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Australian domestic education, by state

The domestic pipeline from school to university — secondary enrolments and retention to Year 12, undergraduate applications and offers, and university commencements, completions and study load. Compare states and follow the trends over time.

State
School
Applications & offers
University
Apparent retention to Year 12 by state · 2025
Australia 81.3%74.4%NSW86.3%VIC82.7%QLD85.3%WA90.3%SA68.6%TAS90.9%ACT54.7%NT
Apparent retention to Year 12 over time — Queensland vs Australia
QLDAustralia201120152020202582.7%81.3%

ABS Schools — capped apparent retention (all affiliations, persons). Volatile for small populations.

Demand by discipline

Where the national undergraduate demand sits, by field of education — and how readily each field converts applications into offers. Health draws the most applications but has the lowest offer rate, reflecting competitive, capped entry.

Undergraduate applications by field of education — national · 2024

Bar length = applications; filled portion = offers. National only — the source does not publish applications by field for individual states.

Applications (bar) · offers (filled) · % = offer rateHealth81,376 · 75%Society and Culture62,682 · 89%Management and Commerce33,161 · 91%Natural and Physical Sciences30,249 · 92%Education25,832 · 87%Engineering and Related Techn…22,050 · 90%Creative Arts19,180 · 80%Information Technology13,802 · 86%Architecture and Building9,227 · 83%Agriculture, Environmental an…4,691 · 92%

Notes & sources

  • · School enrolments and apparent retention: ABS Schools (cat. 4221.0). Retention is capped at 100% and is volatile for small populations. Figures are by state of schooling.
  • · Applications & offers: Dept of Education, Undergraduate Applications & Offers. A demand indicator (per-student, first semester); the QLD TAC reporting break (2019–21) is excluded from the series.
  • · University commencements, completions and study load (EFTSL): Dept of Education Higher Education Statistics (2024). Counts are input-perturbed (indicative) and by institution location, not student home state — a student studying interstate appears under the institution's state.
  • · All sources licensed CC BY 4.0.