Housing matters: Understanding the housing experiences of undergraduate regional, rural and remote students living outside the family home

Regional, rural and remote (RRR) tertiary students’ unequal access to, participation in and completion of higher education when compared to their metropolitan peers is a key area of policy focus for the current federal government. This focus led to the recent (2019) launch of the National Regional, Rural and Remote Tertiary Education Strategy focused on improving the participation and outcomes of RRR students in post-secondary education, along with a suite of regional measures intended to commence in 2021. However, while the strategy identifies finding and financing appropriate accommodation as a challenge for RRR students who relocate to pursue tertiary study, it does not include measures that fully address this challenge. This area of relative silence is echoed in the scholarly literature about Australian higher education, which similarly does not address the accommodation needs and experiences of diverse groups of RRR students who relocate to pursue tertiary study. This report presents the findings of a study designed to begin to address this dual gap in policy and scholarly literature