A Study On The Equal Opportunity Of Higher Education In Australia

In the nineteen eighties, Australia government began to expand their higher education system, and their education system changed to mass education from the elite education. The expansion of higher education system made people pay more attention on the problem of unequal opportunity access to higher education. In the 1980 s and 1990 s, the Australia party leader pay much attention on the “equity” in Australia society, the Australia’s economy developed in a rapid speed, the multiculturalism became the Australia ‘s basic state policy and the ethnics were diversified in Australia.Under this background, the Australia government take the serious account on the problem of unequal opportunity access to higher education.In fact, before 1980 s, the Australia government had noticed the problem of underrepresented groups students’ unequal opportunity access to higher education. This could be proved by the policy which was named the aboriginal and Torres Study Funding Scheme. But at that time, the Australia government had no consistent understanding about who belong to the underrepresented group in Australia higher education. In 1990, the Australia government enacted a policy document which was named Fair Chance for All: National and Institutional Planning for Equity in Higher education. The discussion paper identified six disadvantages groups in higher education: People from Socio-Economy Disadvantage Background, Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander People, Women, People with Disabilities, People from Rural and Isolated Area, People from Non-English-Speaking Backgrounds.To protect the underrepresented groups’ opportunity of access to higher education and their higher education participation, the Australia government enacted some laws and made some policy: the student loan project under the higher education contribution scheme and higher education participation and partnership program to protect the people’s access to education opportunity who have low Socio-Economy background, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Study Assistance Scheme to protect the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s education opportunity,higher education disability support program to make sure that more and more people with disability could participant in higher education.In the first place, the thesis analyzes the social basis and theoretical basis which effected the Australia government to make the laws and education policy to protect the underrepresented students’ opportunity of accessing to higher education. Then the thesis assesses the effectiveness of the policy by analyzing the number of students who applied for and had been admitted by university and the number of different group of students in higher education. Last but not least, the thesis tries to analyze the group eight’s recruitment practices and statistics to uncover how the higher education institutions implemented the policy the government made and then analyzes the effectives of this policy.According to the statistic, the thesis found that different groups of higher education students have the different opportunity of accessing to higher education: those who came from the metropolitan have higher education opportunity then those who came from the rural area, those who came from the high SES have higher education opportunity then those who came from the low SES. But the thesis also found that there are more and more students who came from the underrepresented group applied for the university, and the growth rate is higher than those who came from presented group. Besides, the thesis also found that offer rate difference between different groups of students are began to diminish. It means that the underrepresented group’s opportunity of accessing to higher education and their higher education participation were protected which also indicates that the policy which the Australia government made were effective.