Indigenous academics missing from university ranks

More support is needed to address the relatively small number of indigenous Australians in the higher halls of academia.

Indigenous Australians are far less likely to work as academics compared with non-indigenous employees, latest statistics show.

Department of Education and Training figures for 2017 show that a little more than 1 per cent of university employees, which includes academic and general staff, are indigenous.

Indigenous Australians are estimated to represent 3.3 per cent of the total Australian population.

Furthermore, of people employed by universities, indigenous staff are less likely to be academics (32 per cent) compared with non-indigenous (43 per cent).

The figures also show that the University of Sydney has the highest number of indigenous academics in the country. The university has 31 equivalent full-time indigenous academics, followed by Queensland’s Griffith University with 23 and South Australia’s Flinders University, also with 23.

The universities with the lowest numbers of indigenous academics include Victoria’s Feder­ation University and Swinburne University of Technology, with one each, and the University of Canberra which has no indigenous academics.

Elizabeth McKinley, a professor of indigenous education at the University of Melbourne, said universities were trying to increase the number of indigenous academics. “Everyone is after indigenous academics and indigenous students, and in particular PhD students,” she said.

However, Professor McKinley said unless indigenous students were given targeted support from the time they were at school as well as during their undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, the number of indigenous academics would remain small.

She said a key to increasing the number of indigenous academics was through financial and men­toring support for doctoral students. This involved taking into account the individual circumstances of indigenous higher degree students. Professor McKinley said some students were older and needed different support than younger students.

She said support was particularly important during the time indigenous students had graduated with their doctorates and when they started seeking academic positions. She said they needed guidance, for example, on publishing journal articles to optimise their academic opportunities. They also needed financial support.

Steve Larkin, chief executive of the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education in the Northern Territory, agreed that PhD students needed financial support but said scholarships were only part of the answer. He said many indigenous students had to work full time or supplement their scholarships with work as tutors in universities and needed study leave to complete their doctorates.

“So it is really about finding ways to buy out that time so they can be replaced temporarily for six or 12 months on full pay,” he said.

Professor Larkin, who led a 2011 inquiry into increasing indigenous academics, said indigenous units also were facing financial challenges. Up until last year many indigenous units were employing academics primarily through a commonwealth support fund. “Those provisions have now been limited,” he said.

Professor Larkin said all of Australia would benefit if there were more indigenous academics and if universities embraced indigenous knowledge. “This is a group of people who have a particular perspective on knowing and understanding and making sense of the world,” he said. “So there is a knowledge system there with a different engagement with reality and that adds to our international and national capital.”

Professor Larkin said bringing a different knowledge system to the challenges Australia faced could help find solutions.

Melbourne University has begun a supportive Academic Shepherds Program for indigenous people planning to apply to undertake a PhD at the university.