¡°Enormous¡± disparity in higher education participation across Australia, with admission rates varying widely by gender, state and schooling background, has raised questions over the viability of the Australian Universities Accord¡¯s equity goals.

An analysis of longitudinal census data has found that a ballooning gender gap in degree attainment is even more pronounced when schooling sector and geography are taken into account. Attainment rates range from more than 68 per cent among female private school graduates in Victoria to less than 10 per cent among men who attended Catholic schools in the Northern Territory.

The study, by data analyst David McCloskey, investigated how many secondary school students in 2011 had obtained bachelor¡¯s degrees by 2021. It found that independent schools comprehensively outperformed government schools in funnelling students into higher education.

Meanwhile, the higher education achievement gap between females and males had blown out to 13 percentage points, after women overtook men in the 1990s ¨C raising the question of whether men could ever ¡°catch up¡±.

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¡°The differences in outcomes by sex, state and school sector are so large and significant that it is very unlikely that any of the aspirations of the Universities Accord will be met, unless the causes of these differences can be identified and addressed,¡± McCloskey writes in a published by the Australian Population Research Institute, where he is research associate. ?

¡°The federal government is committing an additional A$2.5 billion [?1.2 billion] from 2024-25 to 2034-35 to support participation in tertiary education from prospective students in under-represented backgrounds. Primary and secondary schooling appear to be the formative years in establishing engagement with post compulsory education. Any hypotheses on how to achieve equitable outcomes need first to build insight into why current outcomes are so varied.¡±

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Newly released higher education student statistics, , show that the gender gap is continuing to widen. Men constituted 38 per cent of commencing domestic students, down from 39 per cent in 2020 and 41 per cent in 2010.

While women¡¯s share of university enrolments is rising, so is the proportion of students of ¡°indeterminate/intersex/unspecified¡± gender. A total of 628 students met this description in 2017, when the category found its way into Education Department statistics. The tally had increased to 1,738 by 2020 and 5,154 by 2024.

At an institutional level, numbers of indeterminate/intersex/unspecified students ranged from 655 at the University of Sydney ¨C which had more such students than all other New South Wales institutions combined ¨C and 549 at the University of Melbourne to six at Bond University and none at Avondale University. Thirty-six per cent of these students were in Victorian universities, with another 22 per cent in Queensland.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com