The demand for post-graduate education in Australia continues to grow – up 18 per cent since 2018 – and evolve to include an increasingly varied range of courses with a focus on flexible and relevant career-aligned options. UNSW dean of lifelong learning Nick Wailes says working adults are looking for flexibility in their study. Would-be learners predominately want answers to simple questions such as “how do I increase my skills, change sectors or accelerate, but do it in a way I can fit it around my work and my family commitments,” he says. At the same time, there has been a huge post-education shift to online delivery, which accelerated during the Covid pandemic.
Demand has shifted to shorter and more industry-aligned qualifications, with noticeable growth in graduate certificates, which students increasingly value more than short courses, Wailes says, adding: “People are also looking for things that are very clearly tied into emerging industries and new career paths.”
On the supply side, he believes universities have failed to sufficiently evolve and they continue to try and serve the emerging demand in outdated ways. “I think that’s the real challenge for the sector,” he says. “It’s not that we don’t have a future. It’s that if we carry on doing things the way we’re doing them now, that’s not what people are looking for.”
A key element of current post-graduate education is differentiation, says Australian Technology Network CEO Ant Bagshaw. Students pursue post-graduate qualifications to both learn something new and for the marketplace value, he adds, and there is now a greater need for post-graduate qualifications as a point of differentiation, particularly in high-participation undergraduate systems.
Universities will continue to respond to changing student demand, Bagshaw says. “Universities are incredibly adaptive organisations and they’ve always adapted over their history,” he adds. “That is, responding to different trends in student demand, different trends in what industries need.”
Employers value technology skills and understanding, which are mostly signalled by qualifications, but some experts say there is significantly more to a university education than bare-bones individual technical skills.
Navitas global head of insights and analytics Jonathan Chew says there is a “tendency to commoditise education” into separate skill chunks. “We’re responding to what the students and employers want,” he adds. “They do want those sorts of building blocks, making sure that you can actually do things. But I think we then miss the role that universities and institutions of higher education play in terms of that transformative personal growth, personal development, the social networks, all of those other elements.”
Post-graduate education has become a lifelong endeavour for many Australians who return again and again to higher education institutions to top up their qualifications.
Keypath Education CEO Ryan O’Hare says this trend has been the largest demographic shift by students in the past two or three years. A single post-graduate qualification is no longer sufficient: “that’s bygone days”, he says, “they’re now coming back to do a top-up in something else.”
About a third of UNSW post-graduate enrolments already have a post-graduate qualification, Wailes says. “Life used to be education, work, retirement, and that is no longer the case,” he adds. “Education needs to carry on throughout your work life. People are seeking ways to remain relevant.”
The cost of post-graduate education is always front of mind with students who consider the long-term value of these large expenditures. The government will assist with loans for the fees of certain post-graduate programs but some micro-credential courses entail out-of-pocket costs.
Despite widespread criticism, Wailes admires the fee help system. “It lets people say, ‘I’m going to go and upgrade my skills and study in that program, and I know that I’ll pay it back over time, but I’ll see some value from it’.”