Students from equity groups are more likely to enrol in high-status courses in universities outside the Group of Eight, according to Erica Southgate’s new equity fellowship report, Fair connection to professional careers. She produced the report for the National Centre for the Study of Equity in Higher Education at Curtin U.

Dr Southgate found that students from equity groups enrolled in IT, engineering, medical studies, physiotherapy and law at G08 institutions, “make up a remarkably small percentage of their field of education cohort.”

“Students from equity groups are far more likely to be enrolled in high-status degrees in less elite universities and that these students make up a remarkably small percentage of their FoE cohort in Go8 universities in particular. From an equity perspective, such patterns of unequal distribution require concerted attention,” she argues.

“It is imperative that universities expand and innovate around pipeline, enabling and alternative pathway programs into high-status degrees for students from equity groups. … If the Go8 universities are genuinely committed to equity, as some of their documentation suggest then they need to substantially improve the proportion of their student cohort who are from equity groups, particularly in high-status degrees. To not do so, and yet continue to make claims that they are concerned stakeholders in the equity field, would be disingenuous,” Dr Southgate suggests.