Australian universities must redesign themselves for a “new normal” where part-time students dominate many classrooms, research suggests.
A report from the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (Acses) says part-timers now comprise 35 per cent of university enrolments and 60 per cent or more of postgraduate, online and mature-aged students. Yet institutional and government policies remain geared towards full-time attendance, tipping the scales against people who come disproportionately from disadvantaged backgrounds and drop out or fail at higher rates than their full-time counterparts.
Report author Kelly Linden said universities had a blind spot about part-time students. Policies were based around 20th-century assumptions that part-timers were cashed-up workers studying 50 per cent of a full-time load.
In reality, about half of part-time students took just one subject a semester, and many slipped in and out of full-time study as their circumstances changed. Others were in effect full-time students picking up subjects during summer terms.
Linden said many students had reduced their study loads to work more because they were struggling with the post-Covid surge in living costs. Others were mature-aged parents lured to university after online delivery and work-from-home policies made higher education a feasible option.
