Month: October 2019

Is declining higher education demand a concern?

Andrew Norton1 Comment

In the last couple of years demand for higher education has trended down, with enrolments falling slightly in 2018 compared to 2017. This post explores some reasons why this might be happening.

Demographic trends are always important to enrolments and participation rates.  Unfortunately no data source tells us in total or by age how many people meet the eligibility criteria for a Commonwealth-supported place.

The size of the birth cohort has a significant influence, but under-counts eligible persons due to migration. With 22 per cent of domestic students born overseas migration is important to demand. ABS demographic data includes migrants, but because of long-term temporary residents over-states how many people are eligible for a CSP.

As universities generally require students to have completed Year 12, final year of school enrolments are also a guide to potential demand. However, this is also an imperfect indicator, due to temporary migrants and not all Year 12 students taking subjects that qualify them for university entry.

With all these caveats, the chart below shows that none of the potential population indicators suggest that, holding participation rates constant, that demand for higher education should be up in aggregate terms. The (temporarily) falling size of the birth cohort and the slight dip in Year 12 students would suggest that demand might trend down.

potential uni students

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Has the university funding freeze caused commencing enrolments to fall?

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The 2018 higher education enrolment data, published yesterday (yes, it should be released much earlier than late October), showed a rare fall in public university domestic commencing bachelor degree students. Both a headcount and full-time equivalent count show a decline of about 0.8 per cent compared to 2017.

2018 was also the first year post the demand driven system, the practical implication of which was that universities would not be paid Commonwealth contributions for enrolling additional students. Indeed, there is a financial incentive to let the number of student places fall.

So is this cause and effect, with changed funding rules causing enrolments to decline? I have no special insight into the strategic decisions of universities, but overall this trend looks to be driven by weak demand more than an unwillingness to supply student places.

As the chart below shows, applications trended down in 2018 and 2019 and offers (willingness to supply) followed this trend. Offer rates were stable: 83.2 per cent in 2017, 83.8 per cent in 2018, and 83.6 per cent in 2019. If universities were actively trying to reduce numbers we might expect offer rates to go down, but this isn’t happening.

applications down 2019

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The changing nature of work training: further evidence and puzzles

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In August, although I only noticed it yesterday, the OECD published a report on work-related training in Australia relevant to my recent blog posts. It has a couple of data sources I had missed that confirm the declining use of some forms of training.

The HILDA survey has a question about whether employed respondents have undertaken any education or training. Based on the questionnaire, it could have been higher education, vocational education or unaccredited training but it has to be ‘structured’. So it would not include short online self-education.

As the chart below from the OECD report shows, the proportion of workers undertaking any type of training has declined. From peak to trough, the proportion participating in structured learning for work over the previous 12 months has declined by about 5 percentage points.

HILDA work related training

I don’t have access to HILDA data, but it has several questions related to the purpose of the training that could help us understand what is going on (recalling that NCVER data suggests that training for the respondent’s current job is declining more than for a new job or promotion).Read More »

The popularity of online self-education

Andrew NortonLeave a comment

A couple of weeks ago I posted on the surprising apparent decline of reskilling and retraining. Mature-age undergraduate, postgraduate, vocational qualification, ABS work-related training, and ATO self-education expenses have all trended down in recent years. These trends did not seem consistent with the oft-repeated claims of workplace change and the need to reskill and retrain.

Especially on LinkedIn, much of the reaction to the post suggested that this was due to online self-education as a substitute for credentialed and uncredentialed courses and training. While I haven’t found any time series data on how online self-education  has grown, I am persuaded that this must be a significant part of the explanation.

In a recent Pearson global survey of learners, employed respondents who required further training were asked how they did it. In Australia, organised courses or training are still more widely used than online self-education. But a third of the sample had used this method (chart below).

use Pearson

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