Data from the Higher Education Student Statistical Collection (HESSC) looks at enrolment and completion numbers by gender and field of education.
This includes STEM courses in:
You can use this interactive data to compare university enrolment and completion numbers for diverse groups in STEM, non-STEM and health fields.
The Power BI dashboards in the monitor present data in different formats, including charts, graphs and tables. You can customise these dashboards based on what you're interested in.
University qualifications in this data include:
Numbers refer to enrolment in a qualification or completion of a qualification in a particular calendar year. Counts include domestic students only, which refers to Australian citizens, New Zealand citizens, Australian permanent residents and Australian humanitarian visa holders.
Enrolment and completion numbers for an individual field, such as information technology, count double degrees in the same field as a single enrolment or completion. This can be expressed as a count of people.
However, when fields are added together, such as at the overall STEM level, double degrees in the same grouping will be double counted. The result is an inflated number for enrolments or completions. For example, if a person enrolled in a double degree in information technology and engineering and related technologies in 2022, they would be counted as 2 STEM enrolments in that year.
For the above reason, the commentary in this article refers to counts of enrolments rather than counts of people.
Cells with counts between one and 4 inclusive have been replaced with a value of 2.5 to perturb the data to maintain the privacy of individuals. Due to this, totals will be slightly different to those published by the Department of Education.
Non-binary and gender diverse people are included in the calculation of proportions in the visualisation and commentary. This group includes students who report a gender other than male or female.
The number of people from a non-English speaking background is likely to be underestimated due to gaps in the data.
The low socioeconomic status group is made up of people whose first address reported to the university was in an area in the bottom 25% of the Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas’ education and occupation index.
Enrolment and completion numbers across years do not represent longitudinal data. They should not be used to calculate attrition rates.
Read more about our methodology and this data.
Between 2015 and 2024, the number of enrolments from women in university STEM courses increased from around 70,200 to around 89,400. This was an increase of 27% compared to 10% for men.
The number of university STEM enrolments from women increased 2% from around 87,800 STEM enrolments in 2023 to around 89,400 STEM enrolments in 2024. This was different to 2022 and 2023, where the number of STEM enrolments from women decreased each year.
Since 2020, the proportion of STEM enrolments from women has remained stable at 37%. This is higher than in 2015, when the proportion of STEM enrolments from women was 34%.
The proportion of postgraduate STEM enrolments from women was 40% in 2024, which was higher than undergraduate STEM enrolments from women, at 36%.
The number of university STEM course completions by women increased from around 14,500 in 2015 to around 19,500 in 2024. This was an increase of 35% and includes both undergraduate and postgraduate completions. From 2021 to 2024, the proportion of university STEM course completions from women remained the same, at 39%.
In 2024, women continued to make up over half of student enrolments and completions in:
Women remained underrepresented in enrolments and completions for engineering and information technology. Women only made up:
The proportion of STEM university program enrolments from First Nations people was 1% in 2024, compared to 2% for both health and non-STEM enrolments. First Nations people account for 3.2% of the Australian population, according to the 2021 Census.
The number of STEM enrolments from First Nations people increased 7% from 2023 to 2024. The number of university STEM completions from First Nations people increased by 27%, from around 390 in 2023 to around 490 in 2024.
For some groups, there was lower representation in enrolments in STEM subjects in 2024 compared to the other fields of education.
Among people from a non-English speaking background, there was higher representation in enrolments in STEM subjects compared to the other fields of education. People from a non-English speaking background represented 5% of STEM enrolments in 2024, compared to 4% for health and 3% for non-STEM enrolments.
People with disability had a higher representation in STEM enrolments (12%) than health (10%), but lower representation than non-STEM enrolments (13%).
Women in all diversity groups were better represented in university STEM enrolments in 2024.
The dataset shows that for university enrolments, STEM is equally popular among non-binary and gender diverse people and all other students. In 2024, 22% of enrolments from non-binary and gender diverse people were in STEM fields. Twenty-one per cent of enrolments from all other students were also in STEM fields.
| Non-binary and gender diverse people | All other students* | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Field type | no. | % | no. | % |
| STEM | 1,217 | 22% | 241,409 | 21% |
| Health | 556 | 10% | 241,824 | 22% |
| Non-STEM | 3,798 | 68% | 641,519 | 57% |
| Total | 5,571 | 100% | 1,124,752 | 100% |
* 'All other students' includes women and men.
