Transition to Tertiary Education in the Arts and Humanities

Abstract

The ‘successful’ Arts student of the new millennium in Australia is likely to be female and studying full-time, having justcompleted her final year of schooling. Increasing numbers of students, however, are mature-age, are working long hours in paid employment, ormay be the first in their family to attend university. A significant proportion of this heterogeneous population may appear on campus only rarely. In order toengage the hearts and minds of thesestudents in their arts and humanities studies, it is necessary to acknowledge such realities. Last century’s solutions to the ‘academic adjustment’ question will not hold. The new transition to study initiatives rely to an extent on differentiating between student groups to establish starting points, but must also find broad and stable ways of supporting the student cohort to make the transition successfully, particularly to the kinds of writingand thinking that characterize the individual disciplines.