Who Gets to come to ANU?

SAI CAMPBELL & ANNA-KATE BRAITHWAITE

ANU proudly presents itself as Australia’s ‘National’ University and the recent unveiling of the ANU 2025 plan declares that its student body will aim to “reflect the full diversity of modern day Australia”. The data, however, presents a different picture.

Coming to ANU is contingent on being admitted and, perhaps more significantly, having the financial means to support your study. The National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education reports that presently, around 4% of domestic students come from the lowest socioeconomic quartile, compared to the average of around 10% in the Group of Eight (G8) and 16% nationally. This figure has barely budged for over a decade and consistently puts ANU squarely at the bottom.

ANU’s 2020 Access and Participation Plan states that “talent, realised or potential, will be the only threshold for joining our community as a student” yet our talented low-SES students simply aren’t getting here - so who actually gets to come to ANU?

Educational inequalities are evident in Australia starting from preschooling through to university. Social class and geographical location should have no correlation with innate intelligence, yet in Australia these factors are major determinants of an individuals’ likelihood of attaining a tertiary qualification. Whether it is through accessing ‘better’ schooling, extensive tutoring or having the support to stay in the secondary education system to finish Year 12, socioeconomic status is a major determinant of students’ success. The chance of achieving a higher ATAR falls swiftly with one’s socioeconomic position. In 2019, just 1.3 percent of the lowest SES quartile achieved an ATAR over 90, whilst the top SES quartile saw 9.4 percent of students achieve an ATAR over 90.

Examining what we define as ‘talent’ may also reveal subtle obstacles for low-SES students in accessing tertiary education. An interesting question that arises is whether ‘community service’ requirements might quietly complicate applications for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The obvious reasons are that schools in low-SES areas have fewer resources and support available to assist students in extracurricular pursuits.

Australia has the largest gap in the shortage of teachers between disadvantaged and advantaged schools amongst all OECD countries. Furthermore, disadvantaged schools have fewer resources such as books and lab equipment and report less student engagement, poorer professional development for teaching staff and more. These material and social disadvantages, compounded with the effect of socioeconomic status on academic achievement, could seriously hamper these students’ ability to make competitive applications to university according to current admission standards.

The current system is, however, generous and activities such as paid employment or caregiver responsibilities do meet the current requirements. Overall, students from low-SES backgrounds who make it to university fare similar retention rates to their more advantaged peers. There is no question, thus, that these students are equally - if not more capable and ‘talented’ than students from any other socioeconomic group. The issue is removing the cultural and economic barriers to their participation in the tertiary education system.

The most obvious obstacle is financial. Whilst the aforementioned material and social disadvantages might not materially impede admission to ANU - especially considering the availability of bonus ATAR points to account for the effects of these circumstances - the more realistic barrier is funding your education. This is more relevant for students from outside of Canberra who make up a sizable portion of the ANU’s student body. The ANU offers around 169 undergraduate student scholarships of which 57 consider financial hardship or socioeconomic status. Many of these scholarships, however, appear to be less than adequate for the typical college resident. As an example, the Australian National Scholarship, at $8000 per annum, falls painfully short of the average cost of $20,000 per annum for a catered college. Living at college also provides access to pastoral care and friend networks which are critical for many students moving interstate for the first time and, often, alone.

When we examine purely ‘merit’-based scholarships, we find two categories: those that are quantitatively assessed and those that are qualitatively assessed. One of the most generous ‘quantitative’ scholarships, the National University Scholarship, which is awarded to students who achieve an ATAR above 99.90 barely covers more than 50% of a typical catered college’s annual rent. Ignoring the aforementioned disparities in academic attainment amongst socioeconomic groups, even falling in the top 0.01% of students in your state appears to hardly qualify you for substantial financial support. Furthermore, bonus points frequently do not count towards eligibility for the most generous of these quantitative scholarships, limiting the range of financial aid available for particular students.

Talent, of course, is not just measured by your ATAR. Qualitative scholarships thus, in theory, aim to identify deserving young people who possess characteristics that are deemed ‘meritorious’. This is a difficult area to discuss as it has been argued previously that ‘talent’ is often, coincidentally we suppose, a function of one’s socioeconomic status. This could be through access to an abundance of extracurriculars, special research programs, academic tutoring, scholarship coaching and more - all of which is facilitated by financial advantage. Interview questions such as ‘What have your parents contributed to Australia?’ could potentially be seen as preferencing a certain type of young Australian that isn’t compatible with the reality of many individuals from minority backgrounds. We therefore see that the material and cultural disadvantages as touched on before can, and do, tangibly impact the likelihood of these students obtaining competitive scholarships.

ANU, as Australia’s ‘National’ University, must be more proactive if it is to build a student body that truly “reflects the full diversity of a modern day Australia”. Acknowledging the barriers that low-SES students might face in admissions and scholarships is key to building pathways to allow for equal access, regardless of socioeconomic status. This could entail reconsidering how we define ‘talent’ to incorporate criteria that does not indirectly favour students from a particular financial background. Furthermore, there may be a need to establish more scholarships that target and effectively support low-SES students over the course of their degree programs and for which equity is the primary qualifying factor.

We should aspire to a student body that represents the full breadth and diversity of wider Australian society - a university that serves all must be open to all.