HEARIA: a new measure of geographic accessibility to higher education in Australia

Geographic disadvantage has historically been defined in Australian higher education by general measures of remoteness such as the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia Plus (ARIA +) and ABS Remoteness Areas (RAs). In this paper, we show how reliance on such measures has obscured what geographic disadvantage means in the identification of regional and remote students in Australia. We introduce a new index, the Higher Education ARIA (HEARIA), based specifically on road-network accessibility to university campuses, and subsequently define Higher Education Remoteness Areas (HERAs). Comparing HERAs with ABS RAs, we find disagreement in the remoteness classification of 15.5 per cent of Statistical Area 1s, with especially pronounced differences in Tasmania and the Northern Territory. These results demonstrate that current operational definitions can misidentify geographical disadvantage among students. This needs to be considered in proposals to increase Australian government support for regional and remote participation, including policies to provide additional funding for regional campuses.