Indigenous Higher Education and the Poison Chalice of Parity
Professor Maria Raciti, University of the Sunshine Coast
I was delighted to be part of the panel for the recent Accord Insights Through an Equity Lens webinar. The release of the Universities Accord Interim Report [the Report] generated much food for thought and also provided the opportunity to spark new thinking about educational inequality.
The Report delivered some attention-grabbing headlines regarding Indigenous students. The implementation of five immediate actions was surprising and praiseworthy, signalling that the Accord would indeed be transformative. One of the five immediate actions was to extend demand-driven funding to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students who are eligible for the course they apply for. This currently only applies to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in regional and remote Australia.
As the initial excitement about the Report settles, we now have the opportunity for deeper and more critical engagement with the proposed ideas. The Report appeared to be saying all the right things in all the right ways. This provided much hope and affirmed to many in the equity space that the panel and policymakers are listening and motivated to act.
The notion of ‘parity’ featured heavily as the ultimate measure of success with regard to Indigenous students. Parity as the determinant of success is scattered throughout most education equity policy documents but it remains unchallenged. There were frequent references to population parity, parity in access and parity in participation in the Report. Parity is calculated in simplistic quantitative terms, comparing the proportion of Indigenous students with non-Indigenous students, using 2021 Census data along various dimensions.
But like many, I have my concerns about parity. Don’t you? At first, achieving parity for Indigenous students—be it population, access or participation—appears attractive and desirable. But is it enough? And what happens when parity is achieved? While it would be ideal, it is unlikely that parity will be replaced by another metric. From this perspective, in what ways can we augment and decolonise parity measures to address parity’s limitations for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples?
The Report talks of ideas for bold reform. Achieving parity for First Nations Australians is not bold thinking. Many might say that it is, in fact, old thinking. If the Review were seeking to be truly bold then, to address historical injustices that continue to impact present-day Indigenous Australians, parity would be the start line rather than the finish line in terms of Indigenous education. I challenge the Review to go beyond parity, to be brash and gutsy, and to pursue a ‘parity plus’ agenda.
A ‘parity plus’ agenda also addresses the question no one wants to ask that I posed above: what happens when parity is achieved? What does the achievement of parity mean in real terms beyond the numbers? Does a lack of disparity (i.e., equal) population, access and participation metrics with non-Indigenous Australians in higher education (HE) suggest Indigenous Australians are no longer marginalised nor experience racism in HE, or that patterns of work-related exclusion and discrimination for graduates no longer exist? When parity is conceived as a number, and the numbers line up with population, access and participation, does this mean that justice has been achieved, that wrongs have been righted, that the system is impartial?
Parity, to me (and maybe you too), seems to be an overly simplistic, convenient, conventional and easy way to partially and inaccurately measure the social and economic justice outcomes of HE. Is this as good as it gets? Parity alone is limited and limiting for Indigenous students. A ‘parity plus’ agenda provides the opportunity to expand the types of parity of interest (e.g., parity of experience, parity of outcomes) and how these could be measured at the national level. More importantly, a ‘parity plus’ agenda could consider additional measures of success for Indigenous peoples in HE.
As esteemed Professor Martin Nakata has long argued (e.g., 2001; 2007; 2013; 2018), when the label of ‘equity group’ is imposed on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples by governments, and success is measured in terms of parity with the non-Indigenous population, it locks in deficit perspectives, overlooks unique cultural and historical contexts, and creates a one-size-fits-all approach that does not fully recognise the diverse needs and aspirations of Indigenous peoples.
My understanding of Professor Nakata’s body of work is that the imposed label of ‘equity group’ sets in motion ‘equity logics’, which directs the deployment of resources in a manner that assumes and perpetuates deficit perspectives for an entire population, irrespective of individual differences or circumstances. These ‘equity logics’ mirror ‘colonial logics’. Hence, when Indigenous student equity success is measured with parity, parity can be seen to be a colonial instrument. Parity does not emancipate but rather further enmeshes Indigenous students in a web of ‘colonial logics’. Professor Nakata posits a shift towards self-determination, which empowers by emphasising and returning agency to Indigenous Australians to define their own educational goals and engage with education on their terms.
A ‘parity plus’ approach that embraces creating and implementing additional measures of success as defined and evaluated by Indigenous peoples under the leadership of Indigenous peoples is a step in the right direction toward decolonising parity. The Report proposes a First Nations Higher Education Council as part of a possible Tertiary Education Commission. It stands to reason that a remit of this Council could be to enact a decolonial ‘parity plus’ agenda, but this agenda must first be set by the Review.
While I leave you with more questions than answers, I invite you to sit with these ideas. Like you, as we unpack, process and talk about issues, my thinking will shift and mature. However, at this early stage, I share with you my preliminary thoughts in this article in the hope that these may help progress the discussion and maybe shape the transformation of the Australian HE sector.
Maria Raciti (Kalkadoon-Thaniquith/Bwgcolman) is a professor and co-director of the Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre at the University of the Sunshine Coast.