ºÚÁÏÀÏ˾»ú CEO Luke Sheehy
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Good morning, everyone.
It’s great to be here in Brisbane and thank you to the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success for having me.
I’d also like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the lands on which we meet today and pay my respects to Elders past and present.
I want to talk today about one of the biggest challenges facing Australian higher education.
How do we open the door to university for more Australians and make sure they can afford to stay once they get there?
Because if Australia is serious about lifting participation, meeting our skills needs and building a fairer country, we have to get both parts of that equation right.
And Queensland gives us a pretty powerful picture of why.
At James Cook University, 45 per cent of students are the first in their family to go to university.
More than a quarter come from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
At the University of Southern Queensland, almost half of students are first in family.
And around 30 per cent come from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
Think about that.
At two Queensland universities, being the first in your family to go to university isn’t some marginal experience.
It’s a huge part of the student experience.
And I think that tells us something important.
There is no shortage of talent in this state.
In fact, these universities show what is possible when more people from backgrounds that have traditionally been underrepresented get the opportunity to go to university.
But nationally, we still have a long way to go.
People from low socioeconomic areas make up a quarter of Australia’s study-aged population, but only 16 per cent of students starting university.
Regional and remote Australians make up 27 per cent of the population, but only around one in five university commencements.
That tells us there are still too many Australians with the ability to succeed at university who aren’t getting the chance.
And if we’re serious about changing that, participation has to grow in the communities that have historically been underrepresented.
Here in Queensland, that means places like Logan, Ipswich, Toowoomba, Rockhampton, Townsville and Cairns.
There is no path to higher university attainment in Australia that runs around places like these.
It runs straight through them.
Through our outer suburbs.
Through regional communities.
Through First Nations communities.
And through families where nobody has been to university before.
I know something about that last group.
I was the first person in my family to graduate from university.
It changed the trajectory of my life.
It gave me opportunities I wouldn’t otherwise have had.
Odds are I wouldn’t be standing here today, representing 38 great Australian universities, if I hadn’t had that opportunity.
Since I was at university, higher education has continued to transform lives and open up new possibilities.
That’s the promise and the power of education.
I want more Australians to have that opportunity.
I know everyone in this room does too.
And right now, we have a real opportunity to make that happen.
The Australian Universities Accord recommended that by 2050 at least 80 per cent of working-age Australians should have a tertiary qualification.
The Government has adopted that target.
That’s important.
But the Accord also recommended that 55 per cent of Australians aged 25 to 34 should have a bachelor degree or above by 2050.
The Government should adopt that target too.
Not instead of the tertiary target.
Alongside it.
And let me be clear about this.
This isn’t university versus TAFE.
I have no interest in that argument.
Australia needs a strong vocational education system and a strong university system.
We need both.
So, if we know we need more university graduates, we should be prepared to set the ambition.
Fifty-five per cent should be that ambition.
And this isn’t growth for growth’s sake.
It’s what our economy is going to require.
Jobs and Skills Australia projects that Australia will add almost two million jobs over the decade to 2035.
More than one million of those new jobs will be in occupations that typically require a bachelor degree or higher.
Think about what sits behind that number.
The teachers in our classrooms.
The nurses and doctors in our hospitals.
The engineers building our infrastructure.
The scientists driving new discoveries.
The people designing our energy transition, strengthening our cyber security and helping Australian businesses adapt to new technology.
These aren’t hypothetical jobs in some distant economy.
They are the workforce Australia is going to need.
And here in Queensland, employment is projected to grow by more than 400,000 jobs over the next decade.
So when we talk about lifting university attainment, we’re not talking about hitting a number for the sake of it.
We’re talking about whether Australia will have the people and skills our economy needs.
That’s why 55 per cent matters.
Setting a target, though, is the easy part.
Getting there is much harder.
Because we can’t get to 55 per cent simply by enrolling more of the people who have traditionally gone to university.
The maths doesn’t work.
The next generation of students will increasingly come from communities our system has historically struggled to reach.
More will be first in family.
More will come from lower-income households.
More will come from regional Australia.
More will be First Nations Australians.
More will have jobs, kids and caring responsibilities.
More will study part-time.
More will move in and out of study as life demands it.
Today’s student is changing.
The Government’s policies have to change with them.
That’s why ºÚÁÏÀÏ˾»ú supports the ambition behind the Government’s Opening the Doors of Opportunity reforms.
We want these reforms to succeed.
We’ve advocated for a system that can grow with demand and better support students who need extra help to succeed.
But getting the detail right matters.
And one of the changes we’ve been pushing for sounds pretty technical.
It isn’t.
It’s about a postcode.
Imagine a student who grows up in Mount Druitt in western Sydney.
They work hard.
They get into university.
And they move across town to Kensington to study.
Their address changes.
Their life story doesn’t.
The barriers they faced growing up don’t suddenly evaporate somewhere on Parramatta Road.
Disadvantage doesn’t disappear when you change address.
Yet if we get these settings wrong, moving suburbs to study could mean that student is no longer recognised for needs-based funding.
That makes no sense.
In fact, current higher education equity programs use a student’s first address as a way of understanding where they came from before university.
We’re seeking assurance that the new system will operate in the same way.
We want a student’s address when they enrol to count.
Because getting through the university gate doesn’t erase the circumstances you had to overcome to get there.
And that goes to a much bigger point about equity.
For a long time, we have tended to think about equity as an access problem.
Who gets in?
That matters enormously.
But it isn’t enough.
We also have to ask who stays, who succeeds and who graduates.
And the evidence tells us we’ve still got more work to do there too.
The Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success’s latest data shows 88 per cent of non-equity students return after their first year of study.
For First Nations students it’s 75 per cent.
For low SES students, and for regional students, it’s 81 per cent.
And for students from remote backgrounds, it’s 79 per cent.
So, widening participation can’t just be about who starts university.
It has to be about who gets the support to finish a degree.
Because opening the door is only half the job.
We have to make sure students can afford to stay once they walk through it.
And that’s where this debate gets harder.
The Government has done some important things for students.
The 20 per cent cut to student debt at the last election was significant.
More than $16 billion was wiped from HELP balances.
That shows the Government is aware and listening.
The Commonwealth Prac Payment was another important step.
So is needs-based funding.
When government gets things right for students, we should say so.
But we should also be prepared to say when a policy clearly isn’t working.
I know I’m preaching to the choir here today when I say Job-ready Graduates falls into that category.
But the point is worth making.
The premise of JRG was blunt.
Make some degrees cheaper.
Make others much more expensive.
And hope students follow the price tag.
They didn’t.
Because students don’t choose their future that way.
They choose what they’re good at, what they care about and where they think they can make a contribution.
JRG didn’t meaningfully change those choices.
It just made some of them much more expensive.
Students in some disciplines today are now looking at more than $50,000 for a three-year degree.
At the same time, the policy has stripped around $800 million a year from university funding.
Students pay more.
Universities get less.
I struggle to see how anyone could call that a successful policy.
And there is a pretty obvious contradiction here.
The Government has just cut more than $16 billion in student debt.
But if student debt is a problem worth spending $16 billion to reduce, then surely the policy loading unnecessarily high debt onto tomorrow’s students is worth fixing too.
We can’t build a participation agenda on top of a price barrier.
But the price of a degree is only one part of affordability.
For many students, their HELP balance is a future problem.
Rent is today’s problem.
Groceries are tonight’s problem.
Getting to class is this morning’s problem.
ºÚÁÏÀÏ˾»ú’s analysis shows that since 2021 student rents have risen around 40 per cent.
Groceries are up 27 per cent.
Utilities, 39 per cent.
Fuel, 43 per cent.
And students have to find that money somewhere.
So, they pick up another shift.
They cut back on groceries.
They skip class.
They reduce their study load.
And sometimes they leave university altogether.
Research published earlier this year by the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success found one in three university students were experiencing financial insecurity.
That isn’t peripheral to the equity challenge.
It is the equity challenge.
Because financial pressure doesn’t land evenly.
A student whose family can help with the rent has options.
A student without that safety net doesn’t.
And if we’re serious about bringing more Australians from disadvantaged backgrounds into university, we need to be equally serious about the cost of keeping them there.
There is one simple thing government could do now.
Today, ºÚÁÏÀÏ˾»ú is calling for every domestic university student to have access to a concession card while they study.
At the moment, some students get a health care card because they receive Youth Allowance, Austudy or ABSTUDY.
Others miss out simply because they don’t receive those payments.
That matters because a concession card can mean cheaper medicines and access to discounts on things like public transport, energy and other everyday costs.
So, you can have two students sitting next to each other in the same lecture, paying the same rent, shopping at the same supermarket, catching the same bus to campus.
One gets access to those concessions.
The other doesn’t.
That doesn’t make much sense to me.
And while we’re talking about transport, there’s another inequity we should fix.
International students should have the same access to student public transport concessions as domestic students.
Here in Queensland, 50-cent fares mean international and domestic students already pay the same to get to campus.
But that isn’t the case everywhere.
In some parts of Australia, an international student can sit beside a domestic student in the same class, then get on the same train home and pay more for the trip.
That doesn’t make much sense either.
International students live in our communities, study at our universities and make an enormous contribution to Australia.
When it comes to getting to and from university, a student should be treated like a student.
For someone earning a full-time salary, these savings might not seem like a big deal.
For a student counting the dollars until payday, they matter.
So, let’s make it simple.
If you’re a domestic student, you get the concession card.
And wherever you come from, if you’re a student, you get the student fare.
It’s practical cost-of-living relief.
Students are investing years of their lives building the skills Australia needs.
We should back them while they do it.
That same principle is why we support the Commonwealth Prac Payment and want to see it continue to expand.
Students shouldn’t have to choose between completing the placement they need to become a nurse, teacher or social worker and earning the money they need to pay rent.
And it applies to research students too.
If we want the next generation of Australian researchers, we have to make research careers financially possible.
Talent shouldn’t be excluded from a PhD because somebody can’t afford to live on the stipend.
That isn’t just research policy.
It’s equity policy.
But there’s another problem underneath all of this.
We don’t actually have a contemporary national picture of what it costs to be a university student in Australia.
ºÚÁÏÀÏ˾»ú has previously conducted a comprehensive national Student Finances Survey.
The last one was in 2017.
Nine years ago.
Before COVID.
Before the rental crisis.
Before the inflation shock.
Before Job-ready Graduates.
Even then, one in seven domestic students regularly went without food or other necessities because they couldn’t afford them.
Three in five domestic students told us their finances were a source of worry.
One in 10 deferred their studies because of money.
One in five reduced their study load for financial reasons.
And that was 2017.
I’d really like to know what those numbers look like today.
I suspect everyone in this room would.
But the truth is, we don’t know.
Not properly.
And that’s no way to make policy.
We wouldn’t run Australia’s cost-of-living policy using household data last collected in 2017.
We shouldn’t run student policy that way either.
So, ºÚÁÏÀÏ˾»ú is calling on the Government to partner with us in running the national Student Finances Survey again.
We measure inflation regularly.
We use current data to adjust JobSeeker and Commonwealth Rent Assistance.
We use contemporary measures of prices and living costs to adjust pensions.
Of course we do.
Because what it cost someone to live nine years ago tells you very little about what they need to live today.
Students deserve the same rigour.
We want surveys of student finances to be conducted regularly.
Let’s find out what students have to say about rental pressures.
How much they are working.
Whether work is keeping them out of class.
What they are cutting back on.
Why they move to part-time study.
Why they defer.
And why some leave.
Because if government is going to make big decisions about widening participation, student support and equity, it should have the best possible evidence in front of it.
You can’t open the door wider if you don’t understand what is pushing people back out.
And this is ultimately what I think the next stage of the Accord has to be about.
Not just growth, but successful growth.
Not simply creating more places but creating the conditions in which more Australians can actually take them up and succeed.
That doesn’t mean making university easy.
University should be challenging.
Students should work hard.
They should be expected to meet high standards.
But being able to afford dinner shouldn’t be part of the test.
And having parents who can transfer a few hundred dollars when things get tight shouldn’t be an unofficial prerequisite for succeeding at university.
That isn’t merit.
And it isn’t equal opportunity.
We sometimes talk about widening participation as though it’s principally a social policy project.
It isn’t.
It’s an economic necessity.
Australia needs more graduates.
We know where the jobs are going to be.
We know the skills they will require.
The question is where those graduates are going to come from.
And the answer can’t simply be the same families, the same suburbs and the same communities that have traditionally supplied them.
We can’t get to 55 per cent by drawing on the same people, from the same places, we always have.
We need more students from our outer suburbs.
More from regional and remote Australia.
More First Nations Australians.
More students from low-income families.
More people who will be the first in their family to go to university.
Australia’s equity challenge is now part of Australia’s skills challenge.
If we leave talent behind, we leave skills behind too.
That’s why equity and productivity aren’t competing agendas.
They are the same agenda.
I know what one university opportunity did for me.
There are millions more Australians with the ability and ambition to seize that same opportunity if we get the settings right.
So that’s the challenge I want to leave with government today.
Adopt the Accord’s 55 per cent university attainment target and be clear about the ambition.
Get the Opening the Doors reforms right, including recognising where a student comes from.
Give all domestic university students access to a concession card while they study and international students access to the same transport concessions as their peers.
Replace Job-ready Graduates with a fairer and more sustainable funding system.
And bring back the national Student Finances Survey so the next phase of reform is built on evidence about the students we actually have today.
These aren’t separate ideas.
They all come back to the same question.
If Australia needs more people going to university, what are we prepared to do to make that opportunity real?
Because equity isn’t just about getting someone through the door.
It’s about whether they can afford to stay.
Whether they can succeed.
Whether they can graduate.
And whether they can take the skills and knowledge they gain into our schools, hospitals, businesses, communities and economy.
That’s how we lift participation.
That’s how we build the workforce Australia needs.
And that’s how a university opportunity changes not just one life, but the country around it.
Opening the door is only half the job.
The job is done when more Australians can walk through it, stay the course and come out the other side ready to help build Australia’s future.
So, let’s make sure more Australians, from more backgrounds and from more parts of the country get that chance.
Thank you.
