Australia’s capability to sustain a strong academic workforce and fulfill the advanced graduate demands of industry is threatened by current trends, with a significant slump in domestic HDR students evident over the past decade.
With a competition underway in Canberra to demonstrate which party can be tougher on immigration restrictions, analysis by Data master Frank Larkins (Uni Melbourne) indicates that domestic postgraduate research student numbers fell by nearly 6,500 or 15% between 2015-24. International HDR numbers rose by 33% or 6,800 over the same period.
More than three quarters of the nation’s universities (32 out of 40) had fewer domestic research students in 2024 compared to 2015, Professor Larkins found.
“The findings will be of major concern to university executives, higher education policy planners and to those who seek to develop an internationally-competitive skill base framework for Australian industries and societal wellbeing,” Professor Larkins writes.
“Australian universities, in the main, are not achieving reasonable research training benchmark performances.”
Some of the universities that bang on loudest about driving the national research effort are going backwards. Every member of the research-intensive Group of Eight universities had fewer local research PGs in 2024 than in ’15; collectively accounting for 50% of the national fall. Half the Eight were national tops for the biggest decline in domestic numbers, Uni Sydney 990 (23.8 %), ANU 581 (29.3 %), UNSW 495 (18.4 %) and Uni Melbourne 457 (12.8 %).
Certainly there is growth in challenger brands – but off low bases. Central Queensland U grew its domestic research student numbers by nearly 62 %, but that was just 241 more enrolments. And some research-strong institutions outside the Eight appear to have had growth strategies, UTS was up 47 % (769 more enrolments).
System-wide, Professor Larkins suggests, a lack of adequate financial support for students and uncertain pathways to rewarding careers have reduced demand and he warns of the “questionable health of research training at some universities.”
The Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) has been warning of the impact of low stipends throughout the year, collecting a range of evidence identifying issues which also culminated in a recommendation for an introduction of $50,000 stipends for 1,000 HDR students in areas of national priority by the SERD review, released in March. This is yet to be implemented.
“The skills developed through investigative research enquiries are essential to meet the challenges of an increasingly competitive technically-driven environment in most sectors of the economy,” he warns.
A review of research training is urgently needed, examining ways to arrest the decline, he concludes.
Professor Larkins’ findings come as Education Minister Jason Clare questions the existing requirement for institutions to research in half the fields they teaches (minimum three) to keep the university title. In May he asked ATEC to advise on a “system where we have universities of different sizes and do different things.”