Factors Influencing Student Success in Engineering Mathematics

Higher education in Australia has expanded rapidly over the last few decades, with a significant growth in university participation from 31,753 tertiary students in 1949 to 695,485 in 2000 (Department of Education and Training, 2001), and over one and half million (1,513,383) in 2017 (Department of Education and Training, 2018b). Universities are increasingly inclusive, with numerous entry pathways available to applicants of all ages and backgrounds who do not have recent secondary educational achievement. The majority who apply to university are admitted, with over 80% of applicants admitted each year since 2010, and 84% in 2018 (Department of Education and Training, 2018a). Only one in four domestic undergraduate students (26%) were granted admission to their course based on their Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) in 2016 (Pilcher and Torii, 2018), and of those, the number admitted with low ATARs is increasing (Norton, et al. 2018).