Research report : higher education enrolment growth : exploring recent change by provider type

This paper provides a snapshot of the higher education sector following recent policy changes that have promoted growth and expansion. The emphasis of this work is to highlight the relative enrolment changes among the different types of higher education providers in the sector during this growth period. The analyses show that most growth in the sector has been in universities – because it is universities which were the specific aim and beneficiaries of substantial change in policy and funding provision. However, the data also suggest that at the same time, other providers such as Private HEPs and TAFEs have managed to continue to find a market in domestic undergraduate enrolments and have continued to grow their small but notable share of these students in Australia. With these findings in mind, the paper contextualises the potential role that could be played by non-university higher education providers in future expansion of the system.