Many Indigenous people now study and teach at Australian universities – but they are still excluded

Don Wu/Getty Images When I graduated from high school more than 25 years ago, I received a phone call.

I hadn’t met the caller, but they knew of me.

They informed me that, according to their records, I was one of only 50 Indigenous students to successfully complete secondary school in the states of South Australia and the Northern Territory combined.

When I graduated, Indigenous students completing secondary studies was cause for our communities to come together to celebrate.

I was invited to an event at Adelaide Festival Centre to mark the achievement alongside my fellow graduates.

For many of us, the memory of generations before us who were never afforded the opportunity to attend the later years of schooling remained clear.

The gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous educational attainment has improved since then – in 2025, South Australia achieved population parity in Indigenous Year 12 graduation rates , which was almost ten times the level it was when I finished school.

But the gap in educational attainment is still not closed, and our community, now greater in number within the halls of higher education, takes very seriously the need to highlight and celebrate Indigenous strengths and build up the next generation.

More and more Indigenous uni students We now see second- and third-in-family Indigenous students on our university campuses.

Whereas once Indigenous students made up small cohorts in community-focused degrees such as education or health, ever-growing numbers of Indigenous peoples are studying across all disciplines .

Indigenous student enrolments at universities are growing year on year .

Higher degree research graduations are steadily increasing, and the number of Indigenous academics is following suit.

Indigenous academics and students are also leading research and education agendas across all disciplines.

We currently have a record number of Indigenous-led Australian Research Council Centres of Excellence across the sector, and the newly established Australian Tertiary Education Commission appointed an Indigenous First Nations Commissioner in Gunditjmara Professor Mark Rose .