Moving beyond ‘acts of faith’: effective scholarships for equity students

ABSTRACT

For decades Australian universities have used equity scholarships as a tool to widen participation in higher education despite limited empirical evidence about how such scholarships influence students’ retention and success outcomes. This paper reports on the first cross-institutional Australian study to investigate the relationship between equity scholarships and recipients’ retention and success outcomes. The study used a comparative case study approach to triangulate cohort and survey data in the 2013 academic year for scholarship holders at three Australian universities. Using an established conceptual framework of student engagement, we find that a comparatively small payment can make a difference to retention rates and that selection criteria determine student outcomes. At the same time, scholarships are no panacea. We conclude that eligibility criteria for equity scholarships should be multi-factorial and that financial support should be nested with other supports for optimal benefit.

KEYWORDS:

• Scholarships
• equity students
• retention
• programme design
• success

Acknowledgments

The project was a genuine team effort and we would like to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of our colleagues in the three participating universities. At Independent University, Dr Kelly George coordinated quantitative data analysis, reporting on institutional data and provided constructive feedback on a draft of this paper. Linda Gasparini supported data extraction and collated scholarships scheme information. Professor Brenda Cherednichenko provided expert guidance on research design and editorial feedback throughout the project. Mary Kelly and Smitha Mandre-Jackson prepared the comprehensive Innovation University case study and generously shared their wealth of experience and longitudinal survey data, which affirmed the cross-sectional findings in the present study. At Sandstone University, Annette Cairnduff oversaw data extraction and collection and drafted the case study, and Danny Sun collated scholarships information.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) in 2015 under grant number [RM 30025].