But joy is not unconfined at the Curtin U based National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education

Certainly, Education  Minister Jason Clare has promised $20.5m over four years, for the NCSEHE, but to do more, differently. “The centre has been around for a while.  And it does good research.  But I want to see a step change.  I want to see real results. That means trialling, evaluating, implementing and monitoring the sorts of things that will really shift the dial,” he told the Universities Australia dinner, last Wednesday.

And in an announcement Thursday, he added, “the centre will also work with universities and other education institutions to evaluate and improve their equity programmes.”

So with $5m pa for four years and the apparent promise of system-wide evaluative authority, what’s not to like?  And yet there is anxiety among some equity experts that the NCSEHE as now is will not be part of the “step-change”

They might be right. Curtin U issued a statement to CMM late Friday, “recognising the excellent research base from NCSEHE to date, the minister has asked that a new centre be formed  to focus on research translation.

“No plans have been finalised, but we envisage the new centre to be quite different albeit with some continuity with the past and using the research accumulated to date from NCSEHE and the broader literature.”

Which way is up for “a step-change”  Productivity Commission Michael Brennan points  to what might be a possible direction. In a speech to the Universities Australia conference last week Mr Brennan suggested, “the expansion of access created opportunities for a different-looking cohort of students, and many of them had the transformative experience that university can provide.

“But they were clearly a group with different qualities and needs, and one clear conclusion was that universities need to take their responsibilities that group of students seriously – not to assume that the student experience is generic and have a one-size fits all, volume based attitude to enrolment,” he said.

This appears in-line with Mr Clare’s announced objective of increasing the HE participation rate of low SES Australians to 20 per cent (a still un-reached goal set by then education minister Julia Gillard in 2020).

NCSEHE research is big on this – what might be the difference Mr Clare has in mind is his statement that the centre work with universities to “evaluate and improve their equity programmes.”