National student equity centre rebrand

The National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education has pivoted after a decade of operation as a research body.

Recently rebranded as the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success, the centre will remain based at Curtin University in Bentley.

ACSES will provide data analysis and research to address challenges faced by disadvantaged students, particularly First Nations Australians, students with disabilities, and those living in low socioeconomic areas.

However, ACSES will also focus on trials and evaluations in Australian universities.

The rebrand includes an overhaul of the leadership team to be led by renowned academic Shamit Saggar.

Professor Saggar was formerly the director of the Public Policy Institute and professor of public policy at The University of Western Australia before he joined the NCSEHE in mid-2023.

Speaking to Business News, Professor Saggar said a decision was made before he joined the centre to change focus.

“The National Centre for Student Equity has been around for about twelve years and does lots of research on equity in universities … but it never really done more than research,” he said.

“The [federal government] pay for it, and they said ‘We’ll triple your funding as long as you switch to something new’.”

In 2022, the federal government committed $20.5 million over four years to expand the work of NCSEHE.

Professor Saggar described ACSES as a what works centre, taking research, analysis and data to examine successful programs in universities.

“How do you basically get more kids from disadvantaged backgrounds to go to university? How to get more to graduates? We’ve got a very explicit mission to do that,” Professor Saggar said.

“I’ve been hired several months ago to go through that, and we’ve spent three or four months building an entire team from scratch.

“Now there’s fifteen to twenty of them working at Curtin. I’m the director and so we obviously need to rebrand to reflect all that because there are thirty-nine universities in Australia, they sort of vaguely knew about the old national centre, but they didn’t think of it as being anything other than research.

“The new name, the new acronym, that reflects the fact that it’s a new centre and it’s probably a slightly better label because it says ‘Australian Centre’.

“The Student Equity and Success … the success bit is [about] kids staying in university and also succeeding, getting good sort of jobs and [have the] labour market results afterwards.”

Despite the centre being Australian, Professor Saggar said the team would also analyse student equity in universities overseas.

Curtin’s hosting of ACSES would also bring some attention to the state, he said, providing opportunities for WA in terms of higher education research.

“It could be based anywhere else, frankly. So that’s good for Curtin, it’s good for WA,” Professor Saggar said.

“Then separately, because we’re at the university, there is a part of our work dedicated to Curtin for which Curtin has put in its own money, I think three million or four million dollars, to support the work.

“That sort of mirrors the work we’re doing in country, but it’s slightly more detailed and more on the ground at Curtin.

“WA universities can become a kind of lab rat, as it were, for stuff that we’re sort of looking at for the country as a whole.”

Curtin University vice-chancellor and ACSES advisory board chair Harlene Hayne said the rebranded centre was committed to make higher education accessible to all Australians.

“ACSES is an Australian first, a centre dedicated to providing the higher education sector with tangible proof of what really works to improve student equity,” she said.

“Together, we can strive to give all students, irrespective of their background, an opportunity to participate in and succeed at university.”

ACSES is set to run some trials and evaluation across the country’s universities in a program titled Equity Frontiers, including at Curtin.

Randomised controlled trials in a number of Australian universities have been undertaken, focusing on increasing student participation and engagement in learning platforms, boosting assignment submission and pass rates.

ACSES will support about 20 small-scale trials, lasting up to 18 months and led by universities, by holding application rounds in April and August this year.