How do we overcome barriers to education in Australia? Find out on this episode of #TheFutureOf
How do we overcome barriers to education in Australia? ‘In this episode, Alex Foot is joined by Professor Ian Li, Director of the Research and Policy Program at the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES), to discuss the equity landscape in Australian higher education, and how things are moving towards a more accessible system.
Professor Ian Li
Director of the Research and Policy Program at the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES)
With a background in health and labour market economics, Professor Ian Li is the Research and Policy program at the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success, where he heads up efforts to find out ‘what works’ in creating a more equitable higher education system in Australia.
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00:00:00:00 - 00:00:24:24
Alex Foot
This is the future of where experts share their vision of the future and how their work is helping shape it for the better. I'm Alex Foot. Dr. Seuss once said, and I quote, The more that you read, the more things you'll know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. The importance of an education is something that seems to be embedded in our collective consciousness.
00:00:25:01 - 00:00:55:00
Alex Foot
It's something that we hear from those that we look up to and something that we pass on to our children. However, the ability of one to access and enjoy the lifelong benefits of a quality education are often determined by factors such as socio economic status, geographical location and cultural background. These barriers can significantly impact an individual's educational journey, making it crucial to devise strategies to deliver equity in education, ensuring that everyone can grow, learn and succeed regardless of their starting point.
00:00:55:02 - 00:01:17:06
Alex Foot
Today, we're looking at the journey ahead for educational equity in Australia. From policy reforms to grassroots initiatives, we're exploring the breadth of efforts aimed at ensuring every student, regardless of background, has access to quality education. For this, I was joined by Professor Ian Li, director of research and policy at the National Center for Student Equity in Higher Education at Curtin University.
00:01:17:10 - 00:01:37:21
Alex Foot
Professor Li heads up efforts to enhance educational equity through innovative research, collaborations, policy engagement and grants for equity projects. If you'd like to find out more about Professor Li's research or the National Center for Student Equity, visit the links provided in the show notes. So today I have Professor Ian Li joining me. And thank you for being here.
00:01:37:23 - 00:01:57:11
Alex Foot
Thank you for having me. Now it's so pretty meta episode. Here at Curtin University, we're going to be talking about higher education and equity. I guess I'm going to start off with what equity means in a higher education context and why is it important? So it's a pretty broad question, but you can get go as far out as you'd like.
00:01:57:13 - 00:02:18:02
Professor Ian Li
Sure. So I think when we think about higher education, the first thing is that it's beneficial. It's beneficial in a lot of sense in terms of employment outcomes. People who are educated getting better jobs, they get better paying jobs, and this effect over the life course. So, you know, monetarily, economically, people get benefits. But there's also other benefits.
00:02:18:02 - 00:02:38:10
Professor Ian Li
People who are high educated, they live longer, they are healthier, they have lower propensity to commit crime. So there's a lot of other benefit step benefits both to individual societies as well. And that's why people have the saying that it's better to build a school or university than to build a hospital or prison. So now that we've got that out of the way, high education is beneficial.
00:02:38:12 - 00:03:08:21
Professor Ian Li
Then the question becomes who should participate in higher education? And that's why we turn to the concepts of equity and fairness and basically we should not be restricting participation in higher, higher education only to certain pockets of people such as those who are wealthier. It should really be anyone who has the ability, the competencies, the propensity to benefit, and as long as they have the intellectual capacity, there should really be a lot to participate in higher education.
00:03:08:23 - 00:03:31:18
Professor Ian Li
So that's why we tend to access and participation and opportunity to all people get an equal opportunity because if you happen to to grow up or be born into a less wealthy household, that doesn't mean that you should be precluded from higher education. In fact, you know, there's lots of really intelligent people, people who are leaders in their views, who come from very humble backgrounds.
00:03:31:20 - 00:04:04:14
Professor Ian Li
So, you know, equity in higher education is about having that fairness for all and understanding that lots of people have the capacity to benefit themselves and actually also society. So we should be trying to level the playing field and make sure that people can access and have wonderful outcomes in higher education. So, okay, so we kind of have as a groundwork, higher education is a good thing for the society, good for the individual, and we should open up participation in higher education as open to people as we can.
00:04:04:17 - 00:04:26:13
Alex Foot
That's right. Where does Australia how does Australia kind of apply that and where does it sit in relation to the rest of the world in terms of an equitable higher education system? You have to go into every single country, but maybe just generally so we get a grip of it. Okay. So your second question on where Australia ranks in terms of how we perform equity wise in higher education, that's a lot harder to answer.
00:04:26:15 - 00:04:47:08
Professor Ian Li
It's a lot harder to answer because there isn't very good statistics on that collected internationally. There isn't very good statistics on that because disadvantage or underrepresentation means different things in different countries. So it's very different to do an apple for Apple comparison in terms of, you know, who's got more lower socioeconomic status, students participating in higher education, for example.
00:04:47:10 - 00:05:17:01
Professor Ian Li
But we do know that Australia probably performs relatively well just simply because we have a higher proportion of young people participating in higher education. We also know that Australia probably does well because we are the first country in the world to come up with the health system on a health system as it's now known. Where is basically an income contingent contingent loan, which means that students or anyone who wants to participate in higher education do not need to fork out the cost of the tuition fees upfront, which can be rather substantial.
00:05:17:01 - 00:05:44:18
Professor Ian Li
I mean, if you looked at the fees recently, we have we are talking about quite a fair chunk of change with that. I just look at my head. That's right. And so I know. Yeah. And you know, it's indexed to inflation, so the government is not charging you an interest on it. So not having to worry about paying that huge, substantial amount of money upfront means that basically the tuition fees are affordable for everyone because it's essentially zero at the point of entry.
00:05:44:20 - 00:06:13:21
Professor Ian Li
You pay it back only when you finish your studies and only when you get a job and you go over the income threshold that you get taken out of your tax. So from a financial barrier perspective, that's excellent. You know, compare in comparison to other countries such as the US, which in the first place has a very hierarchical higher education system where there's elite institutions which have very elite fees as well, and more, I guess, modest colleges where the fees can still be rather substantial.
00:06:13:23 - 00:06:43:09
Professor Ian Li
And if you do a comparison of fees in the US to the fees that we charge in Australia. Well, you thought that Australian fees were expensive, but they pale in comparison to what's being charged in the US. So that's a much more of a financial barrier in other countries like that. And even a lot of the other more egalitarian countries, I would say not many actually do have this system of tax and income contingent contingent loans that loans that we have.
00:06:43:11 - 00:07:06:02
Professor Ian Li
Okay. Well, there are some other countries like Germany, for example, where I believe that it's totally free to participate in higher education. But many other countries would actually have some sort of a fee arrangement and they don't have the income contingent system that we actually have. It's interesting you bring up fees because that kind of makes me think about the level of higher education in Australia to be high school education.
00:07:06:08 - 00:07:26:01
Alex Foot
So if I can broadly paraphrase what you said, that in Australia, higher education fees are pretty level across the board from university, we don't have elite universities. Yeah, and once down on the bottom, how does how does high school and primary school education kind of funnel into that, knowing that they operate on a bit of a different system?
00:07:26:03 - 00:07:44:05
Professor Ian Li
Yep. So that's a very complex question, but I can make some I guess, general and simple points about it. Firstly, education is a part like to get into high medication, you have to have done well in high school. To have done well in high school, you pretty much need to have a solid foundation, which means you need to have done well in primary school.
00:07:44:07 - 00:08:06:21
Professor Ian Li
And I think recently Grattan Institute report shows that, you know, reading levels were actually pretty poor in some lower primary ages and that not doing well at that age means that you can't do well at a later stage, which that shouldn't come as a surprise because if you can't read, you basically can't take instruction in in any other subjects signs met.
00:08:07:02 - 00:08:31:23
Professor Ian Li
You know, if you can't read basically you would also have a relatively poorer performance in any other subject. Really. Yeah. So everything is sort of scaffolded and everything sort of is dependent on what happens before. But then we get into even more complicated and complex intricacies of the schooling system. We don't have a system in Australia where every single school is the same.
00:08:32:00 - 00:08:57:16
Professor Ian Li
And when I say the same, I mean that not in a good way. If you are in more regional and remote areas, for example, the high school that you attend might not actually offer us with ATAR subjects which would disadvantage you if you were trying to get an eight, had to go to university because maybe some of those subjects might actually be required to actually getting admission to a certain cause.
00:08:57:18 - 00:09:12:24
Professor Ian Li
Some of them might be subjects that you are more passionate about, which means that you are also more likely to do well in them. And if you do well in them, that brings up your ETA rank and is on the basis of our ratings that people get admitted into university or not. So those are some of the issues.
00:09:12:24 - 00:09:37:11
Professor Ian Li
And then we come to the issues of public and private schools where private schools have a lot of resources that can be dedicated to them and their students. And to a certain extent, some students are even groomed to actually do well in entry examination. And so they have a bit of an advantage over students from non private schools or public schools where they might actually not do that well to get into university.
00:09:37:13 - 00:09:57:03
Alex Foot
Okay. Now we kind of have a bit of a lay of the land. What's this? What are the sort of things that are going to be done or are being done now by people like yourself at the National Center for Student Equity in Higher Education to make a more equitable higher education system? I guess we look at all sorts of issues.
00:09:57:03 - 00:10:32:07
Professor Ian Li
We look we look at pre access issues or what happens in schools and whether how how would that might actually impact on people's opportunities to get into higher education. And one of the very first papers that I did was looking at social school socioeconomic status and how that affects university outcomes. And what we found was that students from public schools, for example, schools that are traditionally more disadvantaged in terms of socioeconomic, social, socioeconomic status, students from those schools face greater barriers getting to university.
00:10:32:07 - 00:11:13:23
Professor Ian Li
But once they get into university, they actually tried. So to actually support the case that we should be meeting, that there is a case that we can meet more students from disadvantaged backgrounds into university and not have to worry about quality assurance. So that's one thing that we've done. We've also looked at alternative pathways into university. So ETA, which we do know is associated with academic outcomes at university, but we're nontraditional ways of getting students to university actually be worthwhile and feasible to students who come into non-meat pathways, actually try at university.
00:11:14:04 - 00:11:36:14
Professor Ian Li
And our research suggests that there's no one size fits all some non-lethal pathways. Students who enter through some of those don't eat up half. We don't do that well. But there are some non-lethal pathways, such as enabling programs where students actually do pretty well in. Yeah, So, you know, that gives us a bit of evidence to actually look at which ones students might come in, where do we actually succeed?
00:11:36:18 - 00:12:01:08
Alex Foot
Yeah, I think even just anecdotally, that's true. When I was going through, you know, a lot less people than I thought did either, and even less people cared. I think the old adage what I had to do to get more irrelevant endeavor, but it's but in a good way. Yeah. Knowing that once you're in university, if there's enough support available for you, you'll actually be able to succeed.
00:12:01:10 - 00:12:38:08
Alex Foot
Yeah, I guess. What are the priorities from like a government or like a center level for you? Yep. To make a more equitable system. Yeah. So with regard to governmental priorities, for now we can only guess because the university a final report is due any day now. But we can, we can sense from the interim report. And what government minister has said so far is that equity is definitely front and center of the recommendation and the reforms that are coming.
00:12:38:10 - 00:13:22:01
Professor Ian Li
We want to get more people into university, more people from disadvantaged backgrounds into university, because that aligns with economic growth, that aligns with the work of the future, where more university education is going to be needed. I think what the priorities stemming from that are, So how do we get them in? But beyond that, how do we actually make sure that they succeed and thrive at university and beyond and that beyond parties also important because the labor market is not an easy system to actually navigate, we need to make sure that the degrees and the skills that these young people actually are being put forward to get education and training in is actually lying that
00:13:22:01 - 00:13:42:09
Professor Ian Li
we've chopped off the future because it that no one any good to actually give people an education at great expense to both individuals and society, only to for them to end up not having a job in the future. So are we looking at the right sort of pathways to a career for young people? Are we making sure that they actually finish their education in the first place?
00:13:42:09 - 00:14:01:18
Professor Ian Li
Because, you know, research that the center has commissioned in the past has actually found that non completion can be quite high and students can remain in the higher education system for nine years or actually beyond trying to finish their degree. Yeah. Part of that comes in to the fact that the way that university students learn has changed as well.
00:14:01:20 - 00:14:21:22
Professor Ian Li
I think in the 1980s about 40% of young people were working while studying at university. Fast forward another 30 or 40 years and that figure is sitting closer to 80%, so a lot more young people have to work while they're at university partly to support themselves. So, you know, that calls into question other financial support that we give them.
00:14:22:02 - 00:14:44:11
Alex Foot
Is that adequate? But also do they actually have the opportunity to dedicate themselves to their studies and focus now? I think a bit of work is always good because it gives us that transferable skills that we need longer term in our careers. But if we are spending lots of time working, then something must be being given up and that's probably studying and doing well in our subjects at university.
00:14:44:15 - 00:15:06:04
Alex Foot
Yeah. Do you think you could just give us a broad overview of what the center does and what it's trying to do? So we do a lot of things. We have a research and policy program where we commission and fund high quality grants and fellowships from around the country to work on projects that are central to student equity.
00:15:06:06 - 00:15:26:23
Professor Ian Li
We do some of the research in-house ourselves according to our strategic priorities and more importantly, these are all research that we hope will make a policy or practice impact. So stuff that we actually have traction on the ground and actually change the way we do things so that we can ensure better opportunities and better student outcomes for role.
00:15:27:00 - 00:15:50:07
Professor Ian Li
We also have a trials and evaluations program which is new, and the Trials and evaluations program is dedicated to actually trolling interventions that are actually taking place in universities and making sure that we keep and keep on doing only the interventions. That's actually making a positive benefit to students. Now to underpin all of that research and trials and evaluation work, we actually need to have dialog.
00:15:50:07 - 00:16:14:15
Professor Ian Li
So we also have a data program where the strategic aim of the data program is to actually provide high quality data both to our in-house offerings but also to the sector to actually guide and steer better decision making. So in a nutshell, that's what the center is trying to do. We call self a center because we are really trying to make an impact on the ground in policy and in practice.
00:16:14:17 - 00:16:38:12
Professor Ian Li
I guess the thing is that it's a really exciting time to be working in higher education equity because obviously the policy makers have very ambitious plans and it's very, very exciting to be part of that ambitious plan. There is a lot of work that needs to happen before we can actually meet the very ambitious sort of targets that has been talked about in the recent past.
00:16:38:12 - 00:17:03:17
Alex Foot
What are those targets? You know, top your head? Just for our listeners, I think it's something like 50% of young people having participating in high education by 2030. It is very ambitious. We we want a lot of young people to be going to university, but is not enough, as I've said earlier, to get them in. We need to make sure that they actually complete and then have a worthwhile career or job and the other end of it.
00:17:03:19 - 00:17:31:18
Professor Ian Li
So there's lots to actually needs to happen. My question on that, not to play devil's advocate would be in Australia we have a lot of people who do trades or go, Yep, does that count in what we're describing as higher education? And if not, how do we kind of balance those two things? I don't know if you've heard, but like, you know, people from overseas will say something like, Australia is the only country in the world where the plumber can live next to the doctor, like it's a really great and viable career path to get to safe.
00:17:31:24 - 00:17:52:21
Professor Ian Li
And we kind of balance those two things. Yeah, So I think that's a great statement. That's a great idea actually. So I think like what you said in Australia with our career is not just those that requires a university education. People can succeed equally if they're in a blue collar job or in a trade job. So we certainly should not be discounting that.
00:17:52:21 - 00:18:17:13
Professor Ian Li
You know, the vet sector has got quite a bit to offer as well. So we should actually be looking at how education is a complete holistic ecosystem between university and the vocational sector, rather than thinking that only if you go to university you can actually have a happy, fulfilling, economically viable life. Yeah, so maybe I could go to Taif and then do one unit in like economics just because I love it.
00:18:17:16 - 00:18:44:08
Professor Ian Li
Something like that. Yes, you could. It's a future. I want to be a part of today. So you have a pretty diverse research background to be super briefly touched on before health economics, labor market outcomes, did you have any sort of pivotal moment or what sort of sparked your interest to get into higher education studies? So I've actually been involved in labor economics and the economics of education for quite a long time now.
00:18:44:08 - 00:19:08:20
Professor Ian Li
In fact, even before I started dabbling in health economics, I did my honors degree, my honors research and my PhD research in labor economics. So I've always been interested in that side of things. Even while I moved to the school population in global health at UW age, where I was a health economist, I've always kept up and been active in research on higher education policy and higher education.
00:19:08:20 - 00:19:39:22
Professor Ian Li
Equity research is always been something that's part of me and it's always been a weird I'm very passionate about and I see myself as having something to offer in that space. And that's why I've always kept up the interest in that side of things. I guess one additional point is that equity is actually a very big thing in the health sector as well, which is why it's been sort of complimentary and a lot of the concept that we've been talking about in higher education equity, that's it has its parallels and it's mirror actually in the health sector as well.
00:19:39:24 - 00:20:03:06
Professor Ian Li
You know, health equity is basically the existence of inequalities that are actually avoidable. And I see that being mirrored exactly in higher education as well. Yeah, Well, I do think about do you have any interesting projects that you're working on at the center right now and maybe what are the hoped outcomes? Yeah, so we are working on quite a few things.
00:20:03:06 - 00:20:23:23
Professor Ian Li
So one project I will mention here is that we are looking at whether the type of school sector that you come from will affect your experience at university. And this is because, you know, every year we run, not we run. When I say we am talking about high education sector, the higher education sector runs the student experience survey.
00:20:24:00 - 00:20:46:22
Professor Ian Li
And I think there's always some comparison of institutions that will say that, you know, certain university did better than university did worse. Now, I suspect that some of that might actually be driven by people's backgrounds. So if you came from a private school where you had lots of resources being dedicated to your schooling and you came to university and realized that actually, yeah, I expect that to be a lot more independent.
00:20:46:22 - 00:21:05:05
Professor Ian Li
And as far as resources being dedicated to you, you might actually feel like you have a much more dismal university experience and then can say the reverse might be true of the public schools. So that's what we want to actually look at and just try to disentangle that a little bit more. I've heard that anecdotally as well. That's right.
00:21:05:05 - 00:21:27:01
Professor Ian Li
And maybe even in the satisfaction rates of some universities. Why? I see some are so low obviously for a bunch of other reasons too. Yeah. Yeah. Because the private school experience so different to a university for better or for worse, right? That's right. Some students are just entering with high expectations and they are not that happy when those expectations are not met.
00:21:27:03 - 00:21:56:04
Alex Foot
Do you have any stories or experiences within individual community that influence your approach to what you study? I think there's quite a few, but I always remember watching this documentary about students from rural China and the fact that some of these young children had to travel 3 hours by foot every day to get to the school and that they were still really happy and really passionate about schooling, that they did this every day.
00:21:56:06 - 00:22:27:20
Professor Ian Li
And we are not talking about 3 hours just walking on a road as if that's not difficult enough, really. But this three hour journey can include traversing rivers going on very steep and dangerous cliffs on the mountains. And I guess that that's part of what motivates me, knowing that there are some people who are far less privileged and us who just have that passion for learning because they are, you know, thirsty for knowledge, but also because they want to better their outcomes in life and better the outcomes of their family.
00:22:27:22 - 00:22:52:21
Professor Ian Li
And I think we see a lot of that in Australia domestically, as well as people who live 500 kilometers away from the nearest university campus. But would uproot themselves, travel and be based elsewhere just to pursue university travel. When I was teaching at UW A in the UW business School, I had a student who would come from Bunbury every day for 12.
00:22:52:21 - 00:23:11:06
Professor Ian Li
So this is before the age of online tutorial classes. You he would come for my 9 a.m. class and he would tell me that, you know, he started traveling since the wee hours of the morning just to get to university on time, and he'd never leave for classes as well. And I know that Bambury is, you know, we're not talking about Europe, how we're Geraldton or, you know, somewhere really far flung still.
00:23:11:06 - 00:23:37:13
Professor Ian Li
Bunbury but it is still quite a lot of effort, you know. So I think individuals like that motivate and inspire me, knowing that this people will face far greater challenges in obtaining an educational outcome and that we should be trying to support these individuals where possible. I think my last question would be, and this is another broad one what does good look like in say, 10 to 20 years in the higher education sphere?
00:23:37:14 - 00:24:09:07
Alex Foot
What is your dream scenario? What's the scenario we're working towards collectively? What should it be? Okay, so having a good representation of people from all sorts of backgrounds in high education would be good, but also I guess minimizing the adverse outcomes. When I say adverse outcomes, these are things like people dropping out of university because they get demotivated that we study people who meander a long time in the higher education journey, not completing their studies as well.
00:24:09:09 - 00:24:40:06
Professor Ian Li
People who graduate with degrees and then realize that is not what they want to do, and then they have to go through the entire high allocation process again, or people who do not get a job and, you know, can support themselves or their families financially after leaving university. I guess if we manage to address all of these outcomes and have good academic as well as economic outcomes for the individuals at university, I would consider that as a very good outcome in consequence for everyone.
00:24:40:08 - 00:25:01:11
Alex Foot
I think I'd agree while some I think we could all agree that and totally not biased working at university and having gone through university that a society with more educated people is a good thing and making sure that more people can get educated is equally as good. So, Professor Li, thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having me.
00:25:01:13 - 00:25:14:24
Alex Foot
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