Access and participation of students from humanitarian refugee backgrounds

About

As a signatory to the United Nations 1951 International Convention on Refugees, Australia
continues to accept significant numbers of humanitarian refugees on an annual basis. Recent research has highlighted the fact that many of these Humanitarian Program entrants arrive as highly skilled and well-educated persons. This project investigated the access and participation of students from humanitarian refugee backgrounds in the Australian higher education system.

Aims

The intended aims of this research were to:

  • review the literature in order to identify key principles and practices for engaging and supporting refugee background communities with their access to and participation in the university system;
  • address the lack of information on the levels of participation of people of refugee background in Australian higher education;
  • provide an overview of the participation of the diverse refugee background communities across the Australian higher education system;
  • identify patterns of under-representation across the university system, courses and communities;
  • encourage all Australian universities to develop better targeted and designed engagement programs for the diverse refugee background communities;
  • provide a research base for the development of comprehensive national and international responses to the issues of the participation of refugee background students in higher education.

Researchers

  • Dr Les Terry, (formerly Coordinator and Research Fellow, Melbourne Refugee Studies Program) Asia Institute, University of Melbourne
  • Dr Ryan Naylor, (formerly at the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education) College of Science, Health and Engineering, La Trobe University
  • Dr Nga Nguyen, Cancer Council of Australia
  • Dr Alberto Rizzo, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne

With support from the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education at Curtin University and Xavier Irvine (The University of Melbourne).

Outcomes

A report was published in 2016.