Layna Nona had never travelled south of Cairns - the Year 9 student is from remote Badu Island in the Torres Strait, and English is her third language - but last month she joined 236 other Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander high school students at a week-long University of Sydney summer camp designed to give them a taste of tertiary life.
The campus and the city felt big, perhaps overwhelming, but a visit to the courts at the Downing Centre sparked something for Layna, who headed back north to start school last week contemplating a career in the law.
"I just think it's interesting," she said. "It would mean I could have a career and I wouldn't have to be reliant on the small number of jobs in the Torres Strait. It means I could help support my family."
Universities Australia Chief Executive Belinda Robinson said there had been strong growth in Indigenous student numbers since the federal government lifted the cap on publicly funded student places a decade ago.
"Certainly the demand-driven system has played an important role in that growth - there are now 74 per cent more Indigenous undergraduate students than there were in 2008," she said.
"But we also think that individual university outreach programs, including those funded through HEPPP - the key federal equity program that recruits and supports students from low SES [socio-economic status] backgrounds - have played a vital role."
Between 2014 and 2015, the growth in Indigenous undergraduate enrolment (8.5 per cent) was almost triple that of domestic undergraduate enrolment (3.1 per cent).
And completions are up significantly, with the number of Indigenous students graduating between 2008 and 2015 with a bachelor degree growing by 61 per cent, compared with 24 per cent growth for non-Indigenous students.
But amidst the good news, there are caveats. The federal government cut the HEPPP program by $152 million in last year's budget, a cut which UA argues limits the effectiveness of the six-year old program designed to help boost low SES groups' participation at university.
Ms Robinson said that on the latest figures Indigenous students are 1.6 per cent of undergraduate enrolments nationally, but 2.7 per cent of Australia's working-age population.
"So there's more to do, and our universities are determined to keep lifting those numbers," she said.
Opponents have criticised the Group of Eight universities for still not doing enough for equity groups, amid broader criticism of the demand-driven university reforms for driving student debt to the government to unsustainable levels.
But all NSW universities have increased their share of Indigenous enrolments by more than 50 per cent since the introduction of demand-driven reforms in 2010, a Herald analysis of federal Department of Education data shows.
Total Indigenous enrolments across NSW universities increased by 1770 since 2010, to 5239 in 2015, but the prestigious city universities are outperformed by regional universities.
On 2015 figures, the latest available, there are significantly more Indigenous students enrolled at Newcastle University (949) and Charles Sturt (906) compared with the much larger city universities, University of NSW (341), the University of Sydney (335) and the University of Technology Sydney (287).
That is part of the reason why the University of Sydney expanded its five-year-old school outreach program over summer 2017.
"The results to date are promising," said the university's Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stephen Garton. "Eleven alumni from the 2014 and 2015 programs are currently studying with us, and we'll soon know how many Year 12 participants in the 2016 program will join us this year.
"We've demonstrated we can have a real influence when we engage with young people while they're at school."
Liam Fogg, a Year 9 student from the Darug people of western Sydney, also attended the Sydney uni summer camp. "It was a great opportunity to see what university was really like," he said. "Tertiary education is definitely huge now; if you don't have an education past high school it's hard to get a more advanced job."
Liam said that the program targeted students who were already interested in education, so it wasn't necessarily reflective of a wider desire in the Indigenous community to go into university education.
Other universities also run outreach programs over summer to recruit different groups.
UTS ran a program in mid-January targeting low socio-economic background students, including refugees, with over half of the 230 participants coming from non-English-speaking backgrounds.
