Equity in higher education – An Australian researcher

So last time I wrote an update on the status of most of my projects but not my PhD because there have been some ethical issues. I have had plenty of time to reflect on those so I am going to attempt to speak about it.

My PhD is going to have participants from the university where I study (FedUni) and the university where I work (CQUniversity). I think the ability to compare the data is very important, especially in the field of enabling education where there are some single-institute papers but not a lot ot multi-institution stuff done. Initially I wanted to involve as many universities as possible but that was squashed by the confirmation panel. I hope to have the willpower and the energy to gather data from other universities after my PhD is done.

At CQUniversity they are going to provide me with a list of students names and email addresses for all the students that fit my requirements – that is they have finished the enabling program within the last 2 years and have entered (or are about to enter) into undergraduate study. I will then send the email invitation to those students from my CQU email address. I have no direct connection to those students or power over their grades, although there is still a power imbalance just because I am a lecturer and they are students. I didn’t see an issue with this at all.

The procedure for FedUni was going to be very similar except the Student Communications team was going to get the list, send the emails and let me know how many eligilble students recieved the invite. Again, no problems that I saw. I cannot stress this enough…

I HAVE ETHICS APPROVAL FROM THE COMMITTEES AT BOTH UNIVERSITIES TO DO THAT as my recruitment method. Both universities. Both approved. The TAFE project with Sue was similar in that we wanted the students that had done VET course and then used it to enter university. What felt like “all of a sudden” we were not allowed to have access to the list of those students. That would not provide it to us, Student Comms, The Pope, no one! At first Sue and I did not understand why.

It is a privacy issue because those students have not explicitly stated that their email address (which is their personal contact information even if the email address was provided by the university) can be used for research purposes. Most universities (aparently – un-checked information) get around this with a tick-box on the enrollment forms but FedUni does not have that in place. One pretty good analogy would be if a doctors surgery gave us the list of patients that were diabetic – that is an obvious breach of privacy and we came to realise this was too.

So for a few weeks Sue and I spoke to various people to try and have it all explained to us. It just seemed outrageous (at the time) that we had ethics approval for this – so how could they stop us on ethical grounds? I guess it was hard to see past that at first. In the end we spoke to an amazing woman right at the top of the ethics food-chain at FedUni and she gave us the doctor-patient analogy – then we got it! So we asked a few questions about what changed and talked about other details such as the fact that the ethics committee obviously wasn’t aware of this or they would not have approved our project!

My next challenge was communicating all of this to my supervisors. Remember that they had repeatedly told me they were giving me too much of their time and I felt quite hesitant to bother them with anything. They were very dismissive of the issue when I raised it. They kept reassuring me that as long as it all went through Student Comms it would be fine. I was told to trust the system. I was told flat out that it was a “non-issue”. In this case, as the powerless student, I did know better, so I was persistant. In the end I had to go over my supervisors heads and get the amazing lady from the top of the ethics food-chain to speak to my supervisors.

They then attempted to sell me the “it’s not a big deal we will just change the recruitment method” story. I openly complained about a lack of communication as after they’d spoken to the ethics lady they had not communicated anything to me. I did not know if I needed to do an ammendment for ethics (as my recruitment method was changing) and I thought there was a possibility I might have to re-do confirmation of candidature as it could have been considered a significant change in my project. Anyway, at the time it was quite stressful and I did feel very powerless and unheard.

There is plenty more to reflect on. For example, I haven’t seen the enrollment forms at CQU so I am only assuming that students do give their permission for us to use their email addresses for reserach invitations. I am certain that I do not want to be the person who exposes a privacy issue within the university if there is one (which I doubt, but it is a small possibility). There is a whole lot of power relations going on there so with that in mind I’ve chosen the “trust the system” and just keep quiet approach. I’m sure there are others in similar postions elsewhere.

The end result for me is that one university is going to allow me to contact the specific students I need via email and the other will have a different recruitment method where I will essentially put an add in the student newsletter. It’s not ideal but my supervisors are happy and so I (once again, and here you’ll also note that power differential) am just doing what I am told!