Mr Oakeshott, who announced on Tuesday his decision to support Labor, said it was ''a disgrace that regional education has been left behind in this country''.

His argument is backed by a recent federal education department report that shows levels of participation in higher education in regional areas lag significantly behind those in metropolitan areas.

The little-noticed report, released in May, shows that the gap in the levels of university participation between metropolitan and regional areas grew from 10 percentage points to 14 percentage points between 1996 and 2006.

Over that period, university participation among 19 to 21-year-olds from regional areas increased from 18 per cent to 21 per cent, while university participation among 19 to 21-year-olds from metropolitan areas increased from 28 per cent to 35 per cent.

The report says there is evidence that poor quality schooling and lack of school choice in regional areas had contributed to lower year 12 retention rates, which had likely flowed on to lower levels of participation in tertiary education.

But it found that the difference in levels of university participation between regional and metropolitan areas had more to do with differences in socio-economic status than distances to university campuses.

''While proximity to a campus matters, access to university appears to have less influence on university participation than other factors such as socio-economic status,'' the report says.

''In particular, lower levels of education and occupation appear to be largely associated with lower participation in regional and outer metropolitan areas.''

Labor has set the target of raising the proportion of undergraduate higher education enrolments from people from low socio-economic status backgrounds to 20 per cent by 2020.

It has committed $433 million over four years to support achievement of the target. The Coalition had proposed to cut $227 million from these programs to fund other election promises.