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The concept of policy 'success' has been subject to much contestation. In the Indigenous higher education setting, Indigenous (and non-Indigenous) scholars have brought attention to the relevance of experiential knowledge to understanding the effects of power and race on policy, including how success is theorised. This paper aims to interrogate the notion of policy success by exploring how Indigenous users of higher education policy in the Northern Territory (NT), Australia, conceive the term 'success'. We conducted semi-structured interviews with twelve (n = 12) Indigenous people with expertise in NT Indigenous higher education policy. Our findings highlight that while some of our participant's conceptions of policy success align to those within current policy frameworks, there are also differences due to power and race relations. We reflect on the impact on policy outcomes, and discuss how a critical understanding of such relations can advance Indigenous higher education policy in the NT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'The numbers speak for themselves' is a phrase often linked to statistics supporting claims about the success (or otherwise) of policies. Quantitative data are usually viewed as objective and somehow exempt from the same critique that qualitative data faces. QuantCrit theory challenges these assumptions by considering how structural racism impacts on the use of statistics in research and evaluation. This paper applies QuantCrit to the Indigenous higher education policy context in the Northern Territory (NT), Australia. It aims to elicit hidden assumptions within the use of statistics to measure the success of Indigenous higher education policies in the NT. We explore the historical utility of Indigenous higher education student statistics for policy evaluation in the NT. We argue that quantitative success measures should always be considered within the context of the structural racism that shapes policy goals. We conclude by highlighting that quantitative data can be useful for Indigenous higher education policy evaluation and research, but that alternative views for measuring policy success must be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]