Performance study looks to lift the retention rate at universities

Universities are more open than ever to a broader section of the community, but with more enrolments comes more drop outs.

Higher education in Australia has undergone an epic expansion during the past decade. More Australians attend university than ever. This growth is fuelling the knowledge economy and has boosted prospects for a demographic of Australians who previously have not had access to ­higher education.

Alongside this move to a universal higher education system is a growing concern that while ­access has risen, there has been lower student retention. This is despite relevant data showing that attrition rates have been ­relatively stable during the past few years.

The government has indicated that growth in university base funding from 2020 onwards will be related, in part, to performance linked to retention and ­employment.

The higher education attainment rate in regional Australia is still half or less of that in major ­cities. It is therefore vital that ­regional university campuses are able to expand to give more ­oppor­tunities to regional students and develop regional ­economies.

To inform our input to government, the Regional Universities Network recently engaged Nous Group to develop a framework for measuring performance. ­Retention and jobs are of critical importance to students, but both students and the sector as a whole can benefit from con­sidering broader elements of ­performance.

Universities are expected to play a wider role in our economy and communities. Governments have articulated these expectations through the Higher Education Support Act’s objectives, which include a system that is “characterised by quality, diversity and equity of access; and contributes to the development of cultural and intellectual life in Australia; and is appropriate to meet Australia’s social and economic needs for a highly educated and skilled population”.

The focus on student retention is important given its contribution to the Australian economy, as well as individual student success.

However, retention rates are complex and vary widely ­because of a range of psycho­social, individual and institutional reasons. These are widely known and go to personal, work and family circumstances, and also student engagement with their institutions and the learning experience.

Students who study part time, by distance or at a mature age, populations well represented at regional universities, commonly have higher attrition rates than others. Twenty-eight per cent of RUN’s students are from Australia’s lowest socio-economic bracket, many of whom are the first in their family to go to university, as opposed to the 16 per cent national average.

Australia’s higher education system, unlike many older systems, has long been characterised by an openness to opportunity; we don’t restrict access to school-leavers and have long embraced models that allow students to come and go between sectors, at different life stages, depending on their aspirations and commitments. Under present measures, these groups have lower retention. A focus only on retention runs the risk of excluding a substantial cohort of Australians from university.

We therefore propose that university performance be assessed with a range of core and optional measures across HESA objectives. This articulates the full range of activities universities are expected to deliver outside of ­research. It provides a comprehensive assessment of higher education outcomes and broader community impact to measure success.

The view is informed by the success of Pennsylvania’s university performance funding system, which combines core measures on completion and access with a range of optional measures to reflect difference between ­universities. Measures for performance must include, crucially, student ­retention, but with a weighting applied based on universities’ student profiles. A submission process will allow universities to have the opportunity to articulate the strategic context around the outcomes.

This reflects lessons from ­England’s Teaching Excellence Framework and the recommendations of a New Zealand Productivity Commission report last year into higher education.

By observing lessons from overseas, and the experience of regional universities and our students, we think it ­is important that a proposed performance framework provides an opportunity to account for ­institutional difference to capture the full range of university performance. This will support the Australian higher education sector to focus on areas for improvement without compromising its unique strengths.

Greg Hill is chairman of the Regional Universities Network and vice-chancellor of the University of the Sunshine Coast. Caroline Perkins is executive director of RUN.