Needed Now: Dual enrolment options for Australian secondary students
Russell Olwell, TAFE NSW
A new tool for widening university participation
The Australian Universities Accord called for a series of policy changes designed to double the number of people attending university by 2050, with renewed attention on students facing barriers to participation by reason of economic, geographic, disability and disadvantaging factors. However, despite the Accord’s focus on changing this dynamic, right now higher education in Australia has been moving in the wrong direction for members of equity groups such as students from low-income and regional or remote backgrounds. From 2017-2024, the number of commencing students in these equity groups declined according to government enrolment statistics. Aspirations for achieving parity participation for these equity groups are looking increasingly unlikely to eventuate.
Perhaps one of the most outspoken internal critics of higher education’s lack of contribution to wider university participation has been Western Sydney University Vice Chancellor and President George Williams, who wrote in his book, Aiming Higher that, for many young people, “The ladder to a better life is missing a few rungs.” He continued
Those who would benefit most from a university education are often the least able to afford it. Our modern institutions are simply too expensive and too difficult to navigate and, as a result, many people are missing the social mobility that higher education offers.
Williams’s observations capture two key dynamics of this problem: both that students cannot afford tuition, living and transportation expenses – a cost-of-learning and cost-of-living crisis; and that the difficulty students face navigating the university system (and the learning environments once they get there) is lowering access, participation and graduation rates.
Part of meeting this challenge of delivering on the promise of social mobility via higher education is to equip universities, students and families with a wider range of tools that assist new university learners to become successful university graduates. In the United States, over 2 million students per year take part in dual enrolment programs, which enable young people to complete university units while still enrolled as secondary students, earning credit in both systems. Research has found dual enrolment to be a promising strategy to build academic skills and confidence, while reducing student costs and time to degree. However, it is not the norm in Australia and has not appeared on the educational policy radar, even while greater vocational education and training (VET) and higher education collaboration has become a top priority of the government.
Why dual enrolment?
Top students in Australian high schools are fully engaged in challenging HSC coursework and exams until the end of secondary education, and each year produce world-class academic and creative work (see this exhibit now at the Art Gallery of NSW for an example of excellent work by HSC art students). However, not all students in secondary school can maintain the motivation to finish year 12 and move directly on to post-secondary education. Discouraged and disconnected young people can be the result and, each year, students leave secondary school before the end of year 12 and end up fending for themselves in a punishing economy.
Some universities in Australia have created pathway and other programming that allows top students a chance to earn credit in one or more units while still enrolled in high school (for example, Deakin Accelerate, START QUT). However, these opportunities are aimed at highly-motivated and high-achieving students, particularly those who have already established an academic and career direction. These programs, through growing, are not reaching those students who may lack the confidence for, and/or social and cultural capital that encourages and supports, attending university or other post-secondary educational options, missing out on a key opportunity to widen participation in tertiary education.
Research in the United States has proven the overall value of dual enrolment for students, particularly those who are not enrolled in top track classes or who score well on standardised exams. Quantitative research by Brian An has shown that all ranges of students benefit from dual enrolment programs, but it is those students outside the top band of achievement who benefit the most, and those students who are from low-income and first in family backgrounds, and from groups historically excluded from tertiary education.
Particularly, educational research in the United States have shown that, through dual enrolment, participating students have:
Greater confidence about attending university. Early college and dual enrolment programs have been shown to help students move from believing that college – tertiary education – is a possibility, to seeing themselves as successful university students. This is an outcome of many of the current Enabling (now FEE-FREE Uni Ready (FFUR) courses) and other pathways programs that Australian universities already offer; but here is an opportunity to extend the beneficial reach of such initiatives, which is greatly needed if we are to come close to attaining the Universities Accord aspirations for tertiary education growth.
A better chance of finishing university on time or earlier. Research using the random assignment of students seeking admission to dual enrolment programs has shown that these students are more likely to attend and graduate university earlier than their peers who do not enroll.
Saved tuition and earned higher wages. American students and their families have been most motivated by the desire to save money and reduce student loan borrowing. As students can finish university in a timelier manner, they pay less in tuition and are able to enter the workforce and begin their career sooner. Recent research linking educational and payroll records in Texas has shown that dual enrolment students tend to have higher earnings once they enter the workforce.
A transferable model for Australia?
Right now in Australia, there are some promising efforts in the direction of dual enrolment. These programs offer Year 11 and 12 students the chance to try university coursework and have built in support and mentoring structures, though the focus of the programs is students who have already achieved academic success in secondary school. Programs such as Australian Catholic University’s STEP Up offer pathways in education, health care, and business, offering up to two free units of study, with an explicit focus on widening participation for under-represented groups. The University of Tasmania’s University Connections program provides students in the state with a variety of university units to study, with no tuition charges, inclusion of results in ATAR scores, and university credits recognised through the prior learning process at UTas.
Other Australian universities also offer university level programs to secondary students, though their commitment to widening participation varies. The University of Southern Queensland’s Head Start, Griffith University’s Head Start, and the Adelaide University’s Activate program offer a wide variety of courses, with at least one free unit available to “high achieving” or “highly motivated” secondary students in years 10, 11, and 12. Where agreements exist with state governments, participating students are also able to use these classes to make progress towards secondary graduation, though this work does not count automatically towards the University Admissions Centre (UAC) processes. These programs have an admissions process that can work against widening participating, with academic achievement and course-taking requirements that would rule out many secondary students who might benefit from the program.
University pathway programs also capture some important functions of dual enrolment. The UTS UniReady program is built to boost academic skills and to help students feel a stronger sense of belonging and connection to the University. The UNSW Gateway initiative aims to expand equitable access to university for underrepresented students in years 10-12 by “combining a targeted educational outreach program with a dedicated admission pathway… that supports students to strengthen their academic outcomes”. The University of Wollongong offers units in the summer right before full-time university enrolment to help students make the transition successfully. Secondary students spending time on a TAFE campus as part of a VET program mirror the early college and dual enrolment experience in many ways. Each of these experiences captures the aspect of dual enrolment that boosts student confidence and sense of belonging in tertiary education, and changes student self-image to one of being a university student.
However, compared to the number of students who might take advantage of these opportunities, student enrolment numbers are clearly not meeting the full need. While the government has been keen to invest in providing students with preparatory studies to gain the skills they need to get into university without being out of pocket via FFUR courses, the primary focus has been on students who have already left school, less so on those still enrolled in secondary schooling. More recently, school-based enabling programs have sought to address the needs of secondary students seeking a non-ATAR path to university, and these programs have become more prominent over the last decade. However, recent research has shown that the model of school-based enabling courses for students can vary greatly from institution to institution, ranging from use of (free) federal education funding to charging students themselves tuition for the program.
What it would take to expand this effort
Expansion of credit bearing opportunities for equity-deserving secondary students would require creating structures to support students who have one foot in secondary education and one in tertiary education. If dual enrolment became a more prominent part of the structure of education in Australia, units taken as part of these programs could be guaranteed to count towards both secondary and university requirements, be honored by all Australian Universities, and be of direct benefit to students during the university admissions process. As the harmonisation process between universities and VET providers unfolds, building the regulatory and policy infrastructure to guarantee that earned credit is transferable and recognised would enable students to more easily pursue a range of programs that can help them enroll in tertiary education.
Finally, efforts such as dual enrolment require a commitment to equity from the start. The hard lesson from the United States is that dual enrolment efforts that did not build equity into their initial design only replicated social class, racial, and gender inequities as they scaled up in size. Widening participation programs need to be offered first to the students who need them the most, with sufficient resources provided to support them in their efforts. This could dovetail well with the government’s long term Study Hub effort, particularly to provide ongoing student support in place for participants taking part in dual enrolment programs.
Russell Olwell is the author of A Guide to Early College and Dual Enrollment Programs: Designing and Implementing Programs for Student Achievement (2nd Edition, Routledge, 2026). He lives in Sydney and is a learning skills advisor with TAFE NSW working at the Suburban Study Hub Macquarie Fields. His views in this article are entirely his own and do not reflect TAFE policy.