KEY INSIGHTS
Based on EFTS (Equivalent Full-Time Students)
- Student enrolments PER CAPITA (AKA tertiary participation) have steadily decreased across 7 out of 8 universities over the last 10 years:
- University of Canterbury +15%
- University of Auckland-6%
- University of Otago -12%
- University of Waikato -13%
- Auckland University of Technology -13%
- Victoria University -15%
- Massey University -23%
- Lincoln University -34%
- Of all Tertiary education provider types in New Zealand in 2022:
- Universities = 56% of all EFTS
- Te Pūkenga (merger of 16 Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics) = 24%
- Private training establishments (various) = 12%
- Wānanga (3 publicly-owned tertiary institutions that provide education in a Māori cultural context) = 7%
- Student enrolments in TOTAL (ignoring population growth) have also steadily decreased in all tertiary groups, except Universities. The caveat is that Universities also experienced a 6.5k decrease from 2021 to 2022 (less than Te Pūkenga’s 7k decrease that year with less than half as many students).
- The Fees Free scheme has not addressed the decline in tertiary participation. Some might argue that it slowed the decline for Universities, but 2018 and 2019’s plateauing University numbers came mostly from a) international student growth and b) Canterbury University growth.
- Domestic University students had a strong 8.5k uplift from 2020 to 2021, but this turned into a 4.5k decline again going into 2022.
- International University students were steadily increasing from 2013 (18.5k) to 2019 (26k), but then dropped off through Covid lockdowns and border closures, and have continued to decline every year since.
- See last weeks fact for more insights https://thefacts.nz/social/tertiary-participation/
KEY QUESTIONS
- Why has university participation in New Zealand dropped so steadily over the last 10 years?
- Is this a bad thing? If not, why not? If so, how do we fix it?
- How has Canterbury University grown so rapidly while all of the other seven universities have been in decline?
- What do we do now with the Fees Free scheme?
- Do we want to attract international students back? If so, how?
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HAVE YOUR SAY
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Full data analysis
Please contact us if you would like the full data set and research.
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Notes
- We have shared all publicly available data.
- We have asked the Ministry of Education for data beyond this 10-year time series, but have not heard back at the time of publication.
- We have also asked the Ministry of Education and University of Canterbury (UC), how UC has bucked the trend. We have not heard back at the time of publication, but will update this page once we do. It is possible that UC’s growth is a result of some other factor, e.g.capacity returning or increasing post-earthquake rebuild, or a reclassification of other students from another tertiary training institution.
- We led with PER CAPITA measures since that is a fairer reflection of tertiary performance and participation in a growing population, especially when new universities haven’t been added over this timeframe. However, we also included TOTALS for those who want them, and to paint a full picture.
- To avoid clutter and duplication, we didn’t include the following in the graphic this week, but you can see them on last week’s fact https://thefacts.nz/social/tertiary-participation/
- University domestic and international students. NOTE: Universities make up 56% of all EFTS tertiary students in New Zealand and 78% of all international tertiary students in New Zealand.
- The Fees Free scheme which was introduced by the Labour Government in 2018.
- The first Covid lockdowns and border restrictions begun in March 2020. See https://covid19.govt.nz/about-our-covid-19-response/history-of-the-covid-19-alert-system/ for a full breakdown.
- We used NZ population estimates for December months.
- The graph colours were chosen based on prominent regional (sporting) colours.
- All numbers are provisional and subject to revision.
Thank you to the Factors who helped pull this together.
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SOURCES:
- Tertiary numbers = https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/statistics/tertiary-participation#:~:text=Total%20participation,in%202022%20than%20in%202021. > Provider-based equivalent full-time students > EFT.30
Data published by The Ministry of Education
(c) Crown Copyright
Licensed for use under the creative commons attribution licence (BY) 4.0
- NZ population = https://infoshare.stats.govt.nz/ > Population > Population Estimates – DPE > Estimated Resident Population by Age and Sex (1991+) (Annual-Dec).
This work is based on/includes Stats NZ’s data which are licensed by Stats NZ for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.
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