Can mission-based compacts improve equity and diversity?
Andrew Harvey, Griffith University
The dream of a diverse Australian higher education system is longstanding but elusive. Politicians and others have long lamented that we have 42 similar Business degrees and no ‘Aussie Harvard’. Christopher Pyne proposed to create institutional diversity, and at least an ersatz Harvard, by deregulating tuition fees. Eventually, thanks to the crossbench, a lone opposing vice-chancellor, and a campaign against $100,000 degrees, that battle was lost. Homogeneity and affordability were preferred, though the latter is becoming questionable as Arts degrees exceed $50,000.
The most recent attempt to create diversity is through reheating the idea of mission-based compacts. Compacts are bilateral agreements between universities and ATEC, which will “support providers to pursue their unique goals and mission, while also making clear how they will contribute to key priorities, support diversity within the system, and deliver strong outcomes for students and local communities”. Beginning with a foundation year in 2027, the compacts will initially be organised into six performance domains, including First Nations; equity; teaching; research; a joined-up tertiary system; and national, state/territory and regional priorities. These domains are similarly adopted within ATEC’s Interim Statement of Strategic Priorities. I will focus here on student equity, but there is significant overlap among the categories.
The initial compacts template maintains a focus on the standard four domestic priority groups, including Indigenous people; people with a disability; those from the lowest socio-economic status (SES) quartile; and people from regional, rural or remote (RRR) backgrounds. A range of bespoke government programs aim to support these groups, but there has been limited historical progress, evaluation, and innovation.
A more expansive version of compacts could potentially promote diversity, as visible to some extent in England. There, mainstream universities are required to submit Access and Participation Plans to the regulator. These plans typically include detailed performance data and evaluation of institutional equity strategies, including place-based approaches. There is a data-driven focus on social class, but universities also address a wide range of underserved groups, including care leavers (people from out-of-home care backgrounds), military veterans, people from refugee backgrounds and ethnic minority groups, carers, estranged students, people with invisible disabilities, and incarcerated students. Specific geographic areas are targeted and collaborative regional approaches are common, including with secondary schools and further education colleges. Importantly, students themselves are often closely involved in the design of the plans and constituent programs. The success of this approach has arguably been moderate but the plans themselves reflect a diversity of institutional approaches.
Could compacts finally shift the equity dial?
Could mission-based compacts elevate equity and diversity in Australia? Could they engender the rigorous evaluation of equity initiatives that has been so lacking? Could compacts help universities to regain their social licence by promoting more community and place-based work?
Maybe. One problem with recent higher education policies is that they have been more hyphenated than caffeinated. The ‘job-ready graduates’ scheme was largely a funding cut, and previous mission-based compacts had few financial carrots and sticks. As Croucher noted, the first two iterations of compacts developed after 2010 were largely friendless and were not attached to serious financial incentives or consequences. Rather, the compacts were perceived as adding administrative burden and providing little real scope for innovation.
Nobody wants a thrice-risen souffle. To drive greater sectoral diversity, the new compacts will need to be tied to consequences, preferably including financial incentives. If so, there are at least two areas of equity that could be strengthened.
First, we need a greater sectoral emphasis on social class, including differentiation of institutional roles. Needs-based funding (NBF) does provide a loading to universities based on their existing numbers of low SES and Indigenous students, but the proportion of low SES students has moved little and large geographic differences in participation remain.
We need new outreach sites and approaches, deep collaboration with secondary schools that includes curriculum alignment and scaffolded pathways, dual enrolment options, and tracking of students through sectors, similar to the UK’s Higher Education Access Tracker. Highly selective universities need incentives to increase fair access in ways that reflect their missions, including through place-based work. Compacts could set meaningful low SES targets for all universities, tailored to their diverse footprints and missions, as recommended by the Universities Accord.
Second, compacts could support different underserved groups, consistent with institutional missions. Some universities serve communities with high numbers of new migrants, people from refugee backgrounds, or Māori and Pasifika people. Institutions are often located amidst sites of incarceration, or where large distances preclude on-campus study for many prospective students. Compacts could enhance universities’ ability to identify and serve such invisibilised student groups. This approach in turn could increase both institutional diversity and social licence.
Diversity can quickly become complexity. Institutional Access and Participation Plans in England can run to more than 100 pages, and these plans cover just one of the six performance domains outlined by ATEC. There is thus a design challenge for ATEC to promote diversity but also complementarity between institutional, regional, and national priorities. Data and evaluation processes will need to be improved, in concert with ACSES, and compacts will need to align with demand-driven equity and related policies.
Ultimately, compacts will either be funded or friendless (again). If incentives are provided, a more equitable and diverse sector is imaginable, in which students and communities are better served.
Professor Andrew Harvey, Director (Access and Achievement), Griffith University