2025 Section 16 – Equity performance data

If you require further information, a data request can be submitted to the Department. Please see the Data Requests, Data Protocols, Data Privacy and Visual Analytics Guide page.

Changes to Equity Performance Reporting

Section 16 (Equity Performance) has been restructured for the 2025 Student Data release to align reporting with contemporary higher education policy priorities, including those arising from the Australian Universities Accord.
The redesign represents the first major review of this section in many years. The revised section focuses on undergraduate equity cohorts to support the focus and transparent monitoring of progress towards the Accord's participation and attainment objectives.
As part of this redesign, some tables have been removed, consolidated or redesigned, meaning the scope and presentation of information differs from previous releases. In particular, Women in non-traditional areas (WINTA) has been retired as a group of interest, and tables containing counts have been removed as these are available in section 11. Tables have been restructured to better support accessibility (screen readers) and querying of the data in statistical software.

Changes to Regional and Remote statistics

The 2025 student data include an improved measure of regional and remote status of a student, based on the statistical area 1 (SA1) of the student's (current or first) address. The Regional and Remote (SA1) measure has higher accuracy than the postcode measure and removes the proportionality issue of the previous method. In line with policy reforms, the department will move to retire the postcode measure from program administration and reporting over the next few years. Both SA1 and Postcode measures are included in 2025 data.

A note about 2020 Higher Education Equity and Equity Performance Data:

During the transition to the Tertiary Collection of Student Information (TCSI) System, enrolment numbers for students with disability were substantially under-reported in the case of several universities. This issue affects the 2020 access, participation, and success indicators and the 2020 retention rates. Caution should be taken when using the 2020 enrolment data points for students with disability. All other time points are unaffected.