Preliminary 2025 funding per university for Commonwealth supported places
Due to the Department of Education's under-reporting of higher education funding, last year I consolidated institution-level information into a spreadsheet. There were about 250 downloads each for the original and a subsequent updated spreadsheet, so I decided it was worth doing again this year. The data sources are the funding determinations for the various funding categories.
I emphasised 'preliminary' in the post title because the FEE-FREE Uni Ready funding is not yet included. While this is a little frustrating, the upside is that when it is added the amounts involved will be more transparent than might otherwise have been the case.
The headline figures to date are Commonwealth Grant Scheme (CGS) - $8.2 billion, estimated HECS-HELP lending of $5.9 billion, and estimated upfront student contributions of $700 million. Overall, about $14.8 billion, with 95% coming from the Commonwealth in cash flow terms. That percentage will go up when we get the FEE-FREE Uni Ready information.
CGS funding has three components (for more detail see section 7.2 of Mapping Australian higher education):
Higher education courses - the figures shown are the maximum basic grant amounts from the unviersity funding agreements (these will be revised up when the FEE-FREE Uni Ready places are added).
Designated higher education courses - only medicine at this point, so the amounts shown are each university's allocated number of student places multiplied by the relevant Commonwealth contribution.
Demand driven bachelor degree places - the figures shown are university estimates based on EFTSL enrolments multiplied by the relevant Commonwealth contributions. These are paid on actual enrolments so the final number can be higher or lower than the figures currently in the spreadsheet.
For student contributions, the figures are university estimates based on expected EFTSL multiplied by the relevant student contribution rate. There is no floor or cap on payments, so these can vary down or up on the figures shown. The division between upfront payment and HECS-HELP borrowing is also an estimate. On these figures, about 11% of student contributions will be paid upfront.
The spreadsheet with the institutional data to date is here.
Trends - student contribution revenue
Without the FEE-FREE Uni Ready figures, it would be premature to produce some CGS and overall institutional analysis I have published previously.
Missing FEE-FREE Uni Ready funding does not affect student contributions.
For 2025 universities collectively expect that their student contribution revenue will increase by 8.2% on 2024. This is double what would be expected from indexation alone (4.1%). However, the wide differences in student contributions between fields, and the continuing exits of pre-2021 students on grandfathered student contribution rates, complicate the drawing of conclusions. The increase may signal expected enrolment increases, but it could also reflect higher average per student charges, or some mix of the two.
Trends - Indigenous demand driven
The demand driven Indigenous bachelor degree program excludes FEE-FREE Uni Ready places so we can use the CGS figures now. Early results for the regional and remote students only version of this program were disappointing, with no obvious effects in the first three years of the program 2021-2023, as seen in the chart below.
From 2024 the program was extended to all Indigenous bachelor degree students. The increase in estimated Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding for 2025 over 2024 is 8.9%, more than double indexation levels. While this could include compositional change (i.e. a shift to higher Commonwealth contribution fields), overall I think it suggests universities believe that Indigenous enrolments will increase in 2025. This number is updated during the year in light of actual enrolments, so it will be interesting to see if reality reflects this optimism.
