The Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES) has today released its premier annual publication, Equity Insights 2026, showcasing the leading voices who are shaping policy and practice across the higher education sector.
This year’s edition brings together 16 contributions from thought-leading practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and students from across Australia.
Equity Insights examines the evolving higher education landscape and how governments and institutions can redesign systems for success, with a focus on understanding the everyday experience of being a student.
ACSES Executive Director Professor Shamit Saggar said the report addressed some of the most pressing challenges for students, particularly those from underrepresented and disadvantaged backgrounds.
“Equity Insights 2026 presents diverse voices, evidence, and lived experience with a view to better understanding the realities facing university students today—and using that understanding to inform meaningful change,” Professor Saggar said.
“It highlights the widening set of demands students must navigate, including cost-of-living pressures, family and caring responsibilities, food insecurity, racial discrimination, and mental health and wellbeing difficulties.”
ACSES Research and Policy Program Director Professor Ian Li said the publication came at a moment of major reform for the sector, with the establishment of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission and the introduction of the Federal Government’s Needs-based Funding system.
“These changes offer Australia’s higher education sector a rare opportunity to redesign how it supports students,” Professor Li said.
“Several contributions make clear that this opportunity will only be realised if universities, government, and regulators act in concert, and if the sector is honest about the extent to which its own systems, cultures, and assumptions contribute to the pressures students face.”
Equity Insights 2026 includes contributions from Karen Nelson, Claire Field, Luke Sheehy, Patrick Broman, Jesse Parmar, Kerri-Lee Krause, Jacinta King, Giridharan Sivaraman, Sarah Bendall, Natalie Nelmes, Brooke Szucs, Jonathan Bullen, Braden Hill, Josh Mason, Michelle Trudgett, Susan Page, Lauren Tynan, Matt Brett, Alison Knapp, and Tyrone Carlin.
Its release coincides with ACSES’s third annual Policy Symposium, held in Brisbane on September 8–9, with the report set to inform panel discussions around this year’s theme of “The Evolving Student in Higher Education”.
Read the full report here.
