Academic performance of low SES students at an Australian university satellite campus

ABSTRACT

The satellite university campus is becoming more prominent in Australia, and may consist of a large proportion of students of low socio-economic status (SES). Concurrently, there is a governmental target to increase the proportion of low SES students at university. However, there are concerns that students of low SES may be less successful at university, and accordingly, this study aimed to identify whether SES impacted on student success. Retrospective analysis was undertaken of satellite campus students to relate their SES and university entry rank to their academic results. There was no strong relationship between students’ entry rank and their results, nor was there a significant effect of SES on results. This demonstrates that students of low SES, and those of lower entry ranks, were successful in their first year. These results indicate that universities can recruit low SES students to meet governmental policy, without the concerns of increased failure rates.

KEYWORDS:

• Low socio-economic status
• satellite campus
• entry rank
• university performance
• grade point average

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Robert Craig for discussion and guidance during the process of data collection and analysis, and Mary Kelly and Christen Hill for critique of the draft manuscript. The author wishes to thank Sharyn Jenner for provision of data from university databases, and Matthew Neil for discussions on raw data. This work stemmed from the QUT Caboolture Campus Retention Working Party.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Judy A. Craft http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3998-5591