is obviously more difficult than most to gather statistics on, and no students should be forced to out themselves before the administration. However, the university does not even have the limited programs in place for queer students that it does for women or students from non-English speaking backgrounds. The only real support or resources dedicated to this on campus, besides a poorly funded but hard-working Equity and Diversity Unit, are those of the Student Guild. There is little education around homophobia for students, and unacceptable attitudes may be shown in countless subtle ways by lecturers and administration staff.

The age at which many students attend high school and university is an age at which queer youth suffer unacceptably high levels of depression, and suicide rates. Independence requirements for Common Youth Allowance does not take into account same sex partners, limiting the ability of many queer students to financially access higher education. At an age when many queer youth come out, the issue of living in an unsupportive, homophobic or abusive home means that many queer youth are forced to work, rather than remaining dependent on their parents. Once again, this is not an issue that can be dealt with by the university, but must be looked at as a whole. 

Parents, particularly Single Parents

This is another category that the university does not collect data on, and also a group of students who are provided with almost no resources to enable them to study. 

With a society often prejudiced against young and single parents, you would expect that encouragement would be given to parents who seek an education to enable a better future for themselves and their children. However, access to benefits while studying is incredibly low, and free childcare at the university is non-existent. Even access to subsidised places is highly restricted and competitive.

Economically, many parents who enter university are forced to drop out, and those who do remain must study part-time.

Another issue that is rarely mentioned when access is discussed is time spent studying. Most students when they enter university are told that the majority of time they spend working will not be contact hours, but independent study. This is why issues such as youth allowance and childcare are so important. For many students who study and work it is simply impossible to perform at a level to compete with students who do not have to work. Also, parents who can barely afford childcare to attend classes can hardly pay for it while they study. This is one of the major reasons why we reject the ALP’s online university as a solution to current problems. Just because people don’t physically attend classes doesn’t mean an excuse for governments to ignore issues of income support and childcare.

We are increasingly creating a university system that only the wealthy can participate in.

  _____  

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