This article is part of a series exploring ideas for reforming higher education in Australia. We asked academics to analyse overseas models, innovative ways forward in a digital world, and ideas we may not have considered.

Higher education policy is contested. Economic imperatives may be seen as ends in themselves, but there are bigger questions: what is higher education for, whose interests should it serve and how might conflicting interests be balanced?

Nowhere are these questions more morally pressing than in the role universities might play in Indigenous people’s education and research.

Culture counts

Culture counts in education. Culture influences the things people wish to teach and research. It frames the expertise they bring to the academy. Institutions concerned with universal knowledge and free intellectual inquiry should have no difficulty contributing to these objectives.

Universities are supposed to advance everybody’s ideas and aspirations. However, in practical terms, these ideals struggle for influence in the modern university.

As universities become more exclusively vocationally focused they are more likely to have predetermined views of whose knowledge counts. A cultural gap that should not be present may be created for Indigenous students.

Indigenous student support programmes, such as the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme, help narrow the cultural gap. Scholarships help with financial obstacles to study. Flexible course structures help people to fit study around the complexities of everyday life. Yet, Australian universities aspire to better.

Increase the number of Indigenous students
Universities Australia has set significant targets to increase Indigenous student enrolments. Indigenous Australians represent 2.7% of the national population and 1.6% of university enrolments.

Universities Australia proposes measures to increase the rate of Indigenous enrolment growth by at least 50% more than the general population and, ideally, by 100%. But this is a long term objective without a definite time frame.

As the Indigenous population is disproportionately of an age where qualifications are most commonly attained, there is an important economic imperative to maintain efforts to keep Indigenous enrolments growing. This is because there is a strong correlation between qualifications and capacity for meaningful self-determination.

In New Zealand, Maori graduates have similar employment opportunities, incomes and levels of civic engagement to all other graduates. Five years after graduating, Maori doctoral graduates earn more than non-Maori graduates.

Graduation eliminates the gap in people’s capacity for self-determination. Not everybody is equally likely to go to university. Even so, in New Zealand, Maori enrolments increased by 16% between 2008 and 2017. Postgraduate enrolments increased 19% over the same period.

Reasons for this including a greater number of Maori achieving the requisite school qualifications, a disproportionate number of Maori being of school leaving age and significant financial support from some iwi [tribes] for their students.

Increase the number of Indigenous academics
Indigenous graduates are important because some become Indigenous academics. Maori academics contribute to better public policy.

The internationally acclaimed Te Kotahitanga teacher professional development project is illustrative. It is the product of a strong Maori academy. Its “by Maori, for Maori, for all” inspiration makes it an important statement of Maori self-determination.

In 2002, Nga Pae o te Maramatanga, the national Centre of Research Excellence for Maori Development and Advancement, set a goal of raising the number of Maori with a PhD or a PhD in progress to 500 within five years. The goal was achieved in four.