Australia's Regional Universities and Indigenous Advancement

My next good news story on the advancement of Australia's indigenous people was going to be on the role that Australia's regional universities are playing, a quite remarkable yet totally unreported story.

In the meantime, and as reported in my last post, I have been looking at various aspects of university rankings in Australia. Here I thought that it might be interesting if I gave you the Good Universities Australia 2007 university rankings on indigenous participation.

A list of the top rankings follow. As always, M = metro, R = regional and refers to the main campus.

• Five Stars: Australian Catholic University (M), Batchellor (R), Charles Darwin University (R), Curtin (M), Edith Cowan University (M), James Cook University (R), NIDA (M), Southern Cross (R), University of New England (R)
• Four Stars: Australian Defence Force Academy (R), Central Queensland University (R), Deakin (M), Griffith (M), Murdoch (M), Newcastle (R), Queensland University of Technology (M), University of Tasmania (R), UTS (M)
• Three Stars: Australian Maritime College (R), University of Canberra (R), Charles Sturt University (R), Flinders (M), Notre Dame (M), Sunshine Coast (R), University of South Australia (M), University of Southern Queensland (R), University of Western Australia (M)

There are 27 higher educational institutions on this list, 14 regional, 13 metro. Only one (UWA) of the Group of Eight of leading metro universities appears.