My concern about low-ATAR students is primarily about their high risk of not completing a degree. But in this we tend to focus much more on underlying academic ability than on the circumstances in which students study. Completions analysis shows that off campus and part-time students have non-completion risks that are very similar to those faced by below 50 ATAR students, as the slide below shows.

The number of commencing off-campus and part-time students greatly exceeds the number of commencing low ATAR students, as the next slide shows. We are doing some more work at the moment to try to understand the interactions between these factors. In 2015, for example, 24,000 commencing bachelor students were both part-time and off-campus – are these cumulative risk factors, or both just proxies for students with other commitments? Distraction from study could be the actual main risk factor.

Source: Department of Education and Training (domestic students only)

Low ATAR is an issue. But if we are worried about increasing attrition, we have to focus on how students are engaging with their studies and not just how well they did at school.

—–
Update: The day after I wrote this post, the Department released new completion statistics. They are slightly worse than the numbers shown in the first chart.

This week the main university offer rounds start, and with them the annual ATAR controversy. If the last few years are a guide, demand from low ATAR school leavers has stabilised, as the chart below shows. Offers, however, are increasing. Although most low ATAR applications do not result in offers, the number which did more than quadrupled between 2010 and 2016, from less than 2,000 to more than 8,000.

Source: Department of Education and Training

Last year, the number of low ATAR students accepting their offer increased, but still less than half of offers were accepted, which was about a quarter of the original applications.

When I looked at this last year, I said that a significant proportion of low ATAR applicants who accepted their offer were not enrolled after the first census date. While this is a factor in eventual enrolments, we now think this is less of a factor as some students who are reported as having an ATAR during the applications process don’t have one recorded in the enrolment data. A declining share of school leavers are being admitted based on their secondary education. This has dropped from 87 per cent in 2012 to 80 per cent in 2015.

Of the students who do have an ATAR in the enrolment data, those with low ATARs mostly don’t come direct from school. In 2015, there were 2,830 below 50 ATAR students enrolled who had completed school in 2014 (this includes students in pathway diploma courses, not just bachelor degree courses). But in the same year there were 8,000 students with below 50 ATARs in the enrolment data. Of those not being admitted based on their secondary education, about two-thirds were admitted based on previous higher education or vocational education.

Low ATAR enrolments are increasing, and I am among those who thinks that this is an issue. However, it is an issue that needs to be kept in perspective. Only 3 per cent of commencing bachelor degree students have ATARs below 50, and only 7 per cent have ATARs below 60.