Access to Higher Education Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Access to Higher Education - Assignment Example umber of domestic students under two scenarios 2006-2021 by capital city Available at: http://www.universityworldnews.com/filemgmt_data/files/AUR_51-01_Birrell_Edwards.pdf Some of those recommendations include reducing the cost of access to higher education, strengthening the domestic universities to provide quality education to Australian citizens. In addition, due to the inequality level in accessing education especially among people from the lower socio-economic class, the government should aim at empowering these people to enable them compete favourably with the other social classes for positions in the universities. Discussion of the contributing factors Higher education in Australia has been faced with many challenges, these challenges have led to low enrolment in the universities and consequently a small population of the country has graduate qualifications. Some of the factors that have caused the low levels of university enrolments include the following. 1. The high cost of education- One challenge that makes increase in access of higher education hard to achieve is the cost implication that comes with it (Chen & St John, 2011, p23). The cost of acquiring a degree is very high in the country such that not everyone in the society can be able to match. This high cost of acquiring a degree is a challenge especially to individuals in the lower socio-economic class (Harmon 2010, p. 75). Very often, you will find needy students that are very bright but cannot afford to further their studies. The only hope for these students is either to find a sponsor or the government loans and grants provided by governments. The very bright ones are at an advantage because they are likely to receive sponsorship or even get free education from some universities that do this as part... The assignment "Access to Higher Education" investigates access to higher education in Australia. This paper also discusses the causes of the problems that are faced in the country, their origin and the solutions that be implemented to improve the accessibility to higher education in this country. The government of Australia has been putting policies to ensure that raises the number of adults who have a university degree to 40 per cent by the year 2025. However, several challenges stand in the way of government and attaining this dream of realizing the increased number of university graduates. Such problems include the high cost of university education, the attitudes of the people, preferential treatment of some people by the universities, commercialisation of education, which has led to university graduates not being fully equipped to enable work competitively in the job market. In order to deal with these problems in the Australian higher education, this report has given some recommendations that can improve the accessibility of higher education and help the government to attain the target of increasing the number of adult graduates to 40 per cent. Some of those recommendations include reducing the cost of access to higher education, strengthening the domestic universities t o provide quality education to Australian citizens. Due to the inequality level in accessing education, the government should aim at empowering these people to enable them to compete with the other social classes.