Sam Sellar, Rob Hattam, Helen Nixon, Lew Zipin and Trevor Gale

What are the main issues for schools and universities working in partnership to build aspirational capacities? Introduction (Sam)

Aspirations and partnership work in Northern Adelaide (Rob)

Aspirations and achievement (Helen)

Aspirations and community (Lew)

Aspirations and mobility (Trevor)

Brief break for drinks

Questions and discussion

Australian HE policy agenda to : Increase overall participation to 40% of 25-34 year

olds to hold bachelor degrees by 2025, currently 32%

Extend access to disadvantaged groups, so that 20% of students come from low SES backgrounds by 2020, currently 16%

(Draft) Higher Education Participation and Partnership Program guidelines describe how the Australian Government will distribute funding to stimulate institutional contributions to the 20% low SES target $378m participation funding

$126m partnership funding

Aspiration has long been considered an important condition of university entry, but one that is of relatively distant concern for policy makers and institutions (Anderson et al. 1980)

More and different people will need to access HE. Aspiration has become a ‘policy problem’. A main objective of the partnership funding is to:

increase the aspirations of low SES people to access and participate in higher education through effective outreach and related activities with schools, VET providers, community groups and other stakeholders. (Commonwealth of Australia 2010)

Policy discourses have tended to frame aspiration as an individual property: ‘high’, ‘low’ or ‘no’ aspirations

Appadurai (2004) – aspiration is a cultural capacity: Aspirations form parts of wider ethical and

metaphysical ideas which derive from larger cultural norms. Aspirations are never simply individual (as the language of wants and choices inclines us to think). They are always formed in the thick of social life. (Appaduari 2004: 67)

A relational capacity that arises between the characteristics and resources of different groups and individuals and broader institutional structures and norms

Individual aspirations or collective aspirations?

Affirmative or transformative social justice? (Fraser 1997)

We need to avoid normative assumptions about the ‘good life’

The ‘good life’ ought to be open to contest and debate

Higher education ought to provide a means rather than an end for aspirations

Individual Institutional National

Economic

(ownership, mobility)

Economic

(funding)

Economic

(growth, competition)

Social-Cultural

(learning)

Symbolic

(academic status)

Social-Political

(equity)

Table 1: Three levels of aspiration