The number of applications to university for courses commencing in 2015 has attracted more interest than usual, due to the controversy over higher education fees. Some data has already been released by individual tertiary admission centres, but it is now available in consolidated form. The figures are preliminary, reflecting applications made as of October 2014. Based on recent history, there will be tens of thousands more applications lodged after this date. I am still seeing plenty of university advertising aimed at that goal.

There is a particular complication this year in Western Australia. A change to the school starting age in 2003 has flowed through the school system, leading to a Year 12 cohort that was only about 60 per its normal size. This makes the WA figures hard to interpret, and the report presents trend data with and without WA.

Without WA, school leaver applications are up 2.2 per cent. Possibly this could be interpreted as saying that the fear of fees has had little or no impact on demand. That’s probably right, although the apparent upward trend may be due to people who would have taken a gap year starting in 2015, so that they get at least one year on the fixed student contribution rates. We also don’t know exactly how many students completed Year 12, so we cannot calculate an application rate.

Non Year-12 applications are down 6.5 per cent. However, this may not mean anything at all. For non-Year 12 applicants, there is a longer-term structural shift away from using tertiary admission centres and towards applying directly to universities. Since 2010, the number of TAC non-Year 12 applications has declined every year, while the number of direct applications has increased.

The report also raises the possibility that the demand driven system might have reduced a backlog of unmet demand for higher education. It is plausible that as people who had unsuccessfully applied to higher education in the past get admitted the pool of higher education hopefuls will diminish. And as more people get into university straight from school, there is a smaller potential market for mature-age higher education.

While these theories may be right, it is still possible that there will be no decline in overall non-Year 12 applications when we get the direct applications data later in the year.

If the demand driven system survives it will be our best yet test of theories in this area. Under the old system, the supply of places was always well below demand. Unless there was a huge decline in demand any price sensitivity would not show in enrolment numbers. We therefore had to use applications data to assess underlying demand. But applications are an imperfect proxy for a serious intention to pursue higher education. Large numbers of people reject the offers they receive, raising questions about whether some apparent demand for higher education is really just keeping options open, or contingent on an offer for a very specific course. Actual enrolments in a system without supply constraints will be a better guide to the true level of demand for higher education.