Equity in higher education refers to equality of access and outcomes for students who have been traditionally under-represented at university, especially those who have experienced prior educational disadvantage.

There are six target groups that are recognised nationally as experiencing disadvantage in their access to education:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander - defined through self-identification by a positive response to the following question used to collect the DEST students data at enrolment: ‘Are you an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander?’
• People with disabilities - those students who respond positively to the following questions (on the enrolment form): ‘Do you have disability, impairment or long term medical condition which may affect your studies?’
• People from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CALD) - students who are Australian residents but were born overseas and arrived in Australia less than 10 years ago and speak a language other than English at home.
• People from rural and isolated areas -students’ geographic status is determined from the postcode of home location and identified as one of three groups: rural, urban, and isolated. Since 2001 the classification of postcodes has been derived from the 1996 Australian Bureau of Statistics census data. Prior to this the 1993 classification of postcodes devised by the Department of Primary Industry and Energy was used.
• People from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds (Low SES) -those whose postcodes of home location fall within the lowest quartile of the population of a given catchment region (national, state or urban) determined by the value of the ABS Index of Education and Occupation (EdOcc).
• Women in non-traditional study (WINS) - women students enrolled in a field of education or level of program for which the percentage of female enrolments is less than 40%. Originally, at a national level, these fields were: Agriculture, Architecture and Building, Business Administration and Economics, Engineering and Surveying, and Science. By 2003 the fields of education at a national level with less than 40% female participation were Architecture, Engineering and Information Technology. In relation to level of program, at a national level, research degrees have been identified as WINS.