As a teenager growing up in northern NSW, Yvette Blount had no concept of what it meant to attend university. The eldest of six siblings in a family of limited means, she left school when she was 16 to move to Sydney and work in retail.
“No-one in my family had a university education and I didn’t know anything about university,” Yvette says. “You could say that I did it the hard way.”
At first, Yvette went to TAFE to do a typing course. Then she decided to complete her HSC, with the view to applying to university.
“I was working full-time the whole time, and studying at TAFE at night,” Yvette says. “None of the alternative pathways to university that we have today were available back then. I applied to Macquarie University first, and didn’t get in, which is hilarious given I later became an academic there. I was eventually accepted to study for a Bachelor of Business Computing at Charles Sturt by distance. It was a bit of a struggle, but I got there in the end. Next I enrolled in a Masters of Business Administration at UNE and did my PhD at Deakin University, all by distance education.”
"I could fit my studies in with whatever else was going on in my life."
Fast forward to today and Yvette is a Dean and Associate Professor at Skyline Higher Education Australia, where she is helping to establish a new institute of higher education. She is also a mother, a researcher, Honorary Associate Professor in the Deakin University Business School, and mentor to young female students through the Smith Family and Harding Miller Education Foundation charities.
“I understand now the power of university studies to open up a whole new world,” Yvette says. “I figured out that the only way I was ever going to have options was to become better educated. With the MBA at UNE I could attend weekend classes in the city. I could fit my studies in with whatever else was going on in my life.”
"When you get a degree, it opens doors and provides opportunities that you couldn't have imagined."
However, there was little support for students like her at the time. “Even a little financial help can mean that a student has a much better chance of completing,” Yvette says. “That’s why I now give a little to UNE today, to support regional and rural students. Sometimes they just need enough to ensure they are not going to get chucked out of their house or can eat that week. I have been there.
“When you get a degree, it opens doors and provides opportunities that you couldn’t have imagined.”
The opportunities, for Yvette, have been priceless. “My university education has given me the autonomy to choose the kind of job I want,” she says. “The people I’ve met, the travel I’ve done, the people I’ve been able to work with … I would not have been able to have this academic career without it. And now that I am in a position of privilege, I can afford to give back, to support students from rural and regional Australia who are in a similar position to what I was.
“I am hoping the scholarship money helps to ease their worries, so they can focus on their studies; that it sends the message that they are worth supporting.”
