Although removing the cap on undergraduate student fees remains controversial, deregulated fees are not unusual in Australian higher education. A third of public university students already pay market fees. International students make up the majority. The rest, around 140,000 domestic students, take mostly postgraduate coursework degrees.
Deregulated markets provide some insight into both how universities behave when allowed to set their own fees, and how students react to those fees. These are explored in our new Grattan Institute report, University fees: what students pay in deregulated markets.
The International Student Market
In the international student market universities aim to make money, and the main price constraint is what students in a global market will pay. The fees Australian universities charge international students are comparable to competitor universities in countries such as the United Kingdom.
In each country, we observe a wide range of fees for the same or similar courses. In Australia, it is not unusual for the most expensive university to charge double or more the fee of the cheapest university offering the same course. This does not deter international students. Despite the cost, in most disciplines expensive courses attract more students than cheap courses.
