Australia’s tertiary-education cohort tops 2 million

One in five Australians aged 15 to 64, or 3 million people, are enrolled in formal study, figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show. The same dataset showed that just under three-quarters of this number participated in tertiary education in 2016. This equates to 2.2 million people. Two out five completing tertiary education are enrolled in a bachelor's degree. The ABS showed there are 4.6 million Australians with a bachelor degree or higher. This represents a tripling of the proportion of people with these qualifications over the past 30 years; 7.2 per cent in 1986, compared with 26 per cent today. Four out of five people with bachelor degrees are employed, the ABS illustrated. The proportions of men and women enrolled in bachelor degrees are similar – 42 per cent of men and 41 per cent of women – the ABS showed. The proportions remain similar at the PhD level – 10 per cent of men and 10.2 per cent of women. Education doesn’t seem to pay off for mothers when it comes to job prospects, the ABS demonstrated. About 80 per cent of men with dependent children are employed, compared with 28 per cent of women with dependent children. Furthermore, 37 per cent of these women in jobs are employed part-time; compared with just 8.6 per cent of men. Just under one-third of women with dependent children are unemployed, compared with 6.8 per cent of men. Michelle Marquardt, ABS’s program manager of education, crime and culture, said there are differences between what men and women study. “Women were more likely than men to study health, 19 per cent and 8.2 per cent respectively, and society and culture, 26 per cent and 15 per cent respectively, while men were over 12 times as likely as women to study engineering, 18 per cent compared with 1.4 per cent,” Marquardt said.