Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mature-aged students who are aged 25 and older have higher participation rates than younger Indigenous students within Australian higher education institutions. Despite steady increases in enrolments and completions, the completion rates of Indigenous students remain relatively low. Challenges persist, such as lack of representativity and financial hardship, particularly for Indigenous students from regional areas or enrolled through enabling programmes. While initiatives such as the Universities Australia Indigenous Strategy, the Indigenous Student Success Programmes (ISSP) and Closing the Gap policies aim to support Indigenous students, obstacles persist and hinder Indigenous students’ engagement and success.
In this chapter, we focus on unpacking factors that influence Indigenous mature-aged students’ university degree completion based on the previously identified factors in the Higher Education Success Factor (HESF) model. The five factors include: social environment, physical environment, economic conditions, health and wellbeing, and individual characteristics. We wanted to understand how the above-mentioned factors influenced mature-aged Indigenous students’ completion rates. We also analysed 271 open-ended survey responses from Indigenous Australian graduates aged 25 and over who graduated between 2018 and 2022 to draw out the unique concerns of Indigenous mature-aged students based on the previously identified five factors that influence Indigenous mature-aged students’ completion. Our findings highlight the key concerns and needs of Indigenous mature-aged graduates through each factor we examined. While economic conditions had a greater impact on Indigenous graduates compared to other factors, the health and wellbeing factor played a crucial role in their completion rates. Additionally, the social and physical environments affected both their physical and mental health and in turn influenced their ability to complete their studies. Notably, our study found that individual characteristics serve as a strong motivational factor, significantly encouraging Indigenous graduates to complete their programmes. Implications from this research point to the inclusion of a number of systemic issues which need to be addressed, namely, support for career interruptions, enhanced enrolment flexibility, improvements in university administration, and increased financial support to foster success among Indigenous mature-aged students in Australia.