University sector: now and future of higher education in Australia

Friday, 20 October 2023

Appeared in Newcastle Herald 20 October 2023.  

Thousands of high school students in our region are now well into their HSC exams - an important milestone in the lives of Year 12 students.

Vice Chancellor Alex Zelinsky
Wishing all the students right across our region the very best of luck with their remaining exams

Around half of our first-year students come to university directly from high school and we know this time of year can be overwhelming and extremely stressful for them and their families.

In the three months leading up to the exams, our University supported almost 3,000 high school students with their preparation, running HSC support webinars and workshops, and our team of student ambassadors – current university students who know only too well the pressures of Year 12 - visited high schools right across our region.

And this year for the first time, we rolled out our sector-leading Early Entry program that allowed Year 12 students to receive an offer to our University before the HSC exams began. It is based on their progress to date and estimated ATAR, and of course contingent on their completion of the HSC.

We know that students perform their best when they are confident and not overly stressed, so we were very pleased to send out more than 3,500 early entry offers to students across the Hunter and Central Coast regions before their exams.

HSC exams are important. Exams teach students more than the skills of achieving an ATAR score, it’s about the process and is a sign of a student's commitment and ability to focus on their goals. And for those students who want to study at our University, it’s one of the avenues to entry, but not the only avenue to university study.

Remember, there is always a place for you at our University.

I wish all the students right across our region the very best of luck with their remaining exams.

As these students prepare for their final exams, it’s also timely to reflect on the university sector, which remains one our largest exports and a key economic and education driver for our country.

University life and the sector has changed significantly in recent years. The cost to educate our students has increased and on the back of the pandemic, there are fewer domestic students completing the HSC, creating more competition from within Australia and abroad.

What is clear, is the way students think about university study has changed. This means we need to reassess how we deliver our degrees and consider what new programs are needed to match student, industry and community needs.

We’ve already made strides down this path, working with industry to implement new programs like our Graduate Diploma in Teaching (Secondary) to help with the region’s teacher shortage. The Graduate Diploma is perfect for anyone who has an existing degree and is considering becoming a high school teacher, and designed so that we can get qualified teachers in classrooms sooner.

At a broader sector level, the development of the University Accord provides a beacon of light. It presents us with a meaningful chance to provide stability, drive reform and deliver generational change for our students that could shape higher education for the next 30 years.

It is pleasing to see that the Accord panel has placed equity as the key pillar of Australia's higher education system. Placing equity at the heart of the system aligns to our University values, as we believe that every person has the right to participate and succeed.

One of our proudest equity contributions has been through the Wollotuka Institute, which has helped us support the highest number of Indigenous graduates of any university in Australia.

Wollotuka celebrates its 40th anniversary this year – a significant milestone. It’s the kind of dedication to equity that achieves results, with more than 4 per cent of our domestic students identifying as Indigenous. We also have a high retention rate — the proportion of students who continue studying after their first year — at almost 80 per cent for Indigenous students.

This is the kind of big idea and commitment that will be needed to shift our thinking on how the sector operates to ensure our universities keep pace with the rest of the world.

Higher education has the power to change a person’s life. By working collectively as a sector, and by seizing the opportunities in front of us, we can achieve our goal to help change the life of one more student. And who knows, that student may well be sitting their HSC exams this week.

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