Indigenous scholars carve Oxbridge path

Before 2010 no indigenous students were doing a full-time degree at Oxford or Cambridge — now there are 17.

Jordan English, Jared Field and Jessica Buck at Oxford. Picture: Peter Greenland

Jessica Buck, Jordan English and Jared Field are more than exceptionally bright students — they are part of a generational change that has resulted in 40 indigenous students enrolled at Oxford, Cambridge or the London School of Economics since 2010.

This represents a dramatic turnaround. Before 2010 there had been no indigenous students at any of these universities doing a full-time degree; now there are 17 Aboriginal and Torres Strait ­Islander students, and over the past few years all who have started have successfully finished their studies.

“Aboriginal people need to believe that anything is possible,’’ said Oxford student Ms Buck, who is returning to Australia to take up an internship at the Telethon Kids Institute in Perth after finishing a DPhil — the Oxford equivalent of a PhD or Doctor of Philosophy — in cancer research and being the cox of last year’s Oxford rowing eight in the ­famous Boat Race.

“Previously I had never considered Oxford or Cambridge would accept us, or our ideas.’’

The change has come about through the Aurora Education Foundation, initiated by an Australian Rhodes scholar, lawyer Richard Potok. He helped with the Charlie Perkins Scholarship, named for the activist who was one of the first Aboriginal people to obtain a university degree, and the Roberta Sykes Scholarship, and began encouraging applicants to consider top-ranked overseas universities.

The first two Aurora students, Paul Gray and Christian Thompson, started their DPhils at ­Oxford in 2010. The following year the first Aboriginal Rhodes ­scholar, Rebecca Richards, started at Oxford after seeing details of the Rhodes in the Aurora study guide.

Mr Potok said the Aurora foundation then began study tours — an exploratory trip to various top-notch universities in Britain and the US for indigenous students — to expose them to the universities and the opportunities available.

The 2011 study tour resulted in an additional five students at ­Oxford and Cambridge. Since then there has been a significant take-up, especially as former scholars travel Australia talking to students to think about applying for higher study at an overseas university.

Ms Buck, 28, was a Charlie Perkins scholar and said the study tour was critical in meeting lecturers and being encouraged to apply to Oxford.

Over the past 3½ years at ­Oxford she has delved into finding testing agents that can help differentiate various types of cancers in the brain using MRI imaging. Last week she was named the Young Australian of the Year in the UK.

Among those now studying at Oxford is Mr Field, 26, who, like Ms Buck, is a Kamilaroi from northern NSW. He said the Oxford experience over the past four years doing a DPhil in mathematics and systems biology on a Charlie Perkins scholarship had been “intense but a great adventure’’.

Mr English, 24, from Brisbane, is from the Butchulla people on Fraser Island and is on a John Monash scholarship doing a bachelor of civil law and has just received a Rhodes scholarship to do a DPhil in law.