Disability advocates have urged ߣߣ��Ƶn authorities to proceed carefully with a proposal to make “inherent requirements” mandatory in course outlines so that students know in advance what they are signing up for.

The Higher Education Standards Panel (Hesp) says inherent requirements should be included in the “threshold standards” that universities and colleges must satisfy to achieve and maintain their registration.

“While the existing threshold standards imply an obligation to support students with disability, the absence of explicit requirements has led to variable understanding and implementation,” a Hesp discussion paper says.

But recent  to the panel warn that inherent requirements are often used to gatekeep rather than enable. Ebe Ganon, a PhD candidate at UNSW Canberra, said professional accrediting bodies had “perverse incentives” to use inherent requirements as “exclusionary” mechanisms.

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Ganon said universities also had a history of using inherent requirements to sidestep their obligations to make adjustments for students with special needs, or to keep students out of courses altogether.

“This risk will persist unless the standards include a clear expectation that inherent requirements reflect the minimum necessary to achieve genuine learning outcomes,” Ganon said.

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The ߣߣ��Ƶn Disability Clearinghouse on Education and Training (Adcet) said employers were entitled to “lawfully discriminate” by refusing to hire people without the inherent capabilities required by the job. But this entitlement did not extend to universities or colleges.

“Students learn and develop capabilities over time and may undertake degrees for learning and personal development,” Adcet’s submission says. Yet “universities have developed their own interpretations…of inherent requirements, often influenced by professional accreditation bodies. Inherent requirements present a significant area of risk.”

Darlene McLennan, an equity fellow at the University of Tasmania, urged the panel to “tread carefully” on inherent requirements, which had “a troubled history in ߣߣ��Ƶn higher education. More explicit standards in this area could inadvertently legitimise [their] use as exclusion tools rather than information tools.”

McLennan said universities also needed to stop handballing their inclusivity obligations to disability services teams. “The most important shift the amended standards could make is to establish that disability inclusion is a whole-of-institution responsibility,” she said.

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“Disability practitioners are doing excellent and often complex work, but they are doing it largely alone [and without] the institutional authority to require change from academic staff, course designers or senior leadership. For inclusion standards to have practical effect, they need to place explicit obligations on governing bodies and academic leadership.”

Ganon said the main grievances of students with disability were not about policy design or the availability of adjustments. “The consistent failures are…in implementation and enforcement,” she told the panel.

“Students regularly secure appropriate adjustments through disability support services, only to have those adjustments ignored, refused or poorly applied. There is little spot-checking of the alignment between what institutions report and what students experience.

“The threshold standards amendments are an opportunity to build in student-facing accountability mechanisms.”

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com