Key financial metrics on Australia’s higher education sector - 2nd edition

This report is the second release of financial information held by Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). It provides a snapshot of selected key financial metrics across the Australian higher education sector. Data in this report has been sourced from TEQSA’s 2015 data collection and relates to financial years ended 31 December 2014 until 30 June 2015. 

TEQSA is committed to ensuring that stakeholders in Australia’s higher education sector have access to relevant information to enable and better inform decision making. TEQSA works closely with the Department of Education and Training and other agencies to collect data on the sector and to minimise the regulatory burden on providers. As part of its ongoing monitoring and quality assurance role TEQSA collects and then analyses this data.

The first edition of this report was released in April this year following a period of consultation and was well received by the sector. TEQSA intends to release this report on an annual basis using data from the latest available collection year. 

About this report

Assessing the financial position and performance of a provider is a complex process which involves analysing a number of quantitative metrics and understanding the provider’s operating context, mission, governance and management structures. TEQSA conducts an annual financial assessment of each provider, which analyses ten commonly-accepted financial metrics reflecting the key business drivers critical to financial viability and sustainability. TEQSA consulted with the sector prior to adopting these financial metrics in 2013, and received broad support for their adoption.

This report provides a snapshot of selected key financial metrics across the whole sector. The metrics have been selected for their importance in measuring the capacity and capability of providers to deploy financial resources in a way that supports quality in the delivery of higher education. Importantly, the selected metrics are reasonably comparable across all providers and also provide visibility of financial position and performance at sector and sub-sector levels.  The definitions and calculation methodology for each measure is available in the Glossary section of this report.

A copy of the report is available above in MS Word and PDF formats.