Narrm Scholarship Program Celebration Evening
The Vice-Chancellor's address at the inaugural Narrm Scholarship Program celebration evening was delivered on Tuesday 23 April 2024.
Thank you, Nick, and thank you, Uncle Bill and Ganga, for the powerful welcoming ceremony.
I acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we work and learn, and pay my respects to Indigenous Elders, past, present, and emerging, and I acknowledge all Indigenous people here.
As Nick has said, tonight we are here to talk about scholarships. Many of us understand from first-hand experience that scholarships have life-changing potential.
I am one of those people. As a working-class boy from North London, I won a place to study science at the University of Cambridge. Like many of you here tonight, I was the first in my family to go to university. With no fees and a means-tested stipend, I was able to immerse myself in my studies and university life, gaining an education that opened opportunities in life that I could not have dreamt of as a child.
Similar stories are shared with me when I meet alumni who have experienced a University of Melbourne education. They often reflect that their university days were the best days of their lives. Living at home or in low-cost accommodation near campus, they could afford to fully participate in Melbourne’s cultural, sporting, and political life. This often proved a powerful springboard to later career success.
But it has always been the case – and the problem may be getting worse – that talented young people from challenging backgrounds across Victoria and Australia are extremely limited in their ability to access university education. This is not because they lack talent, but purely because they are limited by social and financial circumstance.
It is for such people that a scholarship can change everything.
Not unrelated to this, the challenges facing young people in accessing university education were precisely the reasons why I called on the Government last year to again make university education in Australia fee-free for domestic undergraduates.
But of course, that’s not going to happen any time soon. So, it is up to us who believe in the cause, and who may be in a position to do something about it, to do whatever we can, if we truly believe in the power of higher education to transform lives – which I think every single person here tonight does.’
From the University of Melbourne’s perspective, the needs of talented young people are the reason why we are stepping up our efforts in this direction right now.
But before spelling out what we are aiming at tonight, I want first to acknowledge the fantastic efforts of donors to scholarships already at the University of Melbourne over many years.
For at least two decades, the University’s generous donor and alumni community has supported a substantial access and equity scholarship program. Not only have you opened doors to a first-class education, but you’ve provided motivation and assurance for students who never thought this University might be the place for them. We are so grateful to our friends and supporters for the essential role you have played – and continue to play – in enabling thousands of students to realise their potential.
A scholarship signals to the holder that they are a person supported by others who are confident in their ability to succeed. It expands the horizon of possibility not just for the recipient, but for people around them in their community. It enables a greater diversity of voices to contribute in society. In many cases, it inspires the recipient to give back to students who, like them, find their lives changed as a result.
The University of Melbourne is rightly known as an elite institution of learning in the sense of aiming to operate at the highest level of excellence, but this has not always worked in our favour when it comes to building a diverse and representative student body.
The question before us at Melbourne, are we simply and appropriately elite, or are we also elitist?
In a nutshell, do we really think that big brains exist only in the heads of people who can afford to attend expensive schools? That proposition is clearly absurd. We all know it simply is not true.
Yet we know that some very capable potential students – often with no family or personal experience of universities – can be put off applying to study with us (and often with any university) for a variety of reasons. For some, this might be the high cost of living away from home or of commuting each day. For others, it’s the need to provide support that keeps their family afloat.
But there may also be a simple problem of belief in the minds of some students. We have discovered that many capable young people – exactly the kind we want at this university – don’t believe they will belong here. They don’t consider us when applying for places, they don’t think they will find the kind of welcoming community they need here.
This is not only the University’s loss; it is Australia’s loss. Many of the students who don’t even consider a University of Melbourne education are those who would most benefit from it, those who would harness it to make the biggest impact on society.
We wantto and indeed must invest in these young people, urgently.
Our resolve to widen participation has led us to establish a groundbreaking endeavour that I am proud to introduce formally to our supporter community this evening: the Narrm Scholarship Program.
This is a scholarship and support program of a scale never before seen in Australia. It is the University’s highest priority, and one of the most ambitious things we've ever done.
Our focus is on talented young people in three groups significantly underrepresented in our University community. The choice of these three areas is also aligned to the Australian Government’s equity priority areas. They are:
- Students who are experiencing financial disadvantage
- Students from regional and remote areas (who may also be experiencing financial disadvantage)
- And Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students
We are determined to transform possibilities for students in these cohorts; scholarships that recognise merit and provide equitable opportunity are our most powerful means of achieving this.
Students who have faced the kinds of barriers to study that we’re addressing currently make up around 11% of our student body; by 2030, we want to raise this to 25% – that’s 1 in 4 of the Australian undergraduates studying here. At a time of deepening inequity, we believe that the Narrm Scholarship Program will be one of our country’s most powerful solutions to advance knowledge while creating a more fair and inclusive society.
Let me be clear: what we are talking about with the Narm Scholarships is a major change in the character of the University of Melbourne, working from the ground up – those undergraduates who start here each year, then go on to change the world in their own ways. By the time the Narrm Scholarships have been running for several years, our student population will have fundamentally shifted towards being more socially and economically diverse. It will be a place that transforms the futures of many more young people from challenging backgrounds than it does today.
The University is absolutely dedicated to the success of the Program. To be sustainable, it will require a total financial commitment of around $64M a year by the end of this decade – and this is something we believe can be achieved in partnership with our donor community.
I will think aloud here. What if a donor or group of donors endowed the University with a billion dollars to support the Narrm Scholarships program? With such a donation we could draw down approximately $50 million a year and fund an extraordinary scholarships program.
You may say I’m dreaming, but there are precedents. Just this year, one donor, Ruth Gottesman, gave a billion US dollars to support the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx in New York. The donor said, ‘I wanted to fund students at Einstein so that they would receive free tuition.’
Already at Melbourne, we are extremely fortunate to have a donor and alumni community exceptional in their generosity and vision. Many of you in this room have played an important role in the achievement of students here tonight. Thank you for your ongoing dedication to student success. Let’s now work together to make the University a place of opportunity for all young Australians as never before. The effects of this will be profound and far-reaching.
I know it is challenging but I believe firmly in the Narrm Scholarship Program, its principles and ambitions. And I’m grateful to you for taking the time to hear us tonight as we speak further about fulfilling the promise of potential for young people at this university.
Thank you for listening.