Rate My Professor Tim Pitman

Associate Professor Tim Pitman is a researcher in higher education policy at Curtin University, Faculty of Humanities. He holds a PhD in Education from The University of Western Australia, completed in 2012, and has worked in the Australian higher education sector since 1996. His career includes roles as Senior Research Fellow at Curtin University, Dean of Research in Humanities, and various positions advancing research development and policy analysis. Pitman currently serves as Program Director for Trials and Evaluation at the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES), formerly the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE), where he has also acted as co-director and member of the Grants and Fellowships Committee.

Pitman's research focuses on widening access, participation, and success in higher education for underrepresented groups, including students with disabilities, those from low socioeconomic backgrounds, Indigenous persons, regional and remote areas, and non-English speaking backgrounds. As the 2020 NCSEHE Equity Fellow, he led a major project titled 'Supporting persons with disabilities from regional, rural, and remote Australia to succeed in higher education,' involving surveys of over 1,700 students and staff interviews, resulting in recommendations for Universal Design for Learning, mandatory disability awareness training, and improved institutional compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act. Key publications include '"Profitable for the country": An Australian historical perspective on the targets for graduate numbers' (2020, Higher Education Research & Development), 'Widening participation in higher education: a play in five acts' (2017, Higher Education Research & Development), 'Disability and Australian higher education: The case for an Accessible model of disability support' (2022, Australian Journal of Education), 'Defining people with disability in Australian higher education' (2023, Disability & Society), and his 2022 Equity Fellowship report. His scholarship, cited over 1,000 times, has shaped equity policies and practices across Australian universities.