Australian school leavers embrace higher education

Australian school leavers have given higher education a vote of confidence, with rising numbers opting for university despite misgivings about the payoff from degrees.

Belatedly published Department of Education statistics show that school leavers helped propel higher education student numbers to an unprecedented 1.75 million last year, up 4.7 per cent from 2024.

The figures support claims by education minister Jason Clare that domestic enrolments are reaching record levels, and bode well for the government’s aspiration to more than double the number of government-subsidised students by 2050.

However, it remains to be seen whether the recently legislated “managed growth” funding system will have enough capacity to absorb the rising numbers. The imminent publication of the government’s “compacts” with individual universities, along with institutional-level allocations of funded places, may help clarify whether the system can accommodate the demand.

The new figures show that 138,000 domestic students who started higher education courses in 2025 came fresh out of high school, up from about 115,000 in 2020. Over the five years, the school leaver share of domestic commencements rose a full 10 percentage points to 49.9 per cent.

Overall domestic commencements rose 3.1 per cent to 426,000 in 2025. They have since eclipsed the 2020 peak of 450,000, according to Clare.

The statistics also show that more students are staying the course, with domestic attrition rates at a decade-low 10.7 per cent in 2024 – down from 15 per cent in 2015. Success rates, the proportion of study units which domestic students pass, rose almost five percentage points to a decade-high 88.9 per cent in 2025.

The department’s summary report credits the improved attrition figures partly to student support policies which universities were required to adopt from 2024.

Monash University higher education expert Andrew Norton said the surge in domestic demand was a surprise given that the “value proposition” of higher education had “never been more in doubt”.

“We’re still seeing these quite strong numbers when we might have expected a decline because people think, ‘well, is my degree worth anything in the age of AI?’,” Norton observed.

He attributed the increasing school leaver numbers mainly to demographics, with the department’s figures projecting that Australia’s population of 18-year-olds has surged by almost 7 per cent over the past two years and will rise another 5 per cent by 2034.

Norton said the improvement in attrition was also largely due to demographics. He said school leavers had always completed degrees at higher rates than their older counterparts, who were more likely to quit study when job opportunities arose.  

The lower attrition rates also reflected an influx of “more committed” students, Norton speculated. He said the coronavirus pandemic had elicited a flood of enrolments from half-hearted teenagers because the depressed job market and closed borders had left them with “nothing else to do”.

The statistics show that the number of commencing domestic students aged over 29 has fallen by 16 per cent in five years. Norton said this was due partly to the strong labour market, and partly to the “very rapid increase” among younger entrants.

“As more people get their degree straight after school, there’s…a smaller pool of people left who might be interested in higher ed but haven’t already done it,” he explained.

International higher education enrolments rose 10 per cent last year to comprise a record 37 per cent share of total student numbers, up from 32 per cent before the pandemic. However, commencing overseas student numbers increased by just 3 per cent and are likely to contract next year, with visa issuances for foreign higher education students now in freefall.

Norton said foreign student numbers would “start trending down”, with “huge implications” for universities’ financial health. While the “big commencing cohorts” prior to 2024 would help sustain international enrolments for a few more years, “at some point, it’s really going to bite”.

Monash last year became the first Australian university with six-figure enrolments after its student numbers rose 12.1 per cent to 104,000. Around 15,000 are at the institution’s offshore branch campuses, according to its annual report.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com