Enhancing aspirations and pathways to higher education for low SES migrant and refugee communities: 2015 findings report

The Higher Education Participation Program (HEPP) provides funding to Universities to undertake activities and implement strategies that improve access to undergraduate courses for people with special needs. The target group in this project is domestic students from low socio-economic status (LSES) and non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB) those who have lived in Australia for ten years or less and studying at Swinburne University of Technology (SUT). The objectives of this project are to raise aspirations within the targeted migrant and refugee groups to undertake a higher degree qualification relevant to their employment requirements and career aspirations. Through the gathering of data, the project seeks to improve the services provided to migrant students currently studying within higher education at Swinburne University. The findings will contribute to the development of an action plan for the review of services to migrant students at Swinburne University that can be offered to other universities looking to support their migrant students. This research project constitutes a follow up to a project completed in 2014 that established links with migrant communities in the outer east of Melbourne and sought to identify successful migrant students’ stories for use as motivational material to assist programs supporting migrants seeking to study at university.