Shaping the 21st century student experience at regional universities: Final Report

Shaping the 21st century student experience at regional universities: Final Report

The Australian higher education system operates in an environment increasingly influenced by complex sociocultural, economic and political forces. As a demand-driven system, it offers choice and flexibility about what, where and how to study. However, census data show that participation and attainment rates for bachelor-degree qualifications for people in inner regional, outer regional and remote areas continue to lag behind metropolitan areas. Furthermore, national data (Australian Government Department of Education and Training, 2016) show that students enrolled in regional universities have higher attrition and lower completion rates than students who study in capital city universities. The poorer outcomes were a motivating concern for the project, which sought to thoroughly investigate the under-researched reasons underpinning the regional student experience using a three-stage research design. We believed that the rhetoric aligning the characteristics of regional university students with their academic outcomes was masking a more complex and nuanced set of conditions influencing the experiences of regional university students. Recent contributions in the student engagement and student experience literature suggested that these conditions might include individual characteristics such as emotion, motivation, and proficiency as a student, how well institutions are attuned to meeting these needs, students' interest in the domain of study, and interactions between students and their teachers and institutions.