Deakin Speaking

When uni drop out happens, it can be tempting to balme the student. But this is simplistic thinking at its worst.

The ways in which students from low socio-economic status in Australian higher education are thought about and talked about need some careful examination.

 There are deficit conceptions of students from low socio-economic backgrounds and deficit conceptions of the institutions in which they study. But is there a more useful and progressive framing of the widening participation agenda?

The Australian federal government has set an ambitious target in an attempt to address the under-representation of students from low socioeconomic status (low SES) backgrounds in higher education: that by the year 2020, twenty per cent of higher education enrolments at undergraduate level should be from students from low SES backgrounds.