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The Fallacy of the Bolted Horse: Changing Our Thinking About Mature-Age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander University Students

Suzanne Plater, Julie Mooney-Somers and Jo Lander

The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education / Volume 44 / Issue 01 / August 2015, pp 59 - 69DOI: 10.1017/jie.2015.6, Published online: 05 May 2015

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S132601111500006X

How to cite this article:Suzanne Plater, Julie Mooney-Somers and Jo Lander (2015). The Fallacy of the Bolted Horse: Changing Our ThinkingAbout Mature-Age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander University Students. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education,44, pp 59-69 doi:10.1017/jie.2015.6

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The Australian Journal of Indigenous EducationVolume 44 Number 1 pp. 59–69 C© The Author(s) 2015 doi 10.1017/jie.2015.6

The Fallacy of the Bolted Horse: Changing OurThinking About Mature-Age Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander University StudentsSuzanne Plater,1 Julie Mooney-Somers2 and Jo Lander1

1Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia2Centre for Value, Law and Ethics in Medicine, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

The aim of this article is to critically review and analyse the public representations of mature-age universitystudents in developed and some developing nations and how they compare to the public representationsof mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students in Australia (‘students’ also refers tograduates unless the context requires specificity). Relevant texts were identified by reviewing education-related academic and policy literature, media opinion and reportage pieces, conference proceedings, andprivate sector and higher education reviews, reports and submissions. What this review reveals is striking:very few commentators are publicly and unambiguously encouraging, supporting and celebrating mature-ageAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students. This strongly contrasts with the discussions aroundmature-age university students in general, where continuous or lifelong learning is acclaimed and endorsed,particularly as our populations grow older and remain healthier and there are relatively lower numbers ofworking-age people. While scholars, social commentators, bureaucrats and politicians enthusiastically highlightthe intrinsic and extrinsic value of the mature-age student’s social and economic contributions, the overarchingnarrative of the mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student is one of ‘the horse has bolted’,meaning that it is too late for this cohort and therefore society to benefit from their university education. Inthis article we examine these conflicting positions, investigate why this dichotomy exists, present an alternativeview for consideration, and make recommendations for further research into this area.

Keywords: mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, university students

Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoplescomprise 3% of the total population (Australian Bureau ofStatistics [ABS], 2013b). Across every headline indicatorof disadvantage, there are wide gaps in outcomes betweenthis group and other Australians (Steering Committee forthe Review of Government Service Provision [SCRGSP],2011). The origins of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderdisadvantage can be traced back to historic oppression.Like other nations with violent colonialist pasts, many ofAustralia’s Indigenous peoples were killed, imprisoned,forced onto reserves, missions and stations, assimilated,denied citizenship rights, discriminated against, had theirland taken without compensation, and had their childrenremoved from their care without consent (Attwood &Markus, 1999; Reynolds, 1981, 1987, 1989; Tatz, 2003).However, unlike other developed nations, the oppressionof Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is relativelyrecent: the last known massacre of Aboriginal people took

place as late as 1928, at Coniston in the Northern Territory(Elder, 1998). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoplewere only formally recognised as citizens of Australia in1967, and Aboriginal children were still being forciblyremoved from their families in the 1970s. Even now, theAustralian Constitution does not recognise Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander people as the first peoples of thenation.

Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people arestill living with the trauma, loss and grief associated withthe policies and practices described above, and many ofthe resulting maladaptive practices have taken on a lifeof their own (Johns, 2010; Pearson, 2001). The result is

ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE: Suzanne Plater, Sydney School ofPublic Health, Edward Ford Building (A27), The University ofSydney NSW 2006, Australia.Email: suzanne.plater@sydney.edu.au.

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high rates of criminality, substance use and addiction,unemployment, homelessness, family breakdown, mor-bidity and mortality (SCRGSP, 2011). In this context,educational access, participation and outcomes are unsur-prisingly much lower than those of other Australians.According to the latest data (ABS, 2013a; Australian Gov-ernment, 2014; Behrendt, Larkin, Griew, & Kelly, 2012),school attendance rates for Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander students are 10 percentage points lower thanthose for other Australian students, and earlier data hasthe difference more than doubling in the later years ofschooling (Purdie & Buckley, 2010). School retentionrates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studentsare 51% compared to 81% for other Australian students,and Year 12 completion rates are 54% and 88% respec-tively. Lastly, only 10% of Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander students achieved university entrance scores com-pared to 46% for other Australian students, and com-pletion rates for all undergraduate degrees or above are7% and 26% respectively (ABS, 2013a; Australian Gov-ernment, 2014; Behrendt et al., 2012). Attainment of auniversity degree is even lower among Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander people living in regional and remoteareas: they are three times less likely to have completedan undergraduate degree than their urban-based coun-terparts (ABS, 2011). The impact of these educationaloutcomes on economic participation, civic engagement,crime, health, wellbeing, quality of life and longevity (ABS,2010, 2011; Brennan, Durazzi, & Sene, 2013) frames thepublic discussions around mature-age Aboriginal and Tor-res Strait Islander university education.

As academics involved in the education of mature-ageAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students,we decided to conduct a critical review to understand moreabout these students and their graduate attributes, andtheir experiences in overcoming the challenges describedabove. Our search focus changed once we discovered thatthe limited literature available did not on the whole reflectour experiential knowledge of this cohort.

MethodWe sought recent (2004–2014) national and internationalpapers, reports, strategic plans, submissions and publiccommentary relevant to mature-age Aboriginal and Tor-res Strait Islander university students and mature-age uni-versity students in general. We also sought material thatfocused on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander univer-sity students of all ages on the assumption that mature-ageAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students may be dis-cussed. We used six strategies to generate this material: asystematic search of peer-reviewed publications via index-ing databases (the Higher Education Empirical ResearchDatabase [HEER], Informit and Proquest); a handsearchof reference lists in relevant peer-reviewed publications,primarily using the University of Sydney’s library database

and Google Scholar; a systematic search of internationaland Australian news media via Factiva; a handsearch of rel-evant international and Australian government reports,strategic plans and discussion papers; a handsearch ofconference papers and think tank discussions, reports andsubmissions; and a handsearch of commentary by promi-nent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scholars, writ-ers, activists and politicians.

These search strategies produced a substantial amountof peer-reviewed and grey literature on mature-ageuniversity students in general, considerably less onAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students,and very little on mature-age Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander university students. However, it is possiblethat some literature on mature-age Australian universitystudents in general includes a small number of mature-ageAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university studentswithout explicitly mentioning their presence. Duringthe analytical phase, we continued to search for materialon mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderuniversity students. Suzanne Plater conducted the firstread of the collected literature and coded each textaccording to whether it described mature-age universitystudent characteristics and/or graduate characteristicsand/or their perceived social and economic value. Foreach text, Plater performed detailed coding for relevance,content and purpose, and in particular examined howthe language used might position the reader in relationto mature-age university students. We used this codeddata to compare and contrast descriptions of mature-ageuniversity students in general with mature-age Aboriginaland Torres Strait Islander university students. Throughthese processes we identified two very different represen-tations: one abounding with descriptions of the admirablecharacteristics of mature-age university students in gen-eral and their undisputed social and economic value, andthe other — the mature-age Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander university student representation — meagre inbreadth and depth and dismissive in language and tone.

ResultsRepresentations of Mature-Age UniversityStudents in General

Internationally, most universities define a mature-age stu-dent as aged 25–64 at the time of commencement andnot immediately following full-time secondary studies(Chesters & Watson, 2013; Krause, Hartley, & McInnis,2005; Tones, Fraser, Elder, & White, 2009), although someAustralian universities define a mature-age student as aged21 and over (O’Shea & Stone, 2011; Stone & O’Shea, 2013).Despite this variation in definition, the age of 25 years isseen as an appropriate cut-off point due to the signif-icant differences in life circumstances between studentsaged less than 25 years, who are classed as school leavers,and mature-age students (Tones et al., 2009). The term

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‘mature-age student’ is used throughout the literature todefine those whose prior knowledge includes work andlife experiences that are in addition to, or instead of, for-mal study (Toynton, 2005; Wyatt, 2011). Compared toschool leavers, mature-age students are more likely to beliving away from home with a partner, to be employedfull-time, and to have dependent children (Yoo & Huang,2013; Tones et al., 2009). Mature-age university students,in particular, demonstrate academic performance thatequals or is superior to that of school leavers, which isascribed to their ‘prepackaged’ attributes (Wyatt, 2011,p. 13) at commencement of their university education,and which includes accrued knowledge and skills, adapt-ability, flexibility and coping mechanisms, and a deeperlearning approach (Kenny, Kidd, Nankervis, & Connell,2011; Wyatt, 2011). Despite many mature-age studentsfacing economic, health, family, workplace and learn-ing challenges during their student years, they are morehighly focused, serious and motivated to complete forboth intrinsic and extrinsic reasons. These reasons includea desire to learn in order to solve important problemsin their lives, respect for the sacrifices their family havemade to support their university education, the pursuitof a higher income, employer expectations, and their ownsense of self-worth (Yoo & Huang, 2013).

The literature on mature-age university students ingeneral demonstrates a profound shift in the way devel-oped and some developing nations view this cohort andtheir contribution to future business and economic per-formance. This is primarily due to the world’s popula-tion growing older and healthier while the relative size ofthe working-age population decreases (Smith, Dymock, &Billett, 2013). The other salient trend has been described asthe ‘compression of morbidity’ (Bloom, Boersch-Supan,McGee, & Seike, 2011, p. 1); that is, anti-ageing tech-nologies and healthier lifestyles have not only increasedlongevity but have made old age healthier. The result isthat the morbid years are compressed into a smaller partof the life cycle, meaning that potential productive work-ing lifespans are longer, particularly among those who arenot doing manual labour.

Currently, nations with an ageing population do nothave the workforce, health and housing infrastructure orfinances to cater for their long-term needs, and individ-uals, organisations and societies need to quickly adapt(Bloom et al., 2011; Smith et al., 2013). The challengesposed by ageing have energised all sectors, and many schol-ars, bureaucrats and politicians have turned their minds tofinding a solution. In their article, ‘Attracting mature stu-dents into higher education: The impact to learning andsocial identity’, Howard and Davis (2013) make expliciteven in their title that enrolling and graduating older stu-dents is the desired outcome. Indeed, it is taken for grantedthat widening participation and increasing labour marketflexibility by developing a culture of learning should be apolicy and practice imperative. Howard and Davis (2013)

make reference to the Leitch Review of Skills (HM Trea-sury, 2006), which asserts that developed nations cannotcompete on natural resources and low labour costs andmust therefore invest in their vast untapped and naturalresource, that is, their people. Given that one third of theUK’s adult population do not hold the equivalent of a basicschool-leaving qualification and almost one half have diffi-culty with numbers, the emphasis, according to the LeitchReview, must be on developing the skills and knowledge ofthe adult population. In Australia, the challenges are sim-ilar: the 2006 international Adult Literacy and Life SkillsSurvey (ALLS) found approximately 40% of employedand 60% of unemployed Australians had poor or verypoor literacy or numeracy skills (Department of Industry,2012). As Australia is experiencing the same demographic,technological and global changes that affect other devel-oped and some developing nations (Department of Indus-try, 2012; HM Treasury, 2006), it too must rely more onits capacity to innovate and drive economic growth byinvesting in building the socially and economically valu-able skills of its adult population. The prevailing ‘asset’view expressed throughout the widening participation lit-erature recognises that the human capital and capabilitiesaccrued by mature-age university students will help coun-teract the threat to pension systems, workforce viability,health expenditure and reduced tax revenue (Bloom et al.,2011). Sustained employability is being encouraged andcontinuous learning has become a defining aspect of thisstrategy (Callender & Little, 2014; Smith et al., 2013).

There is also a shift in the discussions around individu-als who enter university at age 35 or older (Daniels, 2011).The European Commission’s (2008) document, Learningfor All, urges the setting up of more equitable educationprograms for older learners, and many developed andsome developing nations are actively encouraging citizensaged 50 or older to participate in university education(Keogh, 2009). It is interesting to note that whileinternational universities are investing in flexible learningopportunities for older mature-age students, Australianuniversities are seen as lagging in this area (Daniels, 2011).This may be due to Australia’s more singular focus onlong-term employability and economic outcomes, to theexclusion of broader cultural and social benefits, whichhas attracted criticism from scholars and educators forits narrow interpretation of widening participation (Gale& Tranter, 2011, as cited in Daniels, 2011). This is despitethe Australian government clearly recognising that olderAustralians are already required to support themselveswell past the retirement age of many European and OECDnations; in fact, Australia leads the OECD nations inextending the pensionable age to 67 by 2023 (Daniels,2011; Department of Human Services, 2009), and thecurrent Australian government has recently proposedextending it to age 70 by 2035 (Crowe & Ackerman, 2014).

A small number of Australian scholars have endeav-oured to expand the nation’s focus in this area.

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According to O’Shea and Stone (2011), university edu-cation for older people has been a significant instrumentfor social change even when the remaining number ofworking years is much reduced when compared to youngergraduates. This is particularly the case for mature-age uni-versity students from low socio-economic backgrounds.O’Shea and Stone (2011) suggest that providing educa-tion opportunities to this cohort can be both personallyand professionally transformative, and the positive influ-ence on their children increases the likelihood that uni-versity is seen as a realistic option. A love of learning,increased confidence and independence, and the poten-tial for generational change within families means morethan simply improved vocational opportunities (O’Shea& Stone, 2011). It also suggests that the benefits areexperienced almost straight away, well before graduation.Daniels (2011) makes a similar point and also suggeststhat a growing number of Australian women in their 40sand 50s are engaging with university education as a way toreinvent their personal and professional lives after fulfillingtheir home-based primary carer obligations. When inclu-sive of the data demonstrating that investing in univer-sity education significantly improves an older individual’sposition in the labour market (Chesters & Watson, 2013),the overall assessment of mature-age university studentsand their value to society is optimistic, encouraging andcelebratory.

Representations of Mature-Age Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander University Students

In contrast to the rich and abundant representationsabove, we struggled to locate any public discussions specif-ically around mature-age Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander university students. We do not doubt that thereare scholars and educators who recognise the value ofmature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander univer-sity students, invest in their education and advocate ontheir behalf. However, their efforts do not appear to havepenetrated the public domain. Exceptions include an arti-cle written by Plater (2012) that highlights the enablersof, and barriers to, attainment of a university degree formature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander uni-versity students, and brief mentions in literature thateither focus on or include in their discussions mature-age university students from low socioeconomic back-grounds (Tones et al., 2009; Daniels, 2011) or Aborigi-nal and Torres Strait Islander university students in gen-eral (Asmar, Page, & Radloff, 2011; Behrendt et al., 2012;Lane, 2009; Lane & Lane, 2008; Pechenkina & Anderson,2011).

Despite the dearth of material, some clues as to thecharacteristics of mature-age Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander university students do emerge. According toAsmar et al. (2011), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderuniversity students are more likely to be older, female,first in family to attend university, of low socioeconomic

status and reside in regional and remote communities.Behrendt et al.’s (2012) Review of Higher Education Accessand Outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait IslanderPeople: Final Report (RHEAO) — the current govern-ment’s guiding document in relation to Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander university education — confirmsthe predominance of older students, noting that 54% ofall Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university stu-dents are mature-age, and compares this figure to thatof non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mature-ageuniversity students (38%; p. 8).

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university stu-dents of all ages are more likely to study via ‘block-mode’ intensive programs (Asmar et al., 2011), whichusually entail a student staying on or near campus, attend-ing classes for up to a week at a time, and return-ing home to complete assessment tasks. Block-modecourses are described as particularly helpful for mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university stu-dents who have family, community and work respon-sibilities. Block-mode also offers Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander students the opportunity to blend academiclearning with workplace experience. According to Asmaret al. (2011), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stu-dents engage with work-related learning at a significantlyhigher rate than other domestic students (43% comparedto 29%).

We note that the development of higher skills for Abo-riginal and Torres Strait Islander university students isoften linked to the importance of community and com-munity development, and such students are significantlymore likely to report that their learning experiences hadenabled them to contribute ‘quite a bit’ or ‘very much’ tothe wellbeing of their community (Asmar et al., 2011,p. 11). This finding is supported by Plater (2011),who found that mature-age Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander university students perceived the attainment of auniversity education to be first about community empow-erment, and second about individual social and economicuplift. Asmar et al. (2011) and James, Krause, and Jen-nings (2010) also emphasise that Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander university students of all ages are morelikely to be motivated, optimistic and committed thanother domestic university students, even as they experi-ence overlapping life challenges that threaten their abilityto complete university education (Asmar, 2014).

Representations in Conflict

The positive descriptions of economic return, valuedhuman resources, new opportunities, self-discovery andgenerational change that characterise the representationsof mature-age university students in general are barelypresent in the representations of mature-age Aborigi-nal and Torres Strait Islander university students. Withthe exception of Asmar et al. (2011) and Plater (2011,2012), we were unable to locate any material that invoked

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optimism when referring to this latter cohort, and noone appears to have specifically investigated, supportedor celebrated their broader economic, cultural and socialexperiences of lifelong learning. This is surprising, givenmore than half of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderuniversity students are mature-age (Behrendt et al., 2012).In fact, exceptions aside, we argue that when mature-ageAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university studentsare mentioned or alluded to, the subtext is ‘the horse hasbolted’. This is the case across published academic lit-erature, media articles, conference proceedings, govern-ment policy documents, and government-commissionedreports, such as the RHEAO (Behrendt et al., 2012). TheRHEAO has made a significant contribution to the devel-opment and implementation of policies and practices thataim to improve the recruitment, retention and comple-tion rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander univer-sity students. Its expert panel, comprised of accomplishedscholars and senior public servants, is highly regarded.However, in the following extract, a marked defeatist toneis evidenced by the use of words such as ‘skewed’, ‘impacts’and ‘exacerbated’:

Currently, the [Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander] profile isskewed to mature-age students with a much lower proportion ofyounger Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in highereducation. Mature-age students experience impacts on theirlong-term economic wellbeing as they have a shorter period inwhich to earn higher rates of professional incomes. This is furtherexacerbated by the lower life expectancy for Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander people, meaning Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander men on average expect to live 11.5 years less thannon-Indigenous men and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderwomen expect to live 9.7 years less than non-Indigenous women.(Behrendt et al., 2012, p. 59)

To provide an immediate and unambiguous point of com-parison, we submit this description of the benefits expe-rienced by older Australians who returned to education(Chesters & Watson, 2013):

The results presented here show that age is not a barrier toimproving one’s human capital and enjoying the economicrewards of doing so. As human capital theory predicts, investingin higher education improves one’s position in the labour marketboth in terms of employment status and earnings. Our initialresults show that the returns to education for those returningto education (i.e., those who graduate after their twenty-fifthbirthday) do not differ significantly from those of younger peo-ple who graduate from university before they turn 25 years ofage. (p. 10)

The defeatism expressed in the RHEAO extract is implicitand explicit throughout the literature we reviewed. In aconsultation paper written for the RHEAO, the authorssuggest that by delaying access to university education infavour of full-time employment, Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander people face a ‘loss of productive years in aprofessional career after receiving [their] university quali-fication (Anderson & Potok, 2011, as cited in Pechenkina &

Anderson, 2011). When discussing the little understoodand mostly overlooked demographic transition of Abo-riginal and Torres Strait Islander people towards an olderpopulation, Jackson (2008) notes that the risk now forAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is that theywill become ‘old’ before they are educated. This positionis reinforced by Taylor (2011) who cautions that:

Given the current levels of Indigenous education, workforce par-ticipation and productivity, the danger is that the opportunityfor Indigenous families and communities to ‘cash in’ on [thedemographic transition] may be forgone, or at least less thanoptimised, for want of human capital among key implicatedcohorts. (p. 296)

Jackson (2008) and Taylor (2011) have contributed to animportant discussion about Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander population growth, spatial redistribution and thedynamics underpinning these changes, and Taylor specif-ically argues that investing in education and training forAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who reside inregional mining and service towns is desirable for sustain-able futures. The authors do not explain at what age anAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person is considered‘old’ or which age groups comprise the ‘key implicatedcohorts’, so we do not know if investment in educationand training is recommended only for young Aboriginaland Torres Strait Islander people. Regardless, it is easyto reach the conclusion that Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander capital and capabilities are seen as being moreheavily mediated by age than they are for non-Aboriginaland Torres Strait Islander people.

In other literature we reviewed, mature-age Aborig-inal and Torres Strait Islander university students wereinvisible. In the context of discussing the Northern Ter-ritory’s poor rate of school-to-university enrolments andcompletions due to lack of academic preparedness, (thelate) Professor Helen Hughes from the Centre for Inde-pendent Studies told the Sydney Morning Herald, ‘To talkabout access to higher education for the remote Aborigi-nal and Torres Strait Islanders is a joke. It’s a stupid joke’(Newman, 2011). While we accept Professor Hughes’point, it does effectively ignore the Aboriginal and Tor-res Strait Islander adults from remote communities whoare capable of, and do access university education on thebasis of prior learning and via non-traditional pathways.In the same article, and once again in the context of dis-cussing young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peo-ple and their low rate of university participation, ProfessorIan Anderson from Melbourne University’s Institute forIndigenous Development states, ‘That [school-leaver] agegroup is the most economically productive time in life.It means there is a significant overall loss to the Abo-riginal economy by having that delay in access to highereducation’ (Newman, 2011). We do not argue with thisstatement. We simply note the lost opportunity to recog-nise the economic productivity of and contribution to the

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Aboriginal economy by mature-age Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander university students.

Other statements provide a more explicit sense of thedefeatism around mature-age Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander university students. We note an especially fatal-istic tone to some discussions around the low aspirationsof Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults, which hasbeen sheeted home to the provision of long-term uncon-ditional welfare. During their 2008 address to the Benne-long Society Conference, Joe Lane and (the late Aboriginalacademic) Maria Lane, posed these questions about Abo-riginal people from remote northern Australia:

But who from the northern communities might want to seekwork outside? Who is most desperate to either escape from theidiocy and horrors of settlement life or gain the skills to initiateand operate enterprises in northern settlements? The young menseem to be uninterested in genuine work, unless driving aroundall day in a Toyota constitutes work. Is it possible that some of theyounger people are more likely to seek to move, not in a floodbut in dribs and drabs over time to local towns? Why wouldthey move? To seek work opportunities? Or has settlement lifedegraded and desensitised young people too? Then is the onlyoption to focus on the education of young children? (p. 12)

At best, the message here is that there are few or no Abo-riginal and Torres Strait Islander adults who live in remotecommunities who might aspire to, or have the capabilitiesto successfully engage with university education. We arenot sure what the evidence is for this. Indeed, the courseswe are involved in have, over the past 15 years, graduatedmore than 200 mature-age Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander students, many of whom are from remote com-munities in the Northern Territory, Cape York and theTorres Strait.

A review of the commentary by influential Aboriginaland Torres Strait Islander people, such as Noel Pearson,Professor Marcia Langton and Professor Steven Larkin,found a similar singular focus on providing educationalopportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderchildren and young people. This then is the main gamein public discussions, peer-reviewed and grey literature,and policy documents. We are not suggesting that actionto provide quality school education and pathways to uni-versity education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderchildren and young people is not important and urgent.We are suggesting that through language, tone and omis-sion, the perhaps unintended and unanticipated messageis that investing in mature-age Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander university students will not yield results our soci-ety deems valuable.

Internal Conflict

And yet, there is a curious paradox here. The value ofAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents, grandpar-ents and postgraduate students as role models for thesesame children and young people is woven throughout thediscussions. Lane and Lane (2008) contended during their

Bennelong Society Conference address that Aboriginaland Torres Strait Islander people who make up what theyterm an ‘open society population’ (people who participatein mainstream society and are usually urban-based) wereshown the way by their parents and grandparents. Lane(2011) writes that the life choices involved with becomingan Aboriginal university graduate and reaping the socialand economic rewards may influence many people whoknow the graduate. Lane proposes that it is therefore ‘quitelikely that by 2020, half the Indigenous urban populationwill be a graduate, a student or someone strongly influ-enced by them in their own life choices’ (p. 2). Hughes andHudson (2011) also refer to the intergenerational effect ofuniversity education, stating that many of the Aboriginaland Torres Strait Islander students now attending univer-sity are from a third generation of parents who them-selves are university educated and this has assisted a moveto postgraduate qualifications. Pechenkina and Anderson(2011) argue the need for more postgraduate Aboriginaland Torres Strait Islander students and graduates to actas role models and research supervisors and participate inuniversity governance. Presumably, this role modelling isnot limited to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peo-ple who are aged under 25 or who followed traditionalpathways from school to university.

These conflicting positions are not confined to discus-sions about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studentsand graduates as role models. The RHEAO highlights the‘very good’ full-time employment and salary outcomesfor Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander graduates andsuggests that these outcomes may be ‘partially explainedby the mature age of many Indigenous students, the factthat many are employed while studying, and the extent towhich well-qualified Indigenous people are sought afterfor leadership roles’ (Behrendt et al., 2012, p. 21). Dur-ing a 2012 newspaper interview, Behrendt also suggestedthat one way for universities to reach the ambitious grad-uation targets set by the RHEAO is to recruit potentialmature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander univer-sity students from the workforce (Fanning, 2012). Perhapsone way to read these conflicting statements is to assumethat the mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderuniversity students being referred to are in their 20s andnot in their 30s or older.

Changing Our Thinking

The overwhelmingly defeatist representations of mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university stu-dents appear to be due to superficial ‘common sense’ideas that need to be challenged. The first of these isthat success in relation to university access, participationand outcomes means that ‘Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander students have a similar age profile to that of non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’ (Behrendtet al., 2012, p. 59). The suggestion that success dependson Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people following

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mainstream pathways from school to university ignoresthe possibility that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderpathways to university education may be differently con-structed. It also ignores the historical exclusion of Abo-riginal and Torres Strait Islander adults from school anduniversity education. When many potential students wereof high school age 20 years ago, only 30% of Aboriginaland Torres Strait Islander people had completed Year 12and very few of those lived in regional and remote areas(McMillan & Marks, 2003). Some Aboriginal and Tor-res Strait Islander people view university education as aEuropean construct with little or no relevance or meaningto their daily lives (Nakata, 2004, 2010; Nakata, Nakata,& Chin, 2008). For others, participation is discouragedby the geographical, financial, cultural, and social bar-riers to investing in university education (Page & Asmar,2008). We contend that the (comparatively) large percent-age of mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderuniversity students who have overcome long-term dis-enfranchisement to enrol in university education shouldbe celebrated by the RHEAO as a step towards rightinga historical wrong and part of a move closer to equityin education. Instead, in the next sentence, the authorsassert that the current university student profile is ‘skewedto mature-age students’. When taken together, these state-ments suggest an imbalance that if corrected would seeproportionally fewer mature-age Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander university students. Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander people comprise just over 1% of the uni-versity student population (ABS, 2011) despite comprising3% of the Australian population. Surely the problem hereis that there are too few young and older Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander university students and we shouldbe encouraging greater numbers of both.

The second ‘common sense’ idea is that mature-ageAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university studentsare economically disadvantaged by virtue of having ashorter period in which to earn a higher income. Thisimplies that attaining a university education at, say, age 35or 40 means that the graduate will not make productiveuse of their remaining working years, which may extendto age 70. Given the extent of the disadvantage in manyAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities andthe low numbers of qualified professionals and role mod-els, dismissing these years as inadequate for experiencingvaluable change is making the best the enemy of the good(an aphorism commonly ascribed to Voltaire). This posi-tion is based on the belief that productivity is measuredprimarily in economic longevity terms and ignores thebroader personal, familial, generational and social trans-formations that can occur over a relatively short timeframethrough education and training.

The third idea, which is closely linked to the second,is that the lower life expectancy of Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander people means that they are even furtherdisadvantaged by time. The implicit hopelessness of this

position ignores two facts. One is that the rate of earlydeath (while still unacceptably high and is higher in remoteareas) is decreasing overall: the average life expectancy forAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men is now 69.1years (10.6 years less than for non-Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander men) and for Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander women it is 73.7 years (9.5 years less than for non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women; AustralianGovernment, 2014). The other is that there are many Abo-riginal and Torres Strait Islander people who do not die ata younger age than their non-Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander counterparts. To assume that they do and aretherefore an unacceptable risk strikes us as unjustifiable.

We also question the singular focus on economic pro-ductivity, which is prevalent in many of the discussions.As Asmar et al. (2011) and Plater (2011) found, Aborigi-nal and Torres Strait Islander students do not always placethe same value on career progression, enhanced profes-sional identity and higher incomes as their non-Aboriginaland Torres Strait Islander counterparts. They may insteadaspire to roles that enable them to give back to their com-munity, as a participant in Plater’s study (2011) indicated:

The position [I’m in now] is lower than the one I was at before[doing the course]. I applied for this because I like [this commu-nity] and I like the work, and as I said to someone the other day,if the truth be known, I’m a health worker at heart. I wasn’tthere to become a big shot. I just want to be where I can dosomething I think is worthwhile. (p. 110)

Conclusion and RecommendationsIn Australia and internationally, widening university edu-cation participation to include mature-age students con-tinues to be justified in terms of sustainable economicproductivity and social returns. The representations ofmature-age university students in general were invariablypositive and reflect the view that expanding the numberof adults at university is core to the successful manage-ment of demographic, labour market and social cohe-sion challenges faced by developed and some developingnations. Research demonstrates their worth in terms ofstudent attitude and aptitude, increased confidence andindependence, employment status and earnings, work-force longevity, and potential for generational change.The difference when compared to the representations ofmature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander univer-sity students is stark. In the place of optimism, inclusion,and a determined approach to attracting, retaining andgraduating mature-age university students in general, wefound pessimism, omission and no indication that it wasdesirable to expend resources on mature-age Aboriginaland Torres Strait Islander university students. This crit-ical review and analysis draws attention to representa-tions circulating within government departments, highereducation institutions, private-sector organisations andin the media that under-appreciate, under-represent or

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Suzanne Plater, Julie Mooney-Somers and Jo Lander

ignore mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderuniversity students. This is despite their numbers beingpredominant. In fact, some see this predominance itself asproblematic, as though there could be such a thing as toomany mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderuniversity students.

We identified a ‘common sense’ rationale for this pref-erence of young over ‘old’: the number of post-degreeproductive years ‘lost’ by mature-age Aboriginal and Tor-res Strait Islander graduates, a predicted truncated lifeexpectancy, implicit assumptions that this cohort will notmake good use of the remaining 10 to 40 years they likelyhave in the workforce, and the focus on economic returnsas the sole measure of their value. Many of the sources wereviewed for this article are commendably striving to revo-lutionise school education in Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander communities and we agree that there is undoubt-edly a crisis in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander edu-cation. However, instead of arguing that adequate andappropriate educational resources are made available toall Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, resourcesthat would support the academic advancement of mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university stu-dents are seen as more usefully channelled elsewhere. Iron-ically, it appears that Australia is pinning all its ‘Closingthe Gap’ hopes on the young at the expense of thosewho are recognised as role models, community leaders,change agents, and motivated and committed universitystudents.

It is vital that we broaden and deepen our understand-ing of mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderuniversity students and the value they potentially bring totheir own lives, the lives of those they influence, and to thewider Australian society. Doing so would lead to a greaterappreciation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peo-ple who have overcome the barriers that prevented themfrom participating in university education at a youngerage, have grasped the opportunity to experience the trans-formative nature of university education, and who haveused their enhanced human capital and capabilities tocontribute to society in ways they perceive as meaning-ful. Rather than the defeatism of the ‘horse has bolted’narrative, an upbeat narrative of second chances and newbeginnings may instead be found: one that acknowledgesthe powerful influence exerted on young Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander people by older Aboriginal and Tor-res Strait Islander people who have crafted a better lifefor themselves, their family and community membersthrough attainment of a university qualification.

Conflict of InterestsSuzanne Plater currently teaches in the Graduate Diplomain Indigenous Health Promotion at the University ofSydney and was its academic coordinator from 2009–2013.This course is specifically for mature-age Aboriginal and

Torres Strait Islander people from urban, regional andremote communities nation-wide. Jo Lander is a regu-lar guest lecturer in the Graduate Diploma in IndigenousHealth Promotion and contributes to its curriculum andresource development. Julie Mooney-Somers is an occa-sional guest lecturer in the Graduate Diploma in Indige-nous Health Promotion.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge and thank Geoffrey Angelesand Yvonne Weldon, two mature-age Aboriginal univer-sity graduates who generously offered their perspectiveson this issue.

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About the AuthorsSuzanne Plater is an academic with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health programs in the SydneySchool of Public Health at the University of Sydney. She was the academic coordinator for the Graduate Diplomain Indigenous Health Promotion at the University of Sydney from 2008–2013 and prior to that was the HealthPromotion Coordinator for Queensland Health’s Deadly Ears Program. Suzanne still teaches in the GraduateDiploma in Indigenous Health Promotion and is also the academic coordinator for the Master of Public Health’sIndigenous Health Promotion unit of study.

Julie Mooney-Somers is a Senior Lecturer in Qualitative Health Research at the Centre for Values, Ethics and theLaw in Medicine, University of Sydney. Her research interests focus on the provision of health services aroundstigmatised conditions (infectious diseases related to sexual practice and drug use) and marginalised populations(young people and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people). She works closely with Aboriginal communitycontrolled health services.

Jo Lander is a Director, Teaching and Learning with the Sydney School of Public Health and Associate Dean,Learning and Teaching with the Sydney Medical School at the University of Sydney. Her professional and researchinterests include linguistics, e-learning and academic literacies, with a particular focus on the learning needsof mature-age postgraduate students. Jo teaches into the Graduate Diploma in Indigenous Health Promotionprogram and has developed online resources to support students in this program.

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