The Education Department has quietly put on its website (in the file marked ‘Appendices’) the ‘equity’ student enrolment data. It’s more bad news for the ‘HECS deters’ theory, though good news for social mobility. The 2005 25% increase in student contribution amounts has had no negative effect on the proportion of students classified as being of low socio-economic status (using the proxy of postcode). In fact, they slightly increased their share of commencing students in both 2005 and 2006, and of all students in 2006 (there was a lagged effect in 2005 of a lower-than-usual intake in the previous year).

Low SES enrolments in the private sector are also up in asbolute and percentage terms, though there have been so many new institutions added to the list between 2005 and 2006 that the two figures are not directly comparable.

However, I would not read very much into these figures. This is a very flat indicator. If you round the numbers, every year since data collection begain in 1991 the overall share of low SES students of total enrolment has been 15%. In the two years for which there is data for private sector, it has been 13% after rounding.
Continue reading “HECS deters theory wrong again” →