Experiences of higher education for regional, rural and remote youth in a metropolitan university

In this research report we explore how youth from regional, rural and remote (RRR) areas experience higher education in a metropolitan institution. We are interested in their university experience, how it is shaped by the institution, as well as how students’ rural subjectivity and identity fits, adapts or is challenged in this new environment. Rather than focusing on issues of learning and academic progression, which are more commonly found in the existing literature, we approach RRR students’ university experience from the standpoints of welfare and their subjective experiences of feeling connected, or not, to their new environment. As they move to a metropolitan university, RRR young people are required to live away from their home and need to construct new spaces of sociality with other students and the university community. We examine the identity work that RRR young people, some of them also from a low socio-economic status background, have to do to negotiate new institutional values, norms and discourses, and social relationships.