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Refugee Background Students Transitioning Into Higher Education pp 89–110Cite as

Navigating the Terrain of Higher Education

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Abstract

This chapter highlights some of the challenges faced by refugee youth as they negotiate the alien terrain of higher education . Drawing on interviews and case studies of refugee-background youth and university staff (academic and support ), we document the journeys of students through three phases of their tertiary education: getting in to university, getting through their tertiary studies and getting on to employment in their chosen career . We argue that despite high aspirations and a desire to transition to tertiary education, refugee youth at university face a range of challenges in relation to the directed support so necessary for successful transition and participation at university. These challenges are examined in terms of two of the six key themes that emerged in our case study of refugee youth pathways from school to university: aspiration and politics and policy .

Keywords

  • universityUniversity
  • schoolSchool
  • Higher educationEducation
  • participationParticipation
  • Refugee Background Students

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Sections of this chapter are drawn from the Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) Case study report: Supporting school-university pathways for refugee students’ access and participation in tertiary education (Naidoo, Wilkinson, Langat, Adoniou, Cunneen, & Bolger, 2015). These sections have been republished with the permission of the OLT.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    All names of participants in these chapters are pseudonyms.

  2. 2.

    In Australia, the term “higher education sector” and “tertiary education sector” are synonymous with universities.

  3. 3.

    The authors note that these figures should be treated with caution due to many records being inaccurate or missing. They note that students were identified on the basis that they had a “permanent humanitarian visa in their citizen/resident indicator data” (Terry et al., 2016, p. 9).

  4. 4.

    This is the term used by Terry et al. (2016) and relates to the sampling of the cohort. See Footnote One above.

  5. 5.

    Support staff is those university staff that are not academics. They are often referred to in Australian universities as professional staff. In our study, they included staff members who were employed in equity units, as well as those who provided academic learning and language support .

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia

    Loshini Naidoo

  2. Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

    Jane Wilkinson

  3. University of Canberra, Bruce, ACT, Australia

    Misty Adoniou

  4. Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia

    Kiprono Langat

Authors
  1. Loshini Naidoo
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  2. Jane Wilkinson
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  3. Misty Adoniou
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  4. Kiprono Langat
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Correspondence to Loshini Naidoo .

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Naidoo, L., Wilkinson, J., Adoniou, M., Langat, K. (2018). Navigating the Terrain of Higher Education. In: Refugee Background Students Transitioning Into Higher Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0420-0_6

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