ABSTRACT
Introduction In the long building of the Australian public university system after World War Two, there were two aspects of the policies designed to provide equality of educational opportunity: the conditions governing student participation, and the conditions governing educational supply. The former received most of the direct attention, but the latter was equally important. The conditions governing participation included the cost of tuition, and scholarships and living allowances. Thus the Whitlam government of 1972-5 expanded and equalised access by abolishing tertiary tuition fees and providing living allowance support to half of the student population. Even at the end of the Whitlam years in 1975, university education was still the activity of a relatively small minority, with only about 15 per cent of those who finished school going straight to university. In equality politics the emphasis was always on the quantitative expansion of places, the socioeconomic composition of participation, and measures to broaden the access provided to the most disadvantaged groups. Here the ultimate horizon of equality of opportunity policy, so difficult to achieve, was to eliminate all social bias in entry so that the social composition of the tertiary student population would mirror that of the general community.
