Rachel High made local headlines in Australia this week after she graduated from Flinders University in Adelaide. Among thousands of graduates this year, High is unique as she is a person who is living with Down Syndrome. The journey to achieving her university degree was a long one, spanning 10 years and her accomplishment is truly one to be proud of.
"It makes me feel great," explained High, who now has a Bachelor of Arts degree in drama and screen studies, as reported by ABC News. "[The best bit was] the ability for me to actually really study and really get in-depth with the study. I grew up on the stage, basically, and then I was thinking of that being my career."
"It expands your thinking, [and] it broadened my perspective in the theatre and the performing fields," High explained. "It really makes you grow inside."
High's 10-year journey did not come without challenges. The 44 year old admitted that she experienced "bad vibes" that pushed her close to a breaking point early in her studies. She shared that she felt "nervous and a little bit scared" at the beginning because she did not know what to expect from the university. In addition, not everyone was very welcoming of her, which made her feel like she did not want to be there.
Rachel's mother, Miriam High explained that social isolation was a challenge for her daughter. Miriam lamented that nobody met her daughter at the gate or took her to the classroom, or even shared experiences with her, which "caused incredible isolation, so much so that she didn't want to stay."
"Because people with intellectual disabilities don't go to university, they're not set up to support them in that way," Miriam explained. This caused the High parents to set up a paid "buddy" support for their daughter. Later, Flinders University offered a mentor to assist their daughter throughout the second half of Rachel's degree.
According to Faithwire, it's important to share stories such as Rachel's, as "stereotypes and assumptions can devalue others' lives and hamper their potential." When Rachel was born 44 years ago, Miriam and her husband were encouraged to place their daughter in a home and try for other kids. They did not follow that advice and instead raised their daughter to live a normal life.
Today, Rachel's final research paper titled "Graduating University as a Woman with Down Syndrome: Reflecting on My Education" has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. It was supervised by diversity and inclusion researcher Sally Robinson, who remarked, "I was very strongly convinced of the merits of her work, but a peer-reviewed academic paper is empirical evidence that this is a high-quality piece of scholarly work."
Professor Robinson remarked that there is so much more work to be done to ensure that people with intellectual and cognitive disabilities have access to higher education. She argued that people with sensory or physical disabilities are entitled to support in universities, but those with intellectual disabilities are not. She hopes that this will change in the near future so that more people like Rachel can achieve their educational goals as well.
