Understanding the persistence of inequality in higher education: evidence from Australia

Abstract

During the latter half of the twentieth century, Australia, like many countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, experienced rapid expansion in participation in higher education which was supported by government through increases in the number of publicly funded university places. However, in spite of this expansion, a disproportionately large share of the undergraduate student population is still drawn from higher socio-economic backgrounds. This paper seeks to understand the persistence of inequality in higher education by examining changes in patterns of participation in Australian universities since the 1970s. Using logistic regressions to analyse data collected by three Australian surveys conducted between 1987 and 2005, the authors examine the influence of having a university-educated parent on an individual’s chances of obtaining a higher education degree. They find that although the expansion of higher education has had some impact in terms of reducing inequality, having a university-educated parent continues to exert a direct effect on an individual’s propensity to graduate from university. The paper draws on the theories of maximally maintained inequality and relative risk aversion to interpret institutional and student behaviour. The policy challenges of addressing structural inequality in higher education are also discussed.

Keywords:

• higher education policy
• participation
• access
• social class
• students
• intergenerational mobility
• low socio-economic status

Acknowledgement

The Neoliberalism, Inequality and Politics Project from which the data in this paper are derived comes from the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland and was supported under the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (DP0449516). The analysis and any errors in this paper are the responsibility of the authors.

Notes

aindicates relevant higher education charging policy in year at which most of cohort turned 19.

1. ATAR is a number between 0 and 99.95 with increments of 0.05 and is calculated from an aggregate of scaled marks in 10 units of ATAR eligible courses. Using a common scale overcomes the difficulties of comparing students from different states and territories (UAC 2011).

2. The dramatic increase in the proportion of respondents with a university degree was somewhat unexpected so we replicated the analysis using the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes 2005 dataset (Wilson et al. 2006) and achieved similar results.