Are TAFE & VET Enrolments Drastically Dropping or Rising? Here’s What the Census Found

What's more popular?

Turns out that while heaps of you'se are still enrolling in university courses, TAFE is becoming a dominant alternative.

The 2021 Census results were released on Tuesday and revealed the contemporary face of Australian education.

TAFE and vocational education institutions enrolled 177,000 more students last year than they did when the Census was last completed in 2016. Meanwhile, university enrolments remained kinda unchanged, with just 25,000 more students.

Along with these stats, Census data also found that tradies hired twice as many apprentices post-pandemic as they did before.

How do university enrolments compare to TAFE and VET enrolments?

While TAFE enrolments have climbed up, there’s still roughly double the amount of university enrolments.

The gender split is pretty much the same across both areas. Enrolments in vocational education are 54.29 per cent female and 45.71 per cent male, while enrolments in university are 56.91 per cent female and 43.09 per cent male.

Why is there an increase in TAFE and VET enrolments?

There are a couple of theories.

The Oz spoke to Professor Sophia Arkoudis from UniMelb. She said one reason was likely due to people wanting to reskill during the pandemic.

“…People were laid off and had to try hard to find a new career. The pathway TAFE offers is affordable and a quicker reskill,” she said.

“Also in an economic downturn, because courses at TAFE…do not have as high fees, people might be looking to access it as a pathway for higher education later on…It’s a very viable pathway into higher education.”

Meanwhile, Professor Arkoudis reckons the reason universities retained their numbers was because students literally didn’t have anywhere else to go.