Australian higher education: the real story of scale, impact and momentum (Season 4 Opener)

G'day and welcome to Season 4 of the Global Horizons podcast!

To open up the season, Rob Malicki reflects on some of the highlights from Australian higher education from the past 12 months.

Over the past 12 months, the narrative of universities "losing their social licence" was shown to be a simply ridiculous, click-bait headline.

Here's the proof:

In the latest data, our universities taught 1,676,077 students, up 4.7%, with success also up, at 87.9% and attrition down to 12.2%.

Equity and access to higher education also moved: more First Nations, low-SES, regional and disability students getting in, and through.Institutions invested, and built, in some bigger projects than ever before: Adelaide University launches on 1 January 2026, and Edith Cowan University's $853m City campus is already energising Perth’s CBD... and it hasn't even opened yet!

Deakin University and the University of Wollongong are building real campuses in India, not fly-in deals.

Monash University is investing a Billion (yes, capital "B"!) in TRX Kuala Lumpur... such a big commitment that even the Prime Minister turned up to back it.

In the labs and libraries across Australia, our researchers continued to punch well above their weight, delivering a Nobel prize, state prizes, and countless breakthroughs from CO2 concrete to soil ecology to brain cancer.

Looking at rankings, and Australia continues to slay on a global scale. Six unis in THE top 100, ten in the top 200, and 97% of public universities ranked globally. If we look at sustainability and climate action rankings, our institutions are leading the world at just the right time, when humanity needs it most.

International education has had a mixed year (read the article by Dirk Mulder in The Koala News for the best summary of that). But on the domestic front, students are better protected and supported now than when the year began: the National Student Ombudsman is live, HELP indexation has been fixed, and the Commonwealth Prac Payments (a BRILLIANT and long overdue addition to our system) are underway. Those initiatives deserve some flames (so I'll oblige: 🔥🔥🔥).

If we truly care about Australia’s future, our university sector is the one doing the heavy lifting. It's educating our people, and driving research and innovation. In short, it's setting us up for the future. And there can't be a better way to fulfil a social license than that.