People from regional and remote areas are recognised as one of 6 equity groups in the Australian Government’s policy framework to improve equity of access, participation and success in higher education. Yet, according to a 2018 analysis for the then Department of Education and Training, several interacting factors continue to contribute to lower higher education attainment in regional and remote areas: 

• limited local higher education study options
• the financial, emotional, and social challenges associated with relocating to study
• differences in student experiences and aspirations and
• other forms of disadvantage that correspond with location, such as being from lower socioeconomic status households, being Indigenous, and/or studying part time.

This quick guide provides an overview of regional and remote higher education. It outlines key statistics based on Australian Government data, current Australian Government initiatives, and a list of regionally headquartered universities.

Currently, Australian Government higher education statistics and policy use the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS), which classifies remoteness based on access to services. The most recent remoteness structure of the ASGS was produced in 2016. The ASGS uses 5 Remoteness Areas: major cities, inner regional, outer regional, remote and very remote. Where possible, the statistics in this quick guide also use the 2016 ASGS Remoteness Areas.  

The quick guide does not cover income support arrangements such as the Tertiary Access Payment, or higher education initiatives to support and grow regional and remote workforces, such as those included in the Stronger Rural Health Strategy, or the reduction of Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) debts for teachers in very remote areas.

Key statistics

Attainment by regionality

According to the ABS, in May 2021, 48.6% of people aged 25 to 34 years in major cities had a bachelor degree or above, compared with 26.9% in inner regional areas, 21.1% in outer regional areas, and approximately 16.6% in remote and very remote areas.

Table 1     Bachelor degree and above attainment rates by Remoteness Area, 2013–2021 (%)

Note: attainment rates vary slightly from those shown in the 2016 Census due to differences in survey methodology.
* These figures have a high margin of error and should be treated with caution.
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Education and Work, Australia, (Canberra: ABS, 2021), Table 34.

Applications and offers

The Department of Education, Skills and Employment (DESE) publishes undergraduate applications, offers and acceptances data annually. The latest DESE analysis of this data (p. 8) shows university applications from regional and remote residents are declining—by 0.1% in 2021, compared with a 4.5% increase among metropolitan applicants. However, non-metropolitan applicants who apply are more likely to receive an offer (84.7% in 2021) compared with metropolitan applicants (81.5% in 2021).

Note that this analysis excludes applications and offers from the Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre because of a ‘half-year’ Year 12 cohort resulting from the introduction of an additional year of schooling in 2007.

Enrolments

Enrolment statistics from the DESE higher education student data collection are shown in Tables 2 (all domestic students) and 3 (undergraduate domestic students only). Undergraduate trends are particularly notable, with enrolments among people from regional and remote backgrounds decreasing between 2019 and 2020 by 3.2% and 3.5% respectively, compared to a 1.9% increase in all domestic undergraduate enrolments.  

Increases in 2016 are largely due to the introduction of a ‘first address’ measure which increased the proportion of regional and remote students recorded. The data collection had previously omitted some students who relocated away from these areas to attend a higher education institution.

Table 2     Regional and remote enrolments, all domestic students and year on year (YoY) change (%), 2013–2020

Note: There is a break in series in 2016 due to the move from the 2011 ASGS to the 2016 ASGS, and the introduction of the first address measure.
Source: Parliamentary Library estimates and Department of Education, Skills and Employment (DESE), 2020 Section 11 - Equity groups, (Canberra: DESE, 14 February 2022).

Table 3     Regional and remote enrolments, undergraduate domestic students and YoY change (%), 2013–2020

Note: See Table 2.
Source: Parliamentary Library estimates and DESE, 2020 Section 11 - Equity groups, (Canberra: DESE, 14 February 2022).

Intersection with other recognised equity groups

In 2020, the first registered address for 224,923 undergraduate domestic students was in a regional or remote area. Table 4 below shows the number of these students who also belong to at least one other recognised equity group, with the largest overlap being that 30.3% of regional and remote students also come from a low socioeconomic status (SES) background.

Table 4     Regional and remote students, membership of other recognised equity groups, all domestic students, 2020

Note: Students may belong to more than one other equity group. Figures should not be summed.
Source: Parliamentary Library estimates and DESE, 2020 Section 11 - Equity groups, (Canberra: DESE, 14 February 2022).

Participation and attainment rates

As an alternative to raw enrolment numbers, the DESE higher education student data collection also includes several different ways of measuring equity group performance in comparison to overall student numbers, and the proportion of people from each equity group in the Australian population. These measures can be more meaningful than enrolment counts, because they provide a basis to judge whether equity groups are engaging with higher education at the level that would be expected if they were not facing barriers to participation.  

Tables 5 (regional) and 6 (remote) provide a selection of access, participation and attainment rates, along with ‘reference values’, which represent the percentage of people living in regional or remote areas in the working-age population (15–64 years):

• access rates measure commencing regional or remote students over all commencing domestic onshore students
• participation rates measure all regional or remote students over all domestic onshore students
• attainment rates measure award course completions by regional or remote students over all domestic award course completions.

Table 5 shows that in 2020, the access rate for students from regional backgrounds (20.25%) remained below the proportion of working-age people living in regional areas in the population as a whole (22.62%), with lower rates of participation (19.37%) and attainment (18.16%) consistent with some commencing students not completing their studies (completion rates are covered in the next section). This disparity is not evident for remote students—a very low population (0.47%) compares with a 1.00% access rate, 0.94% participation rate, and 0.83% attainment rate in 2020.

Table 5     Domestic students at Australian universities, first address¹ regional, 2013–2020 (%)

Notes:
1. First address measure is used from 2016. This measure is based on a student's permanent home address at the commencement of study.
2. Reference values are based on 2011 and 2016 ABS Census data.
Sources: DESE, 2020 Section 11 - Equity groups, (Canberra: DESE, 14 February 2022); DESE, Visual Analytics Equity Performance Data, (Canberra: DESE, n.d.).

Table 6     Domestic students at Australian universities, first address¹ remote, 2013–2020 (%)

Notes: See Table 5.
Sources: DESE, 2020 Section 16 – Equity performance data, (Canberra: DESE, 14 February 2022); DESE, Visual Analytics Equity Performance Data, (Canberra: DESE, n.d.).

Completion rates

DESE analysis (Table 7) shows that 72.9% of metropolitan students who started studying in 2012 had completed by 2020, compared with 67.7% of students from regional backgrounds, and 61.5% of students from remote backgrounds.

Although there is evidence of non-metropolitan students remaining enrolled or re-enrolling, the relatively high proportion of students who withdraw again after re‑enrolling (17.7% of regional and 18.9% remote students, for those who commenced in 2012) points to the persistence of barriers for these students.   

Table 7     Cohort analysis, Australian university commencing domestic bachelor students over a nine-year period (%)

Note: Regional classification is reported on a student's postcode of permanent home residence. Metropolitan, regional and remote categories are derived from the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs classification (MCEETYA) until 2010. From 2011, regional classification is based on the ASGS.
Source: DESE, Completion Rates of Higher Education Students - Cohort Analysis, 2005-2020, (Canberra: DESE, 14 February 2022).

Graduate outcomes

For those people from regional and remote areas who do achieve an undergraduate degree, there is evidence that career outcomes are slightly better than those from city areas.

According to the Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS) (Table 8), completed by graduates of Australian higher education institutions 4 to 6 months after finishing their studies, when compared with their metropolitan counterparts, people from regional or remote areas who complete undergraduate degrees:

• have higher full-time and overall employment rates
• have slightly lower labour force participation rates and
• have slightly higher full-time median salaries.

Table 8     Graduate outcomes, undergraduate students by regionality, 2021 

Source: Social Research Centre, 2021 GOS National Report Accessible, (Melbourne: Social Research Centre, October 2021),  12–13.

Regional Universities

The Regional Universities Network (RUN) is made up of 7 universities headquartered in regional Australia, that aim to ‘ensure that higher education is accessible and achievable, and produce qualified professionals needed for regional development’:

• CQUniversity Australia, headquartered in Rockhampton, Queensland
• Charles Sturt University, headquartered in Bathurst, New South Wales
• Federation University, headquartered in Ballarat, Victoria
• Southern Cross University, headquartered in Lismore, New South Wales
• University of New England, headquartered in Armidale, New South Wales
• University of Southern Queensland, headquartered in Toowoomba, Queensland and
• University of the Sunshine Coast, headquartered in Sippy Downs in the Sunshine Coast Region of Queensland.

In addition to the RUN universities, the following are also based in regional Australia:

• Charles Darwin University, headquartered in Darwin, Northern Territory
• James Cook University, headquartered in Townsville, Queensland and
• University of Tasmania, headquartered in in Hobart, Tasmania.

Many city-based universities also have regional campuses and study locations, while many students from regional and remote backgrounds also study at city-based universities. A list of student numbers from regional and remote backgrounds by provider is at Appendix A.

Australian Government regional and remote student equity initiatives

Background

Current Australian Government equity policy, which includes measures for regional and remote students, builds on A Fair Chance for All, the national plan released in 1990 as part of the Dawkins reforms. A Fair Chance for All ‘set out for the first time a coherent set of national objectives, targets and strategies for ensuring that the benefits of higher education are within everyone’s reach’ (p. 5).

Equity in Higher Education Panel

The Equity in Higher Education Panel (EHEP) was established in 2020 to provide advice and recommendations to DESE about student equity policy. It has been tasked with developing a 5-year Student Equity in Higher Education Roadmap.

National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education

The National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education, based at Curtin University, is funded by the Australian Government to provide national leadership in research, policy and practice related to student equity in higher education. Its work includes interactive equity data and research publications relevant to regional and remote student equity. 

Regional Education Commissioner

The Regional Education Commissioner (the Commissioner) is a non-statutory role responsible for overseeing and coordinating the implementation of actions recommended in the 2019 National Regional, Rural and Remote Tertiary Education Strategy—final report (Napthine Review). The first Commissioner, Fiona Nash, was appointed for a three-year term in December 2021.

The Commissioner has responsibility for actions across all education sectors, including early childhood education, school education, vocational education and training (VET), and higher education.

Regional University Centres

Regional University Centres (RUC), formerly known as Regional Study Hubs, provide general facilities such as study spaces, video conferencing, computers, and administrative and academic support services, for students studying remotely with any tertiary education provider. For people not located close to a regional university campus, RUCs can provide access to some of the kinds of support students typically access on campus, without the need to relocate.

At the time of writing, there are currently 25 RUCs operating (a map is available for download) with an additional RUC scheduled to open, in Wangaratta, in 2022. 

Further information is available via the RUC Network website.

Additional funding for Commonwealth supported places

Additional funding for subsidised higher education courses, known as a Commonwealth supported places (CSP), for people from regional and remote areas, is provided via two mechanisms in the Commonwealth Grant Scheme (CGS):

• demand driven funding is provided for bachelor and honours degrees undertaken by Indigenous people from regional or remote areas and
• a higher rate of indexation for regional and remote campuses listed in the Technical Note for Job-ready Graduates Package will allow for growth in the number of CSPs provided at these campuses, relative to metropolitan locations. 

Indigenous, Regional and Low Socioeconomic Status (SES) Attainment Fund

The Indigenous, Regional and Low SES Attainment Fund includes support to improve access and participation of students from regional and remote backgrounds via:

• the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program, which distributes funding to providers based on their share of domestic undergraduate students from regional and remote areas, as well as Indigenous students and those from a low SES background
• the National Priorities Pool Program, which provides grants to support research, trials and implementation initiatives that aim to improve equity policy and programs
• the Regional Partnerships Project Pool, which provides grants to support collaboration between higher education providers and schools, VET providers and community organisations to address barriers to higher education for students from regional and remote areas and
• the Regional Loading Program, which provides additional funding, based on the remoteness of a provider’s campus(es) and number of CSPs, to support the cost of providing higher education in regional areas.

Rural and regional enterprise scholarships

Rural and Regional Enterprise Scholarships assist VET and higher education students from regional and remote backgrounds with the costs of studying at the Certificate IV to PhD level.

Up to $18,000 is provided depending on course length and type, with an additional $500 available for students who undertake a relevant internship.

Further information

• The Australian Government-funded National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) provides interactive equity data and research publications relevant to regional and remote student equity. In 2019, the NCSEHE published The Best Chance for All: Student Equity 2030—A Long-term Strategic Vision for Student Equity in Higher Education.
• Recent Australian Government and Australian Parliament reviews and strategies include:
  • John Halsey, Independent Review into Regional Rural and Remote Education—Final Report, (Canberra: Department of Education and Training, January 2018).
  • Denis Napthine, National Regional, Rural and Remote Education Strategy (Canberra: Department of Education, Skills and Employment, August 2019).
  • House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training Education in Remote and Complex Environments (Canberra: House of Representatives, 11 November 2020).
• The Regional Universities Network  publishes information about the impact of member universities, including their economic impact.
• A detailed introduction to higher education funding is available in the Parliamentary Library research paper, A Guide to Australian Government Funding for Higher Education Learning and Teaching.
• A list of all university campus and study locations is available via the Library’s Tertiary education providers by campus by Commonwealth Electoral Division publication (access limited to Parliamentary Computing Network users) .
• An in-depth analysis of additional barriers faced by regional and remote students is in the report of The First Year Experience in Australian Universities: Findings from Two Decades, 1994-2014 (pp. 78–80) (access limited to Parliamentary Computing Network users).
  

Appendix A: domestic students with first address regional and remote, by state and institution, 2020

Source: Parliamentary Library estimates and DESE, 2020 Section 11 - Equity groups, (Canberra: DESE, 14 February 2022).

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