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Tertiary education in Australia is formal education beyond high school in Australia, consisting of both government and private institutions and divided into two sectors; Higher Education (provided by universities) and Vocational Education and Training (VET) provided by government-owned TAFEs & private Registered Training Organisations (RTO).[1][2] Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF), the Australian national education policy, classifies tertiary qualification into 10 levels: level 1 to 4 vocational certificates (I - IV); level 5 & 6 undergraduate diploma and advanced diploma; level 6 associate degree; level 7 bachelor degree, level 8 bachelor honours degree & graduate certificates and graduate diplomas; level 9 for master's degree; and level 10 PhD. Most universities are government owned and mostly self-regulated. For other institutes (VETs, i.e. TAFE & RTO) there are two national regulators for tertiary education for registration, recognition and quality assurance of both the "provider institutes" as well as the "individual courses" provided by the providers. Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) regulates institutes which provide education from level 5 or above. Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) regulates institutes which provide education from level 1 to level 6.[3]
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For admission in Australian institutes, Australian & New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents, are considered the "domestic students" regardless of whether they did the prior schooling in Australia or overseas. All others are considered the "international students".[4] Domestic students need to apply only once to the TACs (State-based unified Tertiary Admission Center) of the relevant state for admission to all the universities within that state, which grant admission based on the ATAR-based "Selection Rank" (SR). Those students with International Baccalaureate (IB), both domestic and international students, must apply to the "Australasian Conference of Tertiary Admission Centres" (ACTAC) which calculates an Australia-wide ATAR-like national rank called "Combined Rank" (CR).[5] Domestic students usually pay lot less subsidised-fees compared to the International students. Additionally, the domestic students are entitled to publicly funded universal health care insurance scheme Medicare, Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and various social security welfare payments & benefits, e.g. Austudy Payment, Youth Allowance, etc., to meet the living expenses. The international students are not entitled to these benefits. All international students apply individually to each University, and most international students are self-financed non-subsidised full-fee paying students.
There are 43 universities registered in Australia (including 37 public universities, four private universities, and one international private university).[6][7] Many Australian universities have formed several network groupings, such as Group of Eight (8 leading universities which receive two thirds of the government research grant funding awarded to all universities), Australian Technology Network (ATN), Innovative Research Universities (IRU), Regional Universities Network (RUN), and more.[8]
Australia is well known for high quality education, most of the universities are government owned, and they rank very highly on the global rankings. Australia is ranked 4th (with Germany) by OECD in international PhD students destination after US, UK and France.[9] Australia has a comparatively high proportion of international students as a percentage of students enrolled, at 26.5% in 2018.[10] Australia has the fifth-highest number of foreign students worldwide.[11] The 56% of 462,033 international students in Australia are from top-5 nations; China (23%), India (16%), Nepal (10%), Colombia (4%) and Thailand (3%) with enrollment ratio of 50% in Higher Education (229,833), 35% VET (162,193), 11% ELICOS English language course (50,246), 2% Schools (19,704) and 2% Non-Award (8,057).[12] In 2022, 69% of Australians aged 20–64 had a tertiary qualification, and 24% had multiple qualifications.[1] Among all the ethnic groups in Australia, the Indian Australians are the highest educated group in Australia with 54.6% having a bachelor's or higher degree, more than three times Australia's national average of 17.2%.[13]
The first university established in Australia was the University of Sydney in 1850, followed in 1853 by the University of Melbourne. Prior to federation in 1901 two more universities were established: the University of Adelaide (1874) and the University of Tasmania (1890). At the time of federation, Australia's population was 3,788,100 and there were fewer than 2,652 university students. Two other universities were established soon after federation: the University of Queensland (1909) and the University of Western Australia (1911). All of these universities were controlled by State governments and were largely modelled on the traditional British university system and adopted both architectural and educational features in line with the (then) strongly influential 'mother' country. In his paper Higher Education in Australia: Structure, Policy and Debate[27] Jim Breen observed that in 1914 only 3,300 students (or 0.1% of the Australian population) were enrolled in universities. In 1920 the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC) was formed to represent the interests of these six universities.
The 'non-university' institutions originally issued only trade/technical certificates, diplomas and professional bachelor's degrees. Although universities were differentiated from technical colleges and institutes of technology through their participation in research, Australian universities were initially not established with research as a significant component of their overall activities. For this reason, the Australian Government established the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in 1926 as a backbone for Australian scientific research, which still exists today.
Two university colleges and no new universities were established before World War II. On the eve of the war, Australia's population reached seven million. The university participation level was relatively low. Australia had six universities and two university colleges with combined student numbers of 14,236. 10,354 were degree students (including only 81 higher degree students) and almost 4,000 sub-degree or non-award students.
In 1942, the Universities Commission was created to regulate university enrolments and the implementation of the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme (CRTS).
After the war, in recognition of the increased demand for teachers for the "baby boom" generation and the importance of higher education in national economic growth, the Commonwealth Government took an increased role in the financing of higher education from the States. In 1946 the Australian National University was created by an Act of Federal Parliament as a national research only institution (research and postgraduate research training for national purposes). By 1948 there were 32,000 students enrolled, under the impetus of CRTS.
In 1949, the University of New South Wales was established.
During the 1950s, enrolments increased by 30,000 and participation rates doubled.
In 1950, the Mills Committee Inquiry into university finances, focusing on short-term rather than long-term issues, resulted in the State Grants (Universities) Act 1951 being enacted (retrospective to 1 July 1950). It was a short-term scheme under which the Commonwealth contributed one quarter of the recurrent costs of "State" universities.
In 1954, the University of New England was established. In that year, Robert Menzies established the Committee on Australian Universities. The Murray Committee Inquiry of 1957 found that financial stringency was the root cause of the shortcomings across universities: short staffing, poor infrastructure, high failure rates, weak honours and postgraduate schools. It also accepted the financial recommendations in full, which led to increased funds to the sector and establishment of Australian Universities Commission (AUC) and the conclusion that the Commonwealth Government should accept greater responsibility for the States' universities.
In 1958, Monash University was established. States Grants (Universities) Act 1958 allocated funding to States for capital and recurrent expenditure in universities for the triennial 1958 to 1960. In 1959, Australian Universities Commission Act of 1959 was established the AUC as a statutory body to advise the Commonwealth Government on university matters. Between 1958 and 1960 there was more than a 13% annual increase in university enrolments. By 1960, there were 53,000 students in ten universities. There was a spate of universities established in the 1960s and 70s: Macquarie University (1964), La Trobe University (1964), the University of Newcastle (1965), Flinders University (1966), James Cook University (1970), Griffith University (1971), Deakin University (1974), Murdoch University (1975), and the University of Wollongong (1975). By 1960, the number of students enrolled in Australian Universities had reached 53,000. By 1975 there were 148,000 students in 19 universities.
Until 1973, university tuition was funded either through Commonwealth scholarships, which were based on merit, or through fees. Tertiary education in Australia was structured into three sectors:
During the early 1970s, there was a significant push to make tertiary education in Australia more accessible to working and middle-class people. In 1973, the Whitlam Labor Government abolished university fees. This increased the university participation rate.
In 1974, the Commonwealth assumed full responsibility for funding higher education (i.e., universities and Colleges of Advanced Education (CAEs)) and established the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission (CTEC), which had an advisory role and responsibility for allocating government funding among universities. However, in 1975, in the context of federal political crisis and economic recession, triennial funding of universities was suspended. Demand remained with growth directed to CAEs and State-controlled TAFE colleges.
By the mid-1980s, the method by which fees were re-introduced proved to be a system accepted by both Federal political parties and consequently is still in place today. The system is known as the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) and enables students to defer payment of fees until after they commence professional employment, and after their income exceeds a threshold level – at that point, the fees are automatically deducted through income tax.
By the late 1980s, the Australian tertiary education system was still a three-tier system, composed of:
However, by this point, the roles of the universities, institutes of technology and the CSIRO had also become blurred.[citation needed] Institutes of technology had moved from their traditional role of undergraduate teaching and industry-consulting towards conducting pure and applied research. They also had the ability to award degrees through to Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) level.
For a number of reasons, including clarifying the role of institutes of technology, the Federal Minister for Education of the time (John Dawkins) created the unified national system, which compressed the former three-tier tertiary education system into a two-tier system. This required a number of amalgamations and mergers between smaller tertiary institutions, and the option for institutes of technology to become universities. As a result of these reforms, institutes of technology disappeared and were replaced by a collection of new universities. By the early 1990s, the two-tier tertiary education was in place in Australia – university education and Technical and Further Education (TAFE). By the early years of the new millennium, even TAFE colleges were permitted to offer degrees up to bachelor's level.
The 1980s also saw the establishment of Australia's first private university, Bond University. Founded by businessman Alan Bond, this Gold Coast institution was granted its university status by the Queensland government in 1987.
For the most part, up until the 1990s, the traditional Australian universities had focused upon pure, fundamental, and basic research rather than industry or applied research – a proportion of which had been well supported by the CSIRO which had been set up for this function.[citation needed] Australians had performed well internationally in pure research, having scored almost a dozen Nobel Prizes[28] as a result of their participation in pure research.
In the 1990s, the Hawke/Keating Federal Government sought to redress the shortcoming in applied research by creating a cultural shift in the national research profile.[citation needed] This was achieved[citation needed] by introducing university scholarships and research grants for postgraduate research in collaboration with industry, and by introducing a national system of Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs). These new centres were focused on a narrow band of research themes (e.g., photonics, cast metals, etc.) and were intended to foster cooperation between universities and industry. A typical CRC would be composed of a number of industry partners, university partners and CSIRO. Each CRC would be funded by the Federal Government for an initial period of several years. The total budget of a CRC, composed of the Federal Government monies combined with industry and university funds, was used to fund industry-driven projects with a high potential for commercialisation. It was perceived that this would lead to CRCs becoming self-sustaining (self-funding) entities in the long-term, although this has not eventuated.[citation needed] Most Australian universities have some involvement as partners in CRCs, and CSIRO is also significantly represented across the spectrum of these centres.[citation needed] This has led to a further blurring of the role of CSIRO and how it fits in with research in Australian universities.[citation needed]
From 1989 to 1999, there was an increase of 28% in adults studying in post-compulsory courses, most of which whom were studying in the tertiary sector. [29]
In 2006, Campion College was opened in Sydney as a Roman Catholic liberal arts tertiary college, with an original intake of 16 students, growing to 30-40 per year.
In 2008, Canberra lifted restrictions on university enrolments, in order to make tertiary education more accessible to students from socioeconomic groups which had previously had relatively low levels of participation in higher education. In 2017 the government introduced a freeze on the demand led funding structure, such that admitting more students did not result in a higher funding for institutions, in order to control spending.
In between January 2020 and September 2022, COVID-19 pandemic and Deltacron hybrid variant has both impacted Australian tertiary/higher education sector by reducing revenue by A$3 – 4.6 billion.[30] Australian universities depend on overseas students for their revenue.[30] Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan announced $252 million to support the sector by allowing universities and colleges to offer short courses of 6 months duration with at least 50% reduction in fees, as well as guaranteeing the sector's existing $18 billion funding regardless of changes in domestic enrolment.[30][31] Tehan announced that 20,000 places short-term courses in nursing, teaching, health, IT, and science.[30][31] An estimated 17,000 jobs had been lost in the sector by mid-2021.[32]
Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) is the national Education policy of Australia. It integrates all levels of tertiary education (both vocational and higher education), from trade certificates to higher doctorates, into a single unified classification system based on the following 10 levels.[3]
Australian universities consistently feature well in the top 150 international universities as ranked by the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the QS World University Rankings, and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. From 2012 through 2016, eight Australian universities have featured in the top 150 universities of these three lists.[33][34][35][36] The eight universities which are regularly ranked highly are Australian National University, the University of Melbourne, the University of Queensland, the University of Adelaide, Monash University, the University of Western Australia, the University of New South Wales, and the University of Sydney. These universities comprise Australia's Group of Eight, a coalition of research-intensive Australian universities.[37]
Tertiary education providers are often established or recognised by or under the law of the Australian Government, a state, or the Department of Education, Skills and Employment.[40][39] Following government entities maintain the official register of the approved tertiary education providers:
Most Australian universities are established by the government and hence they receive the vast majority of their public funding from the Australian Government, through the Higher Education Support Act 2003.[38] The Department of Education, Skills and Employment has responsibility for administering this funding, and for developing and administering higher education policy and programs. Government funding is provided largely through:
Universities Australia is the Association of Australian universities which acts as a lobby group. Various universities have formed the subgroups as follows, some universities are part of more than one group:
Vocational Education and Training (VET) in Australia, is provided by following two types of institutes.
Admission for domestic students to undergraduate degrees are done on the basis of ATAR-based selection rank.[47] Admission to universities is granted based on the "selection rank" calculated by each university based on its own unique criteria. Selection ranks are a combination of ATAR, additional points based on universities' own criteria used for selecting students such as a "personal statement, a questionnaire, a portfolio of work, an audition, an interview or a test", as well as special considerations.[48][49][50]
The ATAR is used by all Australian public universities via their respective state-level Tertiary Admissions Centres (TAC), each of these act as single point of application for all universities & post-secondary education institutes within that state or territory, i.e. domestic students do not have to apply for each university or institute separately within that state.
There are 6 SUAC covering 6 states and 2 territories of Australia:
Those students who have completed their pre-university education within the state and wish to apply for university within the state, will have to apply to the state level University admissions center.
Domestic students who wish to apply interstate, must apply to state-level admissions centres of the respective target states.[51] All ATARs are treated as equivalent between the states, though there are slight variations in the way each states calculates the ATAR. For example, an ATAR of 75 in New South Wales is the same as an ATAR of 75.00 in South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia.[52]
Domestic students, who completed their pre-university studies overseas and wish to undertake university education in Australia in one or more states, must apply to state-level university admission centers of those respective states. For example, a domestic student (e.g. Australian citizen) who completed his A-Level exams from Singapore wants to apply to several universities spread across all 6 states and 2 territories of Australia, will have to apply to all 6 state-level admission centers.
For graduate courses, both domestic and international students must apply directly to the respective universities.
Domestic Australian students can obtain Youth Allowance (24 years of age or younger, paid fortnightly e.g. ~$A1,200 per month as of 2023) or Austudy Payment (above 24 years) to support their studies and living expenses.[53][54]
Domestic students are either full fee paying students or they are CSP (Commonwealth Supported Places).[55] The CSP students pay significantly subsidised fee, usually between ~A$0 to ~A$9000 per year for full time study load for most undergraduate courses. The component of fee to be paid the by CSP student is called the student contribution (CS). To cover the CS, the CSP students can also apply for HELP loan (to cover the fee only, excludes laptop, books and living expenses), OS-HELP for studying overseas (total ~A$15,000 for maximum 2 semesters) and SA-HELP to cover for SSAF (student services and amenities fee which is max A$336).[56] Students can also avail Relocation Scholarship (~A$5,100 in the first year & ~A$1,300 per year thereafter are those studying in remote areas or overseas),[57] and Student Startup Loan twice a year (A$1,200 each time x 2 per year of study).[58]
University and other organisations also provides several scholarships which can be applied through the university.
Graduate exercise students can also apply for 2 types of Research Training Program (RTP) Domestic scholarships, the RTP Fee Offset Scholarship to %100 offset the fee and the RTP Stipend Scholarship to cover for the living expenses.[59]
Admission for international students for undergraduate and graduate studies are done by directly applying to individual universities, there's no centralized place to apply.[60] However, there are third party entities in various countries that help students to simultaneously apply for multiple universities in Australia.
Most international students are self-financed.
Research graduate students can apply for Australian government's Research Training Program (RTP) International scholarships.[59]
Of the 956,773 international students in Australia in 2019, 442,219 were enrolled in Higher Education, and 283,893 in vocational institutions, with the remainder enrolled in schools, language courses, and non-award courses.[61] Accordingly, in 2018, international students represented 26.5% of the student Australian university cohort.[62] Per head of population, Australia has the highest number of inbound international students (427,660 in 2018, representing a 1:31 ratio of students:Australian adult population, over double that of the UK (452,079 students, 1:78), or US (987,314, 1:172) which have the largest number of inbound students.[63]
International higher education therefore represents one of the country's largest exports, contributing $25.4 billion to the economy in 2018–19 through their economic activity (including university fees, living costs, tourism, etc.).[64] Of those granted visas between 2001 and 2014 as international students across all sectors, approximately 16% were granted permanent residency at some stage, with 16,588 granted permanent residency in 2019–20.[64]
There are concerns that Australian universities are too dependent on international student revenue, particularly from the largest inbound cohort of China.[65] Similarly, concerns have been raised regarding some international student's English language capability, with calls to tighten admissions standards and provide more support for developing these skills.[66]
In 2011, Australia had over 170 for-profit higher education institutions, taking in 6% of the total student population. Their qualifications are legally equivalent to those issued by the public universities, but there have been concerns raised by external audits about the quality assurance and standards in for-profit colleges.[67]
There are also concerns over the low representation of Indigenous students, students from low socio-economic status backgrounds and students from non-English speaking backgrounds in for-profit colleges, which falls behind that in public universities. However, for-profit colleges do give a second chance to many students who would not otherwise have access to higher education. Partnerships between for-profit "pathway" colleges and public universities have also proven effective in recruiting overseas students. In this model, students spend a year at the pathway college before transferring to the university for two years to complete their degree; 70% of students at the pathway colleges are foreign, going on to make up 45% of foreign students recruited by the partner universities.[67]Problems with the new mass marketing of academic degrees include declining academic standards,[68][69] increased teaching by sessional lecturers, large class sizes, 20% of graduates working part-time, 26% of graduates working full-time but considering themselves to be underemployed, 26% of students not graduating at all, and 17% of employers losing confidence in the quality of instruction at a university.[70][71]
Students' rate of return on their large investment in time and money depends to a great extent on their study area. A longitudinal study by the Department of Education and Training found that median full-time salaries for undergraduates four years into their careers ranged from $55,000 in the creative arts to $120,000 in dentistry. For those with a master's degree or higher, the figures range from $68,800 in communication studies to $122,100 in medicine. Rates of graduate unemployment and underemployment also vary widely between study areas.[72] For comparison, the average taxable income for the top ten trades range from $68,000 for landscapers to $109,000 for boilermakers.[73]
A 2018 study from the Grattan Institute found that the gender gap in career earnings has continued to shrink, and that the proportion of foreign students is growing rapidly. Although the graduate labour market has partly recovered from the Great Recession, only the education, nursing and medical sectors have seen significant earnings growth.[74]
There is a concern that Australian Universities have "lacked the incentives, encouragement and resources" to "bring about the transformation in which high-growth, technology-based businesses become a driving force behind Australia's economy" and demonstrated there is no Australian universities placed in the Reuters top 100 ranking for lack of innovation and competitiveness.[75] Only 10.4% of Australian higher education students study ICT and Engineering/Technologies related courses.[76]
With a larger proportion of university turnover derived from non-Government funds,[77][78] the role of university vice chancellors has moved from one of academic administration to strategic management. Accompanying this shift has been a massive rise in the remuneration of these officials to as much as $1.5 million per year.[79] However, university governance structures remained largely unchanged from their 19th-century origins. All Australian universities have a governance system composed of a chancellor (ceremonial officer), vice-chancellor (chief executive officer), and a university council (governing body). However, unlike a corporate entity board, the university council members have neither financial nor vested specific interests in the performance of the organisation (although the state government is represented in each university council, representing the state government legislative role in the system).
The late 1990s and early years of the new millennium therefore witnessed a collection of financial, managerial and academic failures across the university system [citation needed] – the most notable of these being the Melbourne University Private venture, which saw hundreds of millions of dollars invested in non-productive assets, in search of a 'Harvard style' private university that never delivered on planned outcomes. This was detailed in a book (Off Course)[80] written by former Victorian State Premier John Cain (junior) and co-author John Hewitt who explored problems with governance at the University of Melbourne, arguably one of the nation's most prestigious universities.
There are two main quality systems established by the Commonwealth Government for monitoring and assessing university performance. The Higher Education Standards Framework,[81] enforced by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), sets out minimum quality standards for all higher education providers including standards for governance structures, academic review and monitoring, and student support services. The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) program, administered by the Australian Research Council (ARC), conducts periodic assessments of universities' research against international benchmarks and standards.[82]
The TEQSA reviews of universities essentially look at processes, procedures and their documentation. TEQSA's implementation reflects a move away from the 'fitness-for-purpose' approach employed by its predecessor, the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA), to an approach premised on regulation and risk.[83] TEQSA is currently moving towards its second round of assessments, with all Australian universities having seemingly received mixed (but generally positive) results in the first round.[citation needed] TEQSA's shortcoming is that it does not specifically address issues of governance or strategic planning in anything other than a bureaucratic sense.[citation needed] In the April 2007 edition of Campus Review,[84] the Vice Chancellor of the University of New South Wales, Fred Hilmer, criticised both AUQA (the agency before it became TEQSA) and the Research Quality Framework (a precursor to the ERA that was discarded before rollout):
"... singling out AUQA, Hilmer notes that while complex quality processes are in place, not one institution has lost its accreditation – 'there's never been a consequence – so it's just red tape...'"
"...The RQF is not a good thing – it's an expensive way to measure something that could be measured relatively simply. If we wanted to add impacts as one of the factors, then let's add impact. That can be achieved simply without having to go through what looks like a $90 million dollar exercise with huge implementation issues."
The RQF (scrapped with the change in government in 2007) was modelled on the British Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) system, and was intended to assess the quality and impact of research undertaken at universities through panel-based evaluation of individual research groups within university disciplines. Its objective was to provide government, industry, business and the wider community with an assurance that research quality within Australian universities had been rigorously assessed against international standards. Assessment was expected to allow research groups to be benchmarked against national and international standards across discipline areas. If successfully implemented, this would have been a departure from the Australian Government's traditional approach to measuring research performance exclusively through bibliometrics. The RQF was fraught with controversy,[citation needed] particularly because the cost of such an undertaking (using international panels) and the difficulty in having agreed definitions of research quality and impact. The Labor government which scrapped the RQF has yet to outline any system which will replace it, stating however that it will enter into discussions with higher education providers, to gain consensus on a streamlined, metrics-driven approach.
Australian universities have been accused of accepting massive donations from individuals and groups acting on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. In return for such donations, they have allowed Confucius Institutes and the Chinese Students and Scholars Association to stifle academic debate on Chinese issues such as human rights violations, allowed the Thousand Talents Plan to assist China's espionage and intellectual property infringement goals, and have waived English-language requirements for many students from China.[85] This financial dependence has resulted in a failure to protect pro-democracy Chinese students in Australia from CCP-led intimidation campaigns.[86]
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