Tag: news

How reliable are Census educational attainment numbers?

Andrew NortonLeave a comment

I am a big user of ABS data, including for calculating educational participation and attainment rates. Recently I have been using Census longitudinal data, which links records from a 5% sample of the Australian Census between different Census dates.

Due to respondent inattention to questions, or mistakes by family members answering for others, I would expect some inconsistent answers between censuses. But inconsistency rates for education-related questions are alarmingly high.

For the highest year of school education the ABS-reported inconsistency rate between 2016 and 2021 was 6.8%. For highest non-school qualification the inconsistency rate was 8.9% – meaning that a lower highest education qualification was reported in 2021 than 2016.

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2024 funding by university for Commonwealth supported places

Andrew NortonLeave a comment

The Universities Accord final report noted the problem of ‘no consolidated source of government expenditure by higher education provider and program (such as the Commonwealth Grant Scheme)’. It is one of the many reporting and data availability issues that make understanding Australia’s higher education system unnecessarily difficult.

CGS revenue by higher education provider

In January, after a laborious process of transcribing information from funding agreements, I published the ‘higher education courses’ and ‘designated courses’ funding allocations. To this I have now added funding determinations information on demand driven Indigenous funding, the medical student loading, estimated HECS-HELP lending as of May 2024 and estimated upfront student contributions, also of May 2024. You can download the spreadsheet here. [Update 17/06/24: with revised funding agreements, 15 universities have increased higher education courses funding. The updated spreadsheet can be downloaded here.]

The chart below aggregates the programs into their two main categories, the CGS and student contributions, and ranks them from the largest recipient of funds, Monash University at $722.4 million, to the smallest, Charles Darwin University at $157.8 million.

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