The healthiest and happiest societies are the most equal societies.
It’s the chief reason that Nordic countries, with their shared commitment to educational opportunity and social equity, continue to top The World Happiness Report. At the University of Tasmania, we’re carving out our own approach to educational access in a society where, unlike the Nordic example, young people receive vastly different standards of schooling depending on their socio-economic circumstances and, in many cases, their postcodes.
Tasmania is a modern escape, a clean green island of good food and art only a short flight from the mainland. Whilst Tasmanian tourism is increasingly geared to what the industry terms high value travellers, the State itself struggles with some entrenched social problems. Tasmania has a disproportionately high number of people facing disadvantage in all its forms, including chronic health challenges, disability (26.8% compared with 17.7% nationally), food insecurity (1 in 2 Tasmanians are food insecure) and digital exclusion (66% compared with 71.1% nationally) which is significantly increased the further you live from a city centre.
My childhood in India, where millions of children and people are missing out on the opportunities and life outcomes a good education can provide, sensitised me to the role universities can play in changing lives for the better. Despite its immense human potential, India is plagued by extreme pollution, extreme inequality, extreme poverty, and extreme inertia. Tasmania is a world away, and yet it shares some of the same challenges of equity and inclusion.
In my area of work with the University and global analytics firm Elsevier, we have developed the Tasmanian Societal Impact Model, an analytical framework for measuring and testing the various ways we can make a difference in society. Equality of access is one way. Another is teaching future generations the skills and knowledge to understand the challenges facing the globe and the ways they can rise constructively to meet the challenges.
At the University of Tasmania, enabling access and equity through education is our most transformative tool, and we offer university places to as many people, from as many places, as we can. We offer extensive pathway courses, bridges into higher education and learning pathways from varied backgrounds. And we bolster this commitment to access with strong financial support through our targeted scholarships and support packages.
Our University has a positive impact on society in many ways, the most public being our research and regionally networked campuses. But there may in fact be no more profound measure of our societal impact than the access to education that we extend to people in places that have been left behind. At the University we see many students who are the first in their families to harness this opportunity,
A university education is still the key pathway to many professions, from teaching our future generations, to commerce, to health and science; and at the University we create pathways for everyone.
But Tasmania also has the nation’s highest proportion of adults with only year 11 education or lower: the consequence, in large part, of a culture that has traditionally undervalued participation in education. This is largely through circumstance and partly through choice or lack thereof.
The time has passed when universities could solely rest on their reputations as institutions of knowledge and research. But one thing universities haven’t lost is their capacity to boost upward social mobility, or to perpetuate social inequality and injustice.
Sustainability policies are often framed around science, economy, environment, and technology, but the best ones include access and equity just as explicitly. Our sector needs to actively contribute to holistic sustainability policy, action, and solutions to simultaneously boost economic development and redistribute wealth; too often the former has come at the expense of the latter.
We owe it to our people and our unique - yet far from perfect - place to be ambitious, relevant, and focussed on leading with, and contributing to, tangible societal impact that leaves no one behind.
Iha Diwan is a senior markets and strategy analyst and member of the Tasmanian Societal Impact working group and University Sustainability committee
Main image: A community garden located in the University of Tasmania Inveresk Campus
This story features in the 2023 edition of It's in our nature - a collection of stories that celebrate and highlight the unique work being undertaken by our institution, and the people within it, to deliver a more fair, equitable and sustainable society.
Explore sustainability at the University of Tasmania and how you can get involved.
As we aim to be a global, sustainable and responsible leading institution, our efforts align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.