June 5, 2026
Senate Education and Employment References Committee
The Group of Eight (Go8) welcomes the opportunity to contribute to this inquiry. However, we challenge the underlying premise that our graduates are broadly unsuccessful, our internationally recognised universities are failing them. Framing the issue as a widespread crisis does a disservice to students, graduates and school leavers.
The evidence does not support this characterisation for Go8 universities. Graduate outcomes remain strong and are best understood over the medium term rather than at the point of graduation.
- Go8 undergraduate retention and completion rates consistently outperform the national average, with bachelor completion rates around 10 percentage points higher.
- Retention and success rates at Go8 universities exceed national averages for students with a disability, low SES students, regional and remote students, and students from non-English speaking backgrounds.
- Over the past five years, more than 90 per cent of Go8 graduates have typically been in full-time work three years after graduation, consistently above the national average.
We encourage Australian students to aspire to a degree at a Go8 university, which provides strong foundations for long-term career success. We are proud to lead the nation in student outcomes – ensuring students do not just get a foot in the door but are set up to succeed both during and after university.
That is not to suggest there are no challenges. Graduates, like previous generations, enter dynamic labour markets shaped by economic change, technological disruption, and expanding bodies of knowledge. The task is to understand these shifts accurately and respond appropriately.
Graduate employability and wellbeing should be considered through robust evidence and long-term trends, not overstated narratives. Policy responses should be measured, targeted and grounded in data.
Graduates would benefit from:
- Stronger support for living and study costs, allowing full engagement in study
- Improved access to further education and research opportunities
- An economy better able to make use of their skills and capabilities
- More targeted support during the transition from study to employment.
Achieving this also requires better and more comprehensive data on graduate outcomes.
We support the Senate’s focus on the success of Australia’s students, graduates and universities.
Recommendations
The Committee should consider:
- The adequacy of student income support, including programs such as Commonwealth Prac Payments and Youth Allowance, in enabling students to make the most of their university experiences.
- Increased support for postgraduate coursework and higher degree by research pathways, enabling lifelong capability development.
- Strengthening Australia’s research, development and innovation system to create new industries and transform existing ones, particularly in response to technologies such as artificial intelligence.
- Targeted funding to support students to succeed and thrive post-graduation, complementing existing access and participation measures.
- Improved use and expansion of data to better understand graduate outcomes over time.
Further information
Support for students
The latest Student Experience Survey shows that students considering leaving university are more likely to cite external pressures – such as financial hardship, paid work commitments and caring responsibilities – than study-related or quality related factors. Only 15 per cent identified concerns about future career prospects.
This points to a mismatch between current student support settings and the reality of modern degrees. Many students are undertaking double degrees or professionally oriented programs with significant placement requirements.
Fields such as medicine, allied health and STEM involve intensive contact hours and mandatory placements. While these are a strength, they can impose direct financial costs and foregone income, especially in metropolitan areas where cost-of-living pressures like accommodation are highest.
Financial pressure is therefore not only an access issue but a constraint on participation. Students are often forced to trade off paid work against study, placements, and broader opportunities such as further study or international experience.
This can affect graduate readiness, workforce supply in critical professions, and participation in research and innovation pathways (like research degrees or startups).
There is a strong case for strengthening and expanding targeted income support, including extending Commonwealth Prac Payments to additional fields with mandatory placements, and supporting associated costs such as travel and accommodation.
More broadly, student income support should be treated as an investment in national capability, enabling full participation in high-impact educational experiences and strengthening long-term productivity and innovation.
Support for further studies
Australia’s tertiary system remains disproportionately front-loaded at the undergraduate level, with comparatively limited and fragmented support for postgraduate coursework and higher degree by research (HDR).
This is increasingly misaligned with an advanced knowledge economy, where initial degrees are only the starting point for capability development.
Graduate entry and professional postgraduate programs – particularly in medicine, psychology, engineering, and health – are costly to deliver and often reliant on full fee-paying students. At the same time, Research Training Program (RTP) scholarships have not kept pace with living costs or industry salaries, despite being topped up by Go8 universities.
The result is students face significant financial barriers to progressing beyond undergraduate study, constraining Australia’s capacity to develop graduates with advanced skills and research capability over the course of their career.
Graduates who stand to benefit from higher degrees – particularly those from less advantaged backgrounds – are deterred from pursuing postgraduate coursework or research degrees or forced to undertake them part-time under financial strain.
Inadequate support also reduces the attractiveness of research careers, contributing to leakage from the academic and innovation pipeline.
Addressing this requires:
- Increased value and availability of RTP scholarships
- Expanded support for professional postgraduate coursework in areas of national priority.
Stronger postgraduate support would maximise return on public investment in undergraduate education and support productivity, innovation and leadership.
Responding to industry disruption and transformation
Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence should be approached as opportunities to shape and lead, rather than risks to manage.
Sustained investment across the research pipeline – particularly in areas such as AI, quantum technologies, and biotechnology – ensures Australia is a creator, not simply a consumer, of new technologies.
Go8 universities are central to this effort, producing both the foundational knowledge and the highly skilled graduates required to translate discovery into application. By strengthening our research capabilities, Australia can actively play a role in emerging technology ecosystems, capturing value through new firms, intellectual property, and highly skilled jobs.
This will also enable Australia to modernise and transform its existing industries, rather than allowing them to be disrupted from elsewhere. Artificial intelligence is already reshaping sectors such as professional services, agriculture, and healthcare – offering opportunities to enhance productivity, improve decision-making, and create new business models. The key policy challenge is not whether these changes will occur, but whether Australian firms are equipped to lead and adapt. Investment in applied research, industry collaboration, and workforce capability ensures that AI and related technologies are embedded effectively across the economy, driving competitiveness and resilience rather than displacement.
The Committee should consider how we can support graduates through sustained funding for research, stronger university-industry linkages, support for commercialisation and translation, and opportunities to undertake postgraduate and research degrees. Such an approach reframes AI from a source of uncertainty into one of many tools that graduates can use and master to their benefit and Australia’s benefit.
Post-graduation support
Policy settings have rightly focused on expanding access to university, but less attention has been paid to outcomes after graduation.
Universities are increasingly expected to support students’ transition into employment, further study and research pathways. This includes:
- Work integrated learning and placements
- Career development services
- Mentoring and professional skills programs
- Stronger industry connections and employment outcomes
These activities are resource-intensive and not captured within existing funding models.
A more balanced approach would explicitly recognise and support universities’ role in delivering strong graduate outcomes, alongside access objectives.
Targeted funding streams could support employability initiatives, deeper industry engagement and ongoing student support – ensuring expanded access translates into high-quality outcomes.
Improved data
Existing measures of quality through the Quality Indicators of Learning and Teaching (QILT) offer us far more comprehensive and reliable information about the performance of students and universities than we have ever had before. This can be complemented by system-wide research and findings based on sources such as the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey and the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) – which offer a broader picture of how graduates are faring but are not university specific.
The Government has been making more use of its extensive data collections across multiple departments (such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Tax Office, Department of Home Affairs and Department of Education) through data integration and linkages that have been used by agencies such as Jobs and Skills Australia to offer unprecedented insights into Australia’s labour market. This data has been used to produce several landmark reports that help us better understand the links between tertiary education (from the Department of Education), occupation and salary (from the Australian Tax Office) and visa status (from the Department of Home Affairs).
The Committee should consider how the Government is making use of its existing data collections and the possibilities of expanding its use of this data and other surveys to provide us with a better understanding of educational and labour market dynamics. Providing a better evidence base will improve our ability to know what is working for students and graduates and make more informed and effective decisions around policy.
Conclusion
There is no graduate employability crisis at Go8 universities. We should avoid referencing narratives that create unnecessary concerned students and school leavers.
For many, a Go8 education remains one of the strongest pathways to a successful and fulfilling career.
Improving outcomes requires:
- Stronger support for student living costs
- Better access to postgraduate and research pathways
- Continued investment in research and innovation
- Targeted support for graduates during transition.
