Universities are required to adopt "fair" student admission practices, yet understandings of fairness in student selection are contested. This paper uses an analysis of the admission policies of Australia's public universities to critically examine the use and application of notions of fairness. A further analysis of enrolment data is…

A key assumption of equity policies in Australia, as in many countries, is that pathways from lower-status, vocationally oriented "second" tiers of tertiary education to "first" tier higher education are able to act as an equity mechanism. This is because students from low socio-economic backgrounds are over-represented in…